It might have been the worst thing to hit Farmington since that car crash last month that killed a couple of teens and three cows at the intersection of Highway H and 144. A couple of middle-aged superpowered guys went at it. No kiddin’. It’s right there in Local Man #5. Writer Tony Fleecs and artist Tim Seeley conclude a major plot arc in the series. It’s not pretty, but that’s...that’s kinda the idea. It’s none of yer fancy people dancing around in tights or anything like that. Just a couple of guys, y’know...they’ve got a few things to work out...

See: they were teammates from way back in the 1990s. Seascape. The Slick. Meltdown. King Bee. They were all on the team. Years later, a couple of them run into each other in what used to be 4th Gen Academy. (It’s the Community Center now.) One of them had it in for the other because he killed Hodag. The other one was upset ‘cause he killed Camo Commander. Damn if one of them can’t like...teleport or whatever. He’s teleporting around with a big knife while the other guy’s like...telekinetically shooting shards of glass at him. There was blood everywhere. 

Fleecs gets some of the feel of small-town Wisconsin into an issue that’s really just a couple of old guys fighting. There IS some depth to the story. There are a lot of personal demons emerging from a couple of guys who had been a lot less bitter when they were kids back in the 1990s. It’s kind of an intriguing premise for a conflict, but it lacks the kind of nuance that would elevate it beyond the level of a brawl between a couple of guys at some bar in the middle of nowhere. 

Seeley has done a pretty good job of representing some of the look and feel of contemporary middle-aged guy fashion in rural eastern Wisconsin. It’s not like it’s too terribly interesting to watch visually, though. The specific powers of the two guys involved in the conflict DO have a bit of flash to them, and the brutal kinetics of the action can pack quite a punch when it hits the page at the right angles. There isn’t enough novelty in the specific atmosphere that they’re going for to distinguish it from any other fight in any other superhero comic book, though.

And maybe that’s the whole point. When seen from the right perspective, the gorgeous battles between toned figures in brightly-colored costumes that hit the page with such grace and form...really aren’t all that different than a couple of middle-aged guys beating the hell out of each other at the Community Center. Aggression is aggression, and conflict is conflict. Writers and artists can be as realistic as they want, but on some level, all action is aggression and violence, and...it’s all ugly. All of it. That doesn’t mean that it’s particularly interesting on the comics page, though. 

Grade: C+