Weekly Collection Reviews Part 9

[Diamond]

Previous review.

Welcome to part 9 of the Weekly Collection Reviews!

Now that the sixth volume of the Powers OHC Collection is finally available, I'm doing a review of another comic by the baldest and most controversial writer in the mainstream industry. I'm talking about Fire, by Brian Michael Bendis



Fire is a turning point in Bendis' career, the comic where his rise to fame began, his first major work. As such, it is a very interesting comic because it was created by a young Bendis who was still a newcomer. In other words, Bendis before succumbing to superhero comics.

The story opens with a student being contacted by the government. He is told they want to train him to be a secret agent, but nothing can prepare this young man for what is going to happen. When we think of stories set in the world of intelligence services, we tend to assume that they are going to be either straightfoward and full of action or slow-paced and full of complex intrigues. Fire tries to distance itself by being straightforward and slow-paced, very slow-paced and filling every page with Bendis' dialogue. Whoever dislikes Bendis' writing may want to stay away from this comic.

There is no doubt that the Bendis who wrote this was a very inexperienced Bendis, but even then we can immediately detect every element of his particular style, from dialogue to page layout. And maybe this is Fire's problem: it is what you would expect from a Bendis noir book, but it never reaches the heights of Powers or Torso. Bendis' style and artistic sensibilities are already in Fire, but not the experience and refinement.

The same can be said about Bendis' art. You can recognize his style from the very first page, but it is very irregular (especially when it comes to characters), only saved by a good use of black and white. The other problem with the art is the obvious tracing of locations and faces; sometimes it works well but other times not.

All in all, I would say Fire is still worth reading considering how green Bendis was. Apparently Marvel released two months ago a hardcover with the "remastered" edition Bendis did years ago. Honestly, I do not think it is worth the $19.99 price tag, but if you happen to find it for cheap you might want to give it a try and see how Bendis started in the comics world.