written by Jeremy Whitley
art by Gurihiru
The adventures of the late Hank Pym's daughter Nadia continue as she, her adoptive mother Janet Van Dyne, and her friends and colleagues, the agents of the Genius In action Research Labs (G.I.R.L.) find themselves facing off against longtime Marvel bad guys Advanced Idea Mechanics or (A.I.M.), who also happen to be in league with some mysterious, and distressingly powerful young women as well. Will Nadia's smarts and skills as a Red Room alumna be enough to counter this threat? Also, given Nadia's obsessive as possibly destructive behavior, which may even be the same bipolar disorder that afflicted her father, is she even really ready to take the fight to A.I.M.?
I encountered this character a few years back when creator Mark Waid introduced her in the pages of the All New Avengers, which he was writing at the time, and while I found her likable, she honestly didn't connect with me the way Ms. Marvel or Spider-Gwen did, and as a result I didn't make it a point to pick up her series, which launched a year later.
In fact, I would have overlooked this series altogether if it weren't for the fact that my daughter was captivated by Gurihiru's vibrant art on the cover of the first issue. I ended up getting the first two issues, but gave up with the floppies after they sold out far faster than I could get my hands on them.
For the most part, I enjoyed the book; Whitley writes engaging characters, each with her own voice, whether it's the main character Nadia or her cohorts from G.I.R.L., and he's also got a good grasp on classic characters like Janet Van Dyne and Bobbi Morse a.k.a. Mockingbird. Unfortunately, like many collected editions these days, this story ends on a distinctly anticlimactic note, as it is basically part of a larger, mega arc. Still a lot of writers are able to write a mini-arc with finesse even as they leave the bigger conflict unresolved for the next few issues. Whitley simply doesn't pull it off here, and while I appreciate the efforts of the smaller arc to deal with a serious mental illness, the entire five-issue structure simply doesn't hold up that well and the story feels like a distinct cliffhanger, which in this case doesn't really feel like a good thing.
Luckily for Whitley, though, he's got the ultra-talented duo of Chifuyu Sasaki and Naoko Kawano, collectively known as Gurihiru illustrating his story. In general (with some exceptions), and my fondness for Boom! Studios' Fence notwithstanding, I'm not a huge fan of manga or manga-style illustration, especially when used to render non-Japanese stories like this one, but these two have completely won me over. Their linework and color palette (the team divide the work along those lines) really just pop, and they rely more on actually rendering their characters' expressions than resorting to cheap manga tropes like "deformed" or "chibi" characters. It really is such a pleasure to turn the pages with art this nice. It's just a pity the story it's propping up is as anticlimactic as it is.
There's one more volume left before Whitley's story wraps up, and fortunately, his compelling characterization of Nadia, as well as Gurihiru's stunning art, will definitely have me come back to see how this all ends.
7/10
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