Static Shock #5 – Review

By: Scott McDaniel (writer & penciller), Andy Owens (inker), Guy Major (colorist)

The Story: Folks, it’s never a good idea to mess with a guy’s sister.

The Review: In my experience, the end of a love affair—and of course I’m talking about comics here—always comes into two flavors: bittersweet or bitter.  Admittedly, my fling with Static Shock started out less than moony, gradually growing more and more disenchanted with each issue, but there’s still enough feeling in the relationship for me to say that even at the end, I still think it could’ve worked, had things been a little different.

Because honestly, the story so far has not been bad.  Rozum and McDaniel (and now, just McDaniel) have done a fine job weaving in a number of different plotlines, breaking up the story to keep it from being sedentary.  And in fact, in this issue, a lot of those plotlines actually come together to form a fairly cohesive picture of where this title might be going.  It’s just frustrating that it took this long for it get its act together.

Static Shock #1 – Review

By: Scott McDaniel & John Rozum (writers), Scott McDaniel (penciller), Jonathan Glapion & Le Beau Underwood (inkers), Guy Major (colorist)

The Story: He’s not just a smart-talking kid who shoots lightning—he also loves physics!

The Review: I may have mentioned before at some point that I’m a fan (not an avid one, but a fan nonetheless) of the Static Shock cartoons.  Having few ethnic superheroes to look up to at the time, I suppose I just glommed onto whichever ones wandered into my awareness, and Static was among the most accessible of those.  I just appreciated that for once, someone other than the white dude—someone young—could be the heroic center of an entire show.

In spite of the anticipation following DC’s assumption of Static and other Milestone characters some years back, the teenaged lightning rod didn’t really show up as much as expected, and made little impact even when he did.  After seeing him get marginalized for so long, it sure is a pleasure to watch him flying around in a solo title again.

Better yet to know this isn’t a drastic reconceptualization of our hero, despite the updated threads and equipment.  Though transplanted into New York City (in Harlem, of course), Virgil comes packaged with his Dakota background and colorful family, and, as his constant communiqués with Hardware shows, he still retains ties to his Milestone fellows, possibly signaling more sightings of them in the future.

For now, we can simply enjoy seeing Static in action, mostly on his own, and delivering his usual potent mix of witty, nerdy, and hapless dialogue, penned by the always dependable Rozum.  Though electric-generating characters (and black ones in particular) come a dime a dozen in comics, Static’s unnatural zeal for science allows him some excellent usages of his powers even in the first few pages, where he uses double positive charges to repel innocents from danger.