Freedom Fighters #8 – Review

By: Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti (writers), Travis Moore (penciller), Trevor Scott (inker), Allen Passalaqua (colorist)

The Story: What does the spirit of America do when it’s angry?  It punches you in the face.

The Review: By all accounts, this is the third series (the first two being minis) featuring the Freedom Fighters and written by the Gray-Palmiotti team.  The minis both had the problem of starting strong, then having the story fall part toward the end.  You’d think with that kind of experience, Gray-Palmiotti would have a firm handle on executing their plotting by now.

As it turns out though, this first story arc winds down just as anticlimactically.

Uncle Sam’s reappearance should have heralded the team getting its act together and taking down the Jester in all-American style.  Instead, his teammates spend the issue KO’ed while Uncle Sam has to finish the job himself.  And despite being a metaphysical concept come to supernatural life, Sam doesn’t have much in the way of skills and powers except a terrific right hook.  It makes for a fairly repetitive fight sequence, that’s for sure.

It doesn’t help Uncle Sam and Jester punctuate their punches with babble about American ideology and politics.  Let’s face it—very few people in general have a firm grasp on political science or the implications of their political beliefs.  If I may be so bold to say it, comic-book writers and readers probably have even less.  Can comics be a medium for political discourse?  Sure.  Superhero comics, not so much—check out Law and the Multiverse for just some of the wacky ways superheroes fly in the face our already jittery laws.

Freedom Fighters #7 – Review

By: Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti (writers), Travis Moore (penciller), Walden Wong (inker), Allen Passalqua (colorist)

The Story: By the power of Paul Revere’s lantern, General Sherman’s sword, and the Arcadians’ helmet of war, I summon the spirit of America!

The Review: The sad truth is cancellations never have a direct relationship to the title’s quality.  Even if an ongoing series is awful, as long as it brings in good money, it’ll survive.  Cancellations only happen when a title doesn’t sell, whether it’s so infamously terrible, hardly anyone can stand it; so flavor-specific, its audience isn’t enough to support it; or so underexposed, it never got on its feet to start with.

Freedom Fighters honestly falls in the middle category.  As a title that enthusiastically embraces its “Rah-rah-America!” nature, it winds up very niche.  We live in an era in which most people aren’t much interested in everyday patriotism except for special occasions.  Comic book readers, being increasingly older, more intellectual individuals, are even less likely to take nationalism seriously, so this title can’t help but come across endearingly sincere, but inescapably silly.

Gray-Palmiotti also make their work harder by attempting to bring in actual politics to the story, which always risks messiness.  The more experience you have in real politics, the more you realize that it’s way more complex and rich than the divide between liberals and conservatives, security versus democracy, which gets played up here.  Being so oversimplified damages the title’s integrity: thoughtful readers dismiss it, naïve readers get misled by it.