Advance Review: Cosmos #5

Cosmos #5 is that rare comic that combines some of the best aspects of Silver and Golden Age storytelling while integrating modern techniques in line drawing, inking and color. This combination results in a book that is a delight to read. A team-up book that challenges you to find out more about the characters involved and invokes memories of the first time you read The Avengers or Justice League.

Written by Tony Kitrell (Black Star Line, Darklight Crew) this tale really has that grand epic feel you get in the best team up comics. As I stated above, this book fills me with that sense of nostalgia I get when I read books from the Silver or Golden Age of comics. Certainly, the setting has much to do with it. Today, many team-up books are grittier and present tales that either deconstruct our heroes or put them in situations where they must compromise themselves or their principles. Conversely, Kitrell has rejected that and, in point of fact, one of the main protagonists pushes back against both a villain and fellow hero who want them to follow a more pragmatic and arguably less heroic path. Additionally, this book is LITERALLY universe spanning as it brings together characters from a variety of different creators and comic book companies. The Omniverse, as they coin the phrase, is a gathering of heroes from a variety of different realities in order to fight a larger than life villain threatening all of reality. It doesn’t get much more Silver Age than that. The bringing together of heroes from different creators also reminds me of a time when heroes, such as Fawcett Comic’s Captain Marvel, were folded into DC Comics. Finally, we come to the actual dialogue in the book. It’s hard to explain but once upon a time dialogue in comic books was more innocent, more fantastic and, dare I say, cheesy. For those of you not familiar with these books you might ask what I mean by this. Example — A modern hero might say “Alpha Boy, can you flip that switch over there and we’ll see what’s what”. A Golden Age hero on the other hand would say “Alpha Boy, be a brave lad and depress the switch for the molecular phase inhibitor and we’ll see what these dastardly fiends are up to!” It’s all about delivery. To be fair, this style was so prevalent it eventually became cliche’ and went out of style. However, when it’s used correctly it can be a charming look back into comics past. Kitrell does that here and I love it.

That brings us to art. Did I say this book reminds me of books from the Golden or Silver Age? I ask because the artwork is pure Bronze Age/Dark Age using modern inking and color techniques. Dody Eka’s (Starlex, Alliance of Evil) linework is tight and they frame wide team shots and action in much the same way that luminaries like George Perez did on books like Teen Titans. However, Eka also brings in newer elements that have become prevalent in modern books. They aren’t afraid to have actions that spills out of panels or asymmetric page design featuring close up of characters that overlay traditional panel art. The combination of styles is fantastic and breaks up the flow of the book in an interesting way that catches the eye.

The inkwork by J.E. Lozano (Terminus, Blackstar Line) and Cristian Docolomansky (Starburn, The Promise) is heavy at times but it never detracts from the artwork. Those of you who have read my reviews know that I’m a huge fan of the inker’s art and I think that the two inkers here did an admirable job inking this wonderfully drawn book. There are a few panels here and there where the inking is average but those are not indicative of the overall quality of inking in the book. Several panels stand out for the inking done to primary lines in order to make a character or object stand out from the background. In a book like this, where there are many characters in frame at once, this kind of inking is fundamentally necessary in order to give the action depth and to make the comic successful.

Let’s finish with color. The color by Raphael Kazeem (Malika, E.X.O.) is very good but there are some nitpicky critiques I have that contribute to the slightly lower score it gets compared to the rest of the book. However, let’s cover the good first. Kazeem’s digital art palette on this book is top notch. His use of contrasting colors is right on point and the color is consistent throughout the book. The fact that there are well over 40 separate characters in this book makes this task that much more difficult but I found no continuity mistakes throughout the book. That is a difficult thing to do. Additionally, the book is bright, appealing and beautiful to look at and the color is a large part of that. That said, I noticed that Kazeem’s use of shading is often done without an artist’s eye. What do I mean by that? Unfortunately, or fortunately, for Kazeem I watched a panel at Wondercon recently where they talked about using color and light with an artist’s eye in order accentuate anatomy, texture and light source in a drawing. While Kazeem does try to do that he often fails to account for shading when it comes to anatomy and texture. Texture is very difficult and can take an inordinate amount of time. However, anatomy should always be a factor when shading a character and there were too many instances where Kazeem’s highlights or shadows did not make sense when you take into account the line drawing anatomy and light source. Because of that I had to lower the base score for his color work.

So let’s wrap this up shall we? This book is wonderful fun. In all honesty, this was my first introduction to an Advent Comic book and it hooked me, so much so that I went out and purchased it from their site. That’s saying something considering I read hundreds of books from dozens of publishers every month. The writing was fantastic and gave me a heaping helping of superhero action without falling into the self aggrandizing preaching or moralizing that is all too common these days. The artwork was on point, beautiful and made me want to sit and take it in long after I read the words on the page. All things considered, this book was a joyful experience and one I’d recommend to any comic book fan.

Writing – 4.25 of 5 Stars
Pencils – 4.5 of 5 Stars
Inking – 4.5 of 5 Stars
Color – 3.75 of 5 Stars

Overall Score – 4.25 of 5 Stars

Writer – Tony Kittrell
Pencils – Dody Eka
Inking – J.E. Lozano, Cristian Docolomansky
Color – Raphael Kazeem
Letters – Lucas Gattoni
Publisher – Advent Comics

Author Profile

Nemesis

Nemesis is a poet, writer and author of the upcoming novel The Long Game. He is a writer of science fiction and supernatural thrillers. Besides novels and short stories he writes for UK based ASAP Comics developing new stories for Level 8 and OPSEC. Nem is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and tries to bring those experiences into his writing.

He lives and works out of his home in Riverside, California with his wife and three children. When not writing he enjoys reviewing comic books and graphic novels for ComicCrusaders.com and living the Southern California life with his family.