Comics / Comic Reviews / DC Comics

The Intimates # 12

By Hervé St-Louis
June 3, 2006 - 17:35

This is the big finale to The Intimates where the kids continue to investigate the secrets of the seminary. They stumble onto some cool technology and want to test it out. It’s up to the teachers and seminary’s sponsor, the Devonshire company and its hired goons to stop the kids from destroying the planet or something worse. Will they stop them in time?

This series has always been about kids going to highschool and how they see themselves against the adult world. They try to find a place and to forge their own identity. The added context making this potential after school special different is the fact that the kids have powers, and that the stories don’t lend themselves to a nice quiet ending where everybody is friend again. Casey tried to explore this theme and in a sense succeed.

Although the adults had powers too, the kids felt as alienated from them as from other adults in their world. Therein lies one of the problem with this series. Sometimes teens are trying not to look like adult and define themselves as differently as possible from the grown ups. Sometimes they don’t. Often teens long for the adult life feeling it will provide them some extra freedom. That’s one aspect that wasn’t covered by the series.

Although we got to see things from the adults’ point of view often, the kids were just in opposition to them for sake of opposing and were not really looking to fit in this world while being cool at the same time. This series really was an experiment in comic book writing and exploring themes dear to teens. However, I doubt that many teens even read this series, although the blogging comments at the bottom of the pages and the laissez-faire attitude of the storytelling might have appealed to younger readers.

The artwork has always been the highlight of this series. While at first Camuncoli set the tone for the series, once he left, it wasn’t the same anymore. Many imitators came and went. That made all the characters looking consistent. However, The Intimates was one of these series that relied on the idiosyncratic of the artist to be itself. The flow and the pacing changed once Camuncoli left.

In this issue Garza and D’Andan added some grit to the artwork making it feel textured, but their character designs of newer characters never matched the wildness of Camuncoli. Part of the thrill every issue was to see what weird looking super teen was walking in the corridors of the seminary. That was missing from later artists.

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12