Review: ‘Antioch’ #2 Does Okay
by Benjamin Hall
Summary
Antioch is in super lock-up. His only ally, Frontiersman, isn’t that much of an ally. Can both Antioch and Frontiersman survive the various villainous supers in the pokey? Also what about Antioch’s impending trial?
Overall
6.7/10Writer Patrick Kindlon provides more exposition in this issue than in the first issue (Antioch #1 [2022]). This is both a good and a bad thing. Yes, it helps readers who haven’t read Frontiersman vol. 1 (2022) understand certain narrative elements. However, that arguably also makes this issue more reliant on that other title than necessary. Yet, it is a common occurrence for second issues to contain, or further, set-up for a new series. Thus, Kindlon is not doing too badly on this front. Kindlon also does an effective job of allowing the art to relate certain significant story beats.
Both the cover and the interior visuals for the main story are by artist Marco Ferrari. While artist Pepper is responsible for the back-up story’s visuals. Although both do great work, Pepper seems to get the easier story to work with due to the lesser word count. Nevertheless, both artists have unique ways of laying out pages. This results in some impressive narrative short cuts that are a bit experimental. Not to mention that when it comes to the cover’s design Ferrari evokes a bit of anime and video game style aesthetics. The characters looking somewhat similar to those in Jojo’s Bizarre Adventures: Golden Wind (2018-2019), and the setting looking like something from Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes (1999).
Production designer Erika Schnatz is presumably responsible for the design of the recap and letter pages. Each of these pages feature visuals that are both subtle yet overt. Whether Schnatz or letter Jim Campbell is resemble for the logos on the cover and the first letter page, is unclear. Whatever the case both logos look amazing. Also amazing is how Campbell makes changes the style of the font in certain ways. For instance most of the dialogue is not in italics, but when speech is in a text box it receives italicization. This, plus using colors to differentiate the speakers’ respective boxes, helps add flair while enhancing characterization.
Antioch #2 is out now from Image Comics.
