Lazarus Planet: Revenge of the Gods #2 // Review
Mary just got back to Philadelphia. Now, she’s got to help her little brother Billy out of a jam. Unfortunately, that also means cleaning up his mess while he goes to meet up with a mysterious stranger in Washington, D.C., in Lazarus Planet: Revenge of the Gods #2. Writer G. Willow Wilson introduces Captain Marvel to Wonder Girl Yara Flor in an issue brought to the page by artists Cian Tormey and Emanuela Lupacchino. Colorist Jordie Bellaire brings exquisite depth and radiance to the page of a fun and powerful tumble between young heroes of great power and some very large, very menacing monsters.
Mary returns from Themyscira to find her brother in Captain Marvel mode. He’s battling a ridiculously large blue-skinned giant big enough to crush Fawcett Central High with its bare hands. Somewhere in the middle of battle, Captain Marvel turns back into Billy and gets a vision that tells him to head out to Washington, D.C. Somewhere in the middle of THAT journey, there’s a two-headed beast that shows up, prompting Billy to turn back into Captain Marvel to save a few innocents...a task which quickly gains Billy the aid of the powerful Amazon Yara Flor. Now, Captain Marvel and Wonder Girl are looking to infiltrate Olympus to discover the fate of Wonder Woman.
Wilson’s wit carries the issue quite well through a fast-paced series of action encounters. An issue consisting of three fight sequences might turn into kind of a boring slugfest, but Wilson modulates the action well enough to maintain momentum in and around a number of very clever bits of dialogue. Wilson has a deft and nimble grasp of conversational dialogue in an action-based story. Wilson manages to make the pacing feel perfect even though she moves things move from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., to Mount Olympus in the span of a single issue.
Wilson’s script is in good hands with Tormey and Lupacchino. They brilliantly capture the kinetics of the combat between the giant and the two Marvels. The dynamic is clear: Captain Marvel has power, but he lacks the swiftness and cunning of Marvel Girl, who is much better suited to fighting something large and lumbering. The images of Captain Marvel getting hit with a fist the size of a locomotive are particularly impressive. Yara Flor comes across every bit as graceful as Mary, with a fighting style all her own. Bellaire does some of her best work in recent memory in an issue that gives her an opportunity to show the glow of powerful energy blasts and some rather well-framed establishing shots of the three major locations. Once again, Bellaire shows that she can do some really beautiful work with close-ups of action that feature nothing but speed lines in the background. (That’s a big challenge for any colorist. Bellaire always does an excellent job with those panels.)
It’s fun to see Captain Marvel contrasted against a couple of superpowered women who are much more poised and sharper than he is. It’s a nice dynamic. It isn’t always easy to show the boy-in-a-god’s-body in a way that truly respects the complexity of the hero Captain Marvel. Wilson does a really good job of articulating that complexity.
