Front Lines #1 - Mobile Edition

Marvel Comics
Front Lines #1
By Hervé St.Louis
June 24, 2006 - 15:40

Marvel Comics
Writer(s): Paul Jenkins
Penciller(s): Ramon Bachs
Inker(s): John Lucas
Cover Artist(s): John Watson

Front Lines is about the reporters and journalists that cover Marvel universe’s civil war. In particular, it is about two of them, Sally Floyd and ben Urich who work at the right-leaning Daily Bugle. Following the events in Civil War #1, where teenaged super heroes, the New Warriors caused an explosion in Stamford, Connecticut, pressure is mounting from for the federal government to introduce registration for all super humans. As the Daily Bugle’s publisher, John Jonas Jamieson is one of the supporters, we get an insight into how liberal reporters deal with assignments from above.

This was a very good issue that introduced several concepts straight out of journalism school, but adapted to the Marvel universe’s peculiar setting. I’m not sure where this series is going, but it’s fun that Marvel would publish something that in a sense asks questions about the company’s recent business moves and ethics.

Sure, it’s not spelled that way, but when Daily Bugle editor Joseph Robbie Robertson says to Ben Urich “We’re constantly fighting low numbers and the online thing is cutting into us day by day,” I can’t help but see Marvel’s Editor in Chief Joe Quesada saying these words to justify much of the tricks the company has used to sell more comics. I don’t even believe Jenkins put it there purposely, but if he did, I’m glad it went through Marvel’s radars.

The artwork of this series is ragged but good. Bachs can draw normal humans, fat, old or thin very well. This is what a series like this needs. What wasn’t very impressive was his Ironman. Fortunately his Spider-man was nice. He adds good solid backgrounds that capture the feel of the story. The supplement by Kobayashi was very pleasant visually, although it had storytelling problems. In some frames, it was difficult to understand that Spider-man was crawling a movie screen.

Rating: 8/10