Poor Bruce Jones. He gets back to the conspiracy storyline, brings back in Doc Samson–reimagined as some kind of super-spy–and generally gets the series moving again towards something. Sure, Banner barely has anything to do but the narrative works. Jones splits it between Banner, Samson and Nadia (the Abomination’s wife) and ties them all together trying to get the mystery laptops to work.
All in all, the narrative is successful. Jones goes for an artful cliffhanger rather than a rewarding or intriguing one but artful’s okay.
But Deodato’s back on the art and he butchers it. The juxtaposed fight scenes are awful, the Doc Samson fight scene is awful, even the Banner sitting in a cafe is awful. Deodato misappropriates his artistic attentions. The fight scenes should be compelling, what with Jones’s placement of them in the narrative, instead they’re painful to the eye.
It’s a shame.
B-
CREDITS
Split Decisions, Part One; writer, Bruce Jones; artist, Mike Deodato Jr.; colorist, Studio F; letterer, Cory Petit; editors, Jennifer Huang, Warren Simons, John Miesegaes and Axel Alonso; publisher, Marvel Comics.
I don’t tend to go on at length about bad art. Well, maybe I do sometimes. But not often.
There’s no nice way to phrase this observation so I’m going to just go ahead–Jones gives his female characters, in particular the New York paralegal or whatever she is, way too much credit. Unless he reveals her to be a trained law enforcement officer (like most of his strong female members), it’s just absurd. She can track Banner on the run, she carries night vision binoculars, she’s cool when confronted with Creel possessing a little kid… she’s practically Rambo.
Here's Jones's problem, at least with this arc–he can't tell this story with the Hulk. So far it has little or nothing to do with the bigger conspiracy story, it's just about Bruce Banner getting involved with the Absorbing Man's ingenious plan to free himself and kill a bunch of innocent people in the process.
Much as I enjoy Fernandez's art with setting and people, he's not a good Hulk artist. The Hulk has very, very awkward proportions. Pudgy almost. Muscularly pudgy.
Leandro Fernandez to the rescue! Not just regular Leandro Fernandez either, but doing a walking and talking scene through Central Park at twilight. It’s a gorgeous issue.
And here’s that double-issue long Hulk fight Jones has never done before and now it’s clear why… Because he’s no good at it. Jones and Deodato have a rhythm to the fight. There’s the fight, there’s the side action (sometimes the Abomination’s wife, sometimes the bad guys in a helicopter). Those are usually six panel pages. So you get little panels for big fight moments. Or there’s the half double-page spread device, which Deodato uses a lot.
I haven’t talked about Deodato’s tendency towards wide faces because there have been more interesting things to talk about. Not anymore. Sadly, Jones’s stalling has continued and gotten worse–this issue and the previous easily could have been wrapped into one.
Jones slows down the pace a lot. Deodato gets to draw the Hulk for a while and the Abomination is still an undetermined factor in the story–Jones and Deodato are laying on the ominous foreshadowing–but it’s a breather of an issue. Bruce bonds with Nadia, who is also warming to him. Even though she’s working with the villains.
I do admire Jones’s dedication. He resolves my concerns over the appearance of contrivance by revealing the conspiracy to be even more convoluted than he had previously suggested. But he doesn’t stop with the conspiracy, he makes this issue’s plot even more convoluted and surprising.