T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents #7 – Review

By: Too many to list—check out the review.

The Story: Most of the time, you say, “I’m gonna kill my mother” rhetorically.

The Review: When DC chose to “hold the line” at $2.99 and cut the page count of its issues in exchange, the results were varied: some creators adapted right away, others went through some growing pains, and a few still haven’t adjusted to the change.  None have managed to confront how to squeeze multiple storylines into a significantly shrunken medium without some pain.

Even a skilled writer like Spencer isn’t immune, although he deals with the problem as best as you can hope for.  It might have been wiser for him to scale back or eliminate altogether one of the “features” he includes in this issue, but as he said in a CBR interview, the talent had already hopped aboard and he was unwilling to let it go to waste.  Given that, you wind up with pieces that are strong in themselves, but don’t really further the issue’s goals overall.
It’s hardly worth mentioning the current story, where Colleen gets precisely two pages (underutilizing the always terrific Cafu, Bit, and Santiago Arcas on art) to take an airplane to Morocco and deliver a teaser line.  The moment packs a punch, and promises good things for next issue, but otherwise does nothing to advance the story.

This is problematic since the bulk of the issue involves a drawn out flashback.  In fact, the pacing of it is such that it seems Spencer forgets he’s only got so many pages to indulge in this kind of luxurious storytelling.  But the sequence needs this slow push to work; the prolonged scenes of domesticity tighten the wire of calm before snapping it in an all-out rush of chaos.  It’s the jump in gears from cutting cucumbers to tossing the knife into a man’s neck that gives the flashback some worthwhile tension.  And Mike Grell draws it all so beautifully, showing how an old-school, retro style can still bring intensity to both drama and action, though it’s Val Staples’ warm colors with a yellowish cast that gives the art its period look.

The flashback also gives you some essential bits of info that’ll make Colleen’s upcoming conflict that much stickier: her parental union between one of the greatest T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and one of the Agents’ most notorious enemies.  An interesting twist to be sure, it also brings new meaning to her sympathy for Toby’s two-faced loyalties last issue.  But Spencer brings layers to most everything he writes.  Why else would he choose Dion’s “The Wanderer” to soundtrack the early parts of the flashback?  An oldies tune sung in doo-wop fashion, the rollicking rock rhythm of the song masks the rather dark undertone of its lyrics: the line “I with my two fists of iron and I’m going nowhere” certainly rings true for Colleen’s parents, given their backgrounds.