Review: ‘Frontiersman’ #2 Moves Forward
by Benjamin Hall
Summary
Frontiersman has put his costume back on to help generate news. Yet, this relatively small action draws more attention than he expects. One such source of attention is the being Galaxie Prime. However, is Prime set to attack Frontiersman, or are these old foes set to find a middle ground of understanding?
Overall
8/10Artist Marco Ferrari is very consistent when it comes to the interior art. A particular area of consistency is the body proportions, especially how they compare to each other and the settings. Ferrari also does a good job at balancing the visual characterization between cartoonish and realistic. When it comes to the color palette Ferrari uses mostly greens and blues throughout this issue to good affect. Unfortunately some of the coloring is not fully solid, and this could be jarring to more critical readers. Also there are a few bits panels that suggest Ferrari may be too reliant on cross-hatching. However, Ferrari’s work does not have so much cross-hatching that it results in overly complex imagery.
Writer Patrick Kindlon creates very believable dialogue. Although Kindlon mainly does the telling of this story through the ‘talking heads’ motif there is enough action to balance things out. Kindlon also does a great job at writing interesting back matter about one of the inspirations for this series. Yet, without the work of letterer Jim Campbell Kindlon’s characterization would not work as well with Ferrari’s art. In particular on the pages where the visuals look more experimental Campbell grounds things via the font and its positioning. Cambell also does a good job when it comes to using bold type to create emphasis in sentences.
Though the interior work is arguably great overall this issue may lose some readers due to two factors. The first factor is that the wraparound cover art by artist Maurizio Rosenzweig suggests a massive cosmic story. Factor two is that while the narrative is massive and cosmic it is not what one will expect from the cover. In fact depending on what one expects after reading the first issue (assuming they have) this issue’s narrative could result in either satisfaction or disappointment. Whatever the case the cover features a nice assortment of homages with good amount of space between them, and a pleasant color palette.
Frontiersman #2 is out now from Image Comics
