Radiant Black volume 1

I picked this up after listening to an interview with writer Kyle Higgins on the Off Panel podcast. One fun bit of that conversation was Higgins saying that he is still in touch with some ex-colleagues at DC (I read some of his New 52 Nightwing) and one told him that a group of editors picked Radiant Black for their comic book club. At the discussion one (maybe more than one of them, I don't remember) said that they would never allow a writer to open a DC comic with a first page like that of Radiant Black. The entire first page is one panel, showing someone's phone in a holder on their car dashboard, displaying their bank statement with $38,000 of credit card debt. The voice from the phone from the bank, rejecting their application for a loan. The phone belongs to Nathan Burnett, a 30-year-old who is failing at being a writer, and who is crying in public by page 3. It is a really strong first issue that lays out the characters' foundations before anything weird happens (something weird does happen) and then wraps up with a great kicker.

After leaving DC, Higgins worked for years on the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers comic which led to him getting a reputation for handling tokusatsu stuff well and to working on Ultraman. Radiant Black has that same DNA of ordinary people getting powered up and wearing suits that wouldn't look out of place on a Saturday morning kids show, but he doubles down on "ordinary people" part here. Nathan, the broke writer turned Uber driver, isn't just dealing with debt. He's dealing with doubt. There's a whole issue in the first volume where Nathan attempts to lock himself in a room and write (this is someone who has recently acquired superpowers and hasn't really worked out what to do with them). One of the best scenes overall is a conversation over porridge where Nathan's dad asks him about getting a job.

The final issue in the volume has a guest creative team in co-writer Cherish Chen and artist Darko LaFuente. On the podcast Higgins talked about bringing in guests and building out a creative team and an extended world - it's quite cool. Chen and LaFuente switch perspectives to another character who is dealing with similar stuff to Nathan (gaining a superpower) in quite different circumstances. This was one of my favourite parts of the comic. It tells the story of Satomi Sone, a young woman about to get married to a man with a gambling problem. There's a panel with Satomi and her fiance smiling at each other, at a family gathering, her father's speech bubble "You two are going to make a beautful family," which slams into the next page of them not speaking on the drive home. Everything in Radiant Black puts the characters first. You don't care about two capes in masks trading blows if you don't spend time with them first, and it works really well.

Incidentally, I love how LaFuente adds terrain lines to give depth - little circles around characters' knuckles, for example. I think in a lot of my favourite comic book art there is a tension between realism and cartoonishness. LaFuente has great control, his figures are solid and real, but there is exaggeration in hands and faces, pushing the expressions. Satomi is isolated, gradually working out how deep their problems go, and so much of the storytelling is conveyed with silent panels showing her expressions.

The majority of the art in the book is by series co-creator Marcelo Costa. It doesn't click me with in quite the same way, but it's very good. Many of the panels, I'm looking now at the page of Nathan carrying his moving boxes towards his parents house, look like stills from an animation. The characters are really distinctive and expressive. For a story that is so character-driven it works. And the superhero action stuff, when it pops off, is vibrant and evocative of the inspirational material while really feeling like its own thing. Oh! And it's fun that the alien tech involved causes people to swear in an alien language (with option to decode if you are so inclined).

This comic is a lot of fun.