Editor's Note: newuniversal: Shockfront #1 arrives in stores tomorrow, May 14.

"Tumble"

Thom Young: Three and a half bullets
Paul Brian McCoy: Three bullets (as a first issue); Four Bullets (as a seventh issue)


Thom Young: This was a difficult issue for me to assign a bullet ranking. If I rate it purely on its own merits, it deserves four bullets--possibly even four and a half. However, my biggest concern coming into this issue is that it wouldn’t pick up where the story left off in newuniverse #6 because it needed to be "new user friendly" as the first issue of a new series.

Unfortunately, it both does and doesn't pick up where the previous series left off--which would make me give it only three bullets.

Paul Brian McCoy: My initial reaction was that on its own, as a first issue to a new mini-series, this book would be three and a half if I was feeling generous, and the art didn't make me feel very generous. However, when read as a continuation of the issue that came before, my score goes up. I don't think this is being written for new readers at all, and if you haven't read the first series, then this might just be a confusing mess.

Thom Young: Oh, I agree. By "on its own" I didn't mean as the first issue of a new series. I meant as an issue that is neither new-user friendly nor connected to a previous story. It's definitely not a good entry point first issue for new readers, but it's also not exactly picking up where the former series left off.

What I mean by it being a four-bullet issue "on its own" is that it's very well-written and I enjoyed it a great deal more than I enjoy most comic books that are being produced nowadays. I even enjoyed Steve Kurth's illustrations more than I enjoy the work of most pencilers nowadays.

After a year layoff, and without re-reading the previous six issues, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to recall all that I needed to, but Ellis provides a three-page expository introduction of the seven key plotlines from the previous series and that jarred my memory enough to enjoy this issue.

Paul Brian McCoy: I didn't think the recap sections were very effective. I gave the book a couple of reads before going back and rereading the first six issues, and this works much better as an issue #7 than it does as a first issue.

There's not a lot to really grab a new reader and establish just what the hell is going on here. This was especially problematic for me because my memory isn't any good to begin with, so all I remembered from the first series were the broad strokes stuff that was mentioned in the recap. The real beauty of those first six issues was in the details that laid out an interesting and intriguing alternate reality.

But after rereading the first series and then picking up this issue again, it works much better. Maybe too much time has passed between then and now (both in-narrative and out) to make it a comfortable transition, but reading the first series is pretty much required.

Thom Young: Yeah, it is. Yet it doesn't exactly pick up where the previous issue left off, and that bothered me more than having to have read the previous issues bothered me (since I had read those issues, and could sort of recall what was in them).

According to the timestamp on page five ("March 16, 2006"), exactly two weeks have passed since the White Event occurred on March 2, 2006--and that means it's been about 13 days since the end of newuniversal #6 (which ended with the words "To Be Continued"). Ellis stopped using timestamps in the first series after the third issue (at which point about 17 hours had passed since the White Event), but it looks like the entire previous six-issue series occurred in no more than 24 hours.

So we're picking up the story 13 days from where we left it a year ago--and that's not too bad. However, considering the events in the initial six issues happened in about 24 hours, I almost feel as if I've missed 78 issues.

Not really, but I am a bit disappointed that we weren't shown some of what transpired during those missing 13 days--such as Phil Voight and Dr. Swann's interactions at Project Spitfire at Fort Meade, Maryland. Perhaps we'll get caught up with all of those events either in flashback or expository dialog.

Paul Brian McCoy: Those missing elements are really the main reasons my score isn't higher for this issue. There are three pages of story lost because of the recap pages, then we open with a full page from a Chinese comic that the character Izinami Randall is reading, followed by a page and a half discussion of fanboy behavior and comic shop traffic. That's almost a quarter of the book spent already and nothing has happened yet.

Again, the character work done here is effective if the reader is coming in from the previous series, but otherwise this stuff comes completely out of the blue. I mean, I love the conversation Izinami has with her boss, but I'm not sure it's really beneficial in the context of a first issue narrative. I suppose it does provide some emotional grounding for what comes later, but I'm not even sure why it had to play like it does.

Plus there's no indication of why this is a manhua shop instead of a typical American comics shop or what the cultural significance this is to Ellis' fictional world. If a reader hadn't read the previous series and wasn't familiar with the socio-political landscape that Ellis had established there, this all may just seem odd and confusing.

Four and a half pages is a lot of room to touch on another previous storyline or two.

Thom Young: I particularly enjoy scenes like that one. They create a sense of verisimilitude for me that not only grounds the emotional content that comes later but those types of scenes ground the entire fantasy world of superheroes for me in a world that becomes identifiable for me in some small ways.

In a way, it's the last vestige of what Jim Shooter had in mind when he originally came up with the New Universe concept 20 years ago. It was supposed to be "the world outside your window"--a universe of interconnected titles that would create a deeper sense of verisimilitude than most superhero comics.

Twenty years ago, it seemed that such an approach was the future of comics--taking the next step from the Silver Age stories of Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, and Stan Lee in which the heroes had "identifiable problems" up to the "real world perspectives" of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen and Alex Ross and Kurt Busiek's Marvels.

Warren Ellis has mostly gone to great lengths to show us that his New Universe is not "the world outside your window," but with scenes like the one you mentioned he's at least letting us know that the people populating this New Universe have the same emotional worlds inside ourselves.

Paul Brian McCoy: It just seems like a new reader isn't going to be invested enough in this world to wade through all the Asian names and characters being discussed right out of the gate. Especially if one doesn't already know that China is the dominant political and cultural super power in this world.

It's clearly an echo of the use of pirate comics in Watchmen to reflect the in-narrative pop cultural preoccupations, and it helps to provide texture to the world Ellis has created. Eh, I’m probably just over-thinking this anyway. I liked it. New readers might not.

Thom Young: Yeah, the idea of there being manhua stores rather than comic book stores was interesting--and it definitely relates back to the first issue of the previous series where it was disclosed that bars in rural Oklahoma serve Tsingtao beer and that the Chinese have multiple bases on the moon. I suppose we'll see more of China's position as the top political superpower as the series progresses.

I was also wondering, though, if Ellis wasn't having some fun with a possible pun in which manhua, the Chinese word for comics, sounds like manure. Because, of course, everything else in that scene is typical of American comic book culture--as in Tuesday being a slow day because the fanboys only come in on Wednesday to get their manhua (manure).

Paul Brian McCoy: I wouldn't put it past Ellis. However, it's apparently just the luck of the pronunciation. According to Internet wizardry, manhua (the Chinese word originally borrowed from the Japanese manga and referring to all comics) became associated particularly with Chinese comics as early as 1925.

And, in a neat bit of trivia, the Chinese characters for manhua are identical for those used in Japanese manga, Korean manhwa, and Vietnamese manhoa.

Thom Young: Yeah, they're obviously all etymologically related, but I just thought Ellis decided to have some punning fun with the word in relation to American comics--especially with the couple of references the manager of the store makes to "crap."

Anyway, when I reviewed the sixth issue of newuniversal (which I had no idea was to be the last issue for a year), I wrote, "What became painfully obvious to me as I read this latest chapter is that the story really needs to be read in one collected graphic novel."

Of course, Marvel then collected those six issues into a "graphic novel" even though the story wasn't completed and the sixth chapter ended with "To Be Continued."

I'm now inclined to wait out the entirety of this current series until it, too, is collected in a paperback edition. It should not only be cheaper (and I am a damn cheap jackass, as you know), but it should also be easier to follow the social, political, and personal aspects of the story.

Paul Brian McCoy: Without a doubt it'll read better collected, especially when read with the first series. Part of me kind of wishes that they had just released the whole thing at once, like The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier (although, to be fair, that was a stand-alone story, whereas this seems to be plotted as an ongoing series of minis), since there are so many storylines (two new characters are revealed this issue, making a grand total of nine narrative threads) and so little space to give them the attention they deserve.

Thom Young: If I remember correctly, the original series was planned as an ongoing monthly, and I would now recant my statement in my review of the sixth issue had Ellis, Larroca, and Marvel been able to produce it on a monthly basis. In a literary world of greater verisimilitude, six or seven separate plotlines should not be expected to all conclude around the same time unless they eventually all intertwine (which, of course, they might).

It's much more realistic, though, to think of plotlines that don't directly intertwine. Instead, if Ellis had planned for them to indirectly intertwine over the course of several dozen issues--much like the structure of a TV soap opera. In retrospect, the soap opera structure of plotlines coming together both directly and indirectly would have been the hook for me to keep buying each issue as it was published.

Now, if the new approach is to wrap up all plotlines in six-issue increments, then I'm much more inclined to just wait for the collected edition.

Paul Brian McCoy: I haven't been able to find any interviews about this new project online, so it's hard to tell what the game plan is going to be here. I hope Ellis plans to continue with the characters, even if it is as consecutive minis I know there's a one-shot planned for July (newuniversal: 1959), and it's being written by Kieron Gillon (hand-picked by Ellis, the ads say). I suppose that's one way to keep building and fleshing out this world.

But I really want to know what happened with Dr. Proudhawk more than any other character--which again reinforces for me how much stronger this issue is when read as issue #7. The timing of this issue's new character revelations builds on the introduction of Proudhawk near the end of the previous series.

Without that bit of previous knowledge about the story (that there are other people whose powers are awakening, even though they may not seem to be connected to the White Event), the new characters just seem to be random appearances (accompanied by horrific gore) with no context from which to draw meaning.

Thom Young: I don't even remember Proudhawk in either this issue or the previous, so I'm obviously going to have to re-read all seven issues when I get the time.

Paul Brian McCoy: Well, he's not even referenced in a single panel in this issue. However, his vision quest and the discovery of his role in what's coming were my favorite parts of the first six issues. That was in issue five, by the way.

Thom Young: I guess I don't recall the plotlines from a year ago as much as I thought I did. I'm going to have to add the entire run to my ever-growing stack of stuff I have to get around to reading. I won't mind, though, because I love the writing on this series. It outshines every other series that I'm reading with the exception of All-Star Superman.

Paul Brian McCoy Ellis' Thunderbolts shines like that for me. I'm sad that he's wrapping up on that one. Twelve issues just wasn't enough for me.

Thom Young: That's a series I should have tried, and will probably buy in the collected paperback. I know you indicated earlier that you didn't like the illustrations, but I should point out that I like Steve Kurth's pencils on this issue more than I liked Salvador Larroca's on the six issues of the previous series.

Paul Brian McCoy: I really don't care for the art at all, which may be making me more cranky about the pacing than I normally would be. I've never seen Kurth's work before, and after a quick Internet search, I see he's done G.I. Joe, Ghostbusters, Dragonlance titles and, most recently, Marvel's adaptation of Last of the Mohicans. Well, there's nothing in this book that makes me want to see any of his other work. It's just ugly.

Actually, I take that back. He does a good job with exploding bodies. The gore is realistic and graphic, which is something I like when it's in service to a good story. And it is in service to a good story here, regardless of my bitching and nitpicking.

But the rest of the book looks pretty bad to me. This could just be a combination of his pencils with Andrew Hennessy's inks, but generally, the people really don't look quite right. Faces often seem twisted or squeezed into unnatural positions and the use of heavy shadows and swaths of black tends to add to the ugliness rather than create mood or drama. There's just no reason to have the shadows as heavy as they are when a more subtle shade of color would work much better.

Colorist Chris Chuckry does the best he can to create depth and texture, but he can only do so much. This might have worked better as color art over unfinished pencils, although that wouldn't change the basic ugliness of the characters. Regardless, I found it to be a dramatic step down in art quality from the first series (even though I usually didn't care for Larroca's photo-referencing choices).

Thom Young: Fair enough. We disagree about something else besides gun control and which bands were the progenitors of heavy metal. I found Kurth's pencils to create even more of a sense of verisimilitude for me than Larroca's did (though I didn't realize this until I started looking through the previous series in preparation for this review).

I also like Kurth's work more than I do many other illustrators working for either DC and Marvel nowadays--but that's sort of faint praise as far as I'm concerned, since I find a lot of comic book illustrations nowadays are being produced by pencilers who have little understanding of how their panels should complement the story by moving the action flowingly from panel to panel, and then when to cause the flow of the action to stop when the story requires it. I didn't find any of those types of problems with either Larroca's or Kurth's, but I did find Kurth's figures to be more natural.

What I particularly liked about this issue, though, is related to something I noted in my review of the previous issue where I mentioned that it seemed that Ellis had introduced General Thunderbolt Ross into the story--again indicating that this New Universe is not "the world outside your window" but is actually a parallel Marvel Universe in which none of the inhabitants of the regular MU (whatever it's numerical designation is) had achieved super powers.

Paul Brian McCoy: I agree. That was a very nice touch. I also love how this is just a given here, whereas other companies might use this detail as the cornerstone for a company-wide epic event.

Thom Young: Yeah, in Ellis's New Universe, I'm sure Peter Parker exists but will never be bitten by a radioactive spider. Instead, he's probably a geekish high school student in Queens getting picked on by Flash Thompson. My suspicions are born out in this current issue in which we see Captain George Stacey (Gwen's father) briefing a room of detectives about the "Justice Killer," Det. John Tensen.

Capt. Stacey's first team of detectives who will be coordinating the case are:

• Jean DeWolff (presumably not a captain here as she was in the Spider-Man comics of the 1970s and 1980s),
• Det. Flint (who dates back in the Marvel Universe at least as far as Moon Knight volume one #12 in 1981),
• Misty Knight (who was an NYPD police officer before being injured in the line of duty and getting a bionic arm in the Iron Fist story in Marvel Premiere #20 in 1975--presumably the New Universe version never received a bionic arm and she made detective), and
• Det. Nick Manolis (who was a corrupt cop in Frank Miller's 1981 Daredevil stories, but seems to have avoided being murdered in the New Universe.

Even though I'm more in tune with DC Universe history than I am Marvel history, I really enjoyed these appearances and the idea that Ellis is giving us an alternate version of Marvel's 1970s universe set in 2006.

Paul Brian McCoy: I'm glad you detailed all that, since my faulty memory only recognized Stacey, DeWolff, and Knight. For what it's worth, this makes Ellis' second alternate version of Misty Knight.

All in all, I'm a little disappointed with this as a first issue. It moves a little too casually for a first issue, and I thought too much space was given over to recap with not enough new information included. It does get stronger as it goes along, though, but then we run out of pages, just as it's getting interesting. The pacing works better if this issue is read in succession with the previous six.

In fact, I'm amazed at the difference rereading the first six issues made to my enjoyment of this comic. And luckily for the readers out there, both a trade and/or a premiere hardback collection is readily available. Hell, instead of digging through the piles of back issues in my closet, I just ordered the hardback cheap from Amazon on Thursday morning and had it Friday afternoon (with no shipping charge and the regular discount, the hardback was just over 13 bucks--you can't beat that).

Thom Young: No, you can't. I'm half inclined to sell my six issues on eBay for a fourth of what I paid for them and then just buy the trade paperbacks from Amazon. The only downside to that is that I wouldn't be able to enjoy Ellis's writing as soon as it's originally published, but it would probably be worth it both financially and in being able to follow the story more closely.

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