It’s 1955. Franky Peabody isn’t exactly the best scout, but he’s learning. He may not have known how to tie a knot, but when it came to starting fires, he was a natural...not exactly in the way that would have earned him a merit badge, though. He was also really good at feeding the local wildlife and paddling a canoe and well..Franky’s got issues that are only just beginning in Hyde Street #2. Writer Geoff Johns and artist Ivan Reis make another venture into a Twilight Zone-style anthology series with inker Danny Miki and colorist Brad Anderson.
The police would have caught-up with little Franky Peabody, but his dad was something like a war hero in the Pacific theatre of war, so they’re willing to overlook what might have happened between him and the rest of the scout troupe. He’s kind of a sensitive kid, though. Even his biology teacher seems a bit insensitive to the fact that he’s not really happy with the idea of dissecting a fetal pig. Things are going to get worse fro Franky before they can ever get better. And when they get better for Franky...they kind of get worse for a lot of other people.
Johns had established that Frankie was a little bit darker than just about everybody else on Hyde Street. In the second issue of the series, he begins to detail the history behind that darkness. He's a vicious, vicious kid. He takes great pleasure in the misfortune of others. Obviously that's going to come from somewhere. And obviously where that's going to come is in the form of a very rough childhood. John does a good job of not necessarily moving too far over the top with it. It's not extremely heavy handed or anything like that. Nevertheless, John manages Frankie, a perfectly respectable kid who just got dealt the wrong hand. And the fact that he's able to do so in a way that doesn't feel like it's been done 1 million times is quite an accomplishment.
The harshness of Frankie's world is delivered to the page respectably by the art team. Though there is a lot of mid 20th century. Reality to deliver to the page, the heart and soul of the issue really needs to be the deep and deeply human drama that serves as the center for everything. Reis and Miki do a good job of bringing that into sharp relief in a world that has considerable atmosphere rendered for the page by the coloring of Anderson.
Johns and company deliver a really impressive second issue. One more foundation gets delayed for a series that could easily run for quite a few issues. There is so much potential in the story of so many people who have been subjected to the darker end of humanity. Really interesting to get a very sophisticated and nuanced look at that in a series that dives very deeply into the nature of human misfortune.
