REVIEW: Aero #2

STORY

Aero is part of a new line of manga being done by Marvel. Now this isn’t like when Marvel did manga versions of their characters back in the 90s for a while. This is legit manga created by mangaka and adapted by Marvel writers for American set in the 616 continuity.

Aero is a new superheroine lving in Shanghai. She’s an architect which gives her an even greater incentive to defend her city than the average hero because she has a hand in building it. We get a blurb filling us in on how last issue Aero had to use her powers to defend the city from a building she had designed, which had been animated into a giant monster. The battle continues this issue as Aero becomes aware of more buildings turned into monsters and a mile wide “living”“ city descending from the stormy skies to crush Shanghai. Aero uses her powers in a novel way to find the villain behind this, Madame Huang, Aero’s former mentor. Its a nice plot point having the student go up against their corrupter master. While nothing new it always makes for good story fodder when heroes and villains share some sort of close bond. No I’ve read both issues of Aero but saddly I don’t know anything about Madame Haung. More of this back story is like in the Agents of Atlas series, but as a new reader I really need to know more about these two now. The book up to this point has been doing a fine job giving us a view into Aero’s abilities as a hero, her motivations and her life outside of being a heroine complete with insight into relationship issues and more. Its solid stuff, but Madame Haung is a bit vague. I wish Aero gave us a little internal dialogue explaining how it is she can turn building into creatures, how she’s able to easily dodge someone who moves like the wind and more. It makes me feel like I need some clidd notes to read some of this book. Back in the old days Marvel used to add little boxes from the writer or editor telling you what issues you needed to find to fill in these gaps, but that sort of thing has been sadly lacking for a long time, leaving it up to the reader to do research. Marvel, if you tell me where to find more of the story, you might jest end up with another sale. Word of advice.

Even with Pak adapting the book for the West it still reads in a lot of ways like manga, the way certain things unfold and story structure. Now manga has been pretty popular for a while but this might be a bit of a disconnect for those unfamiliar with the medium and sometimes Eastern sensibilities don’t translate easily for Western readers. Pak does a pretty good job with this but I still noticed the differences, but perhaps thats because I’m a long time manga reader, so you’re millage may vary.

ART

The art is quite beautiful bith in line and color. Its dynamic, powerful and often cinematic with numerous splash panels to highlight big action in the story. Sometimes this is a bit gratuitous. On manga markets this can be used to fill page counts as the scheduling of manga is pretty cutthroat. You can’t fall behind over there or your book can disappear from publication quite quickly. The art style looks like a combination of both the Japanese style of comic art as well as that of the Chinese kung fu comics that I love so much (like Hero, and Mega Dragon and Tiger). A lot of the character look and design feels like the former while the sumptously painted panels remind me of the latter. I don’t know Keng’s nationality or background but I’ve become quite a fan of his approach to this comic.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Aero is not at all a bad dip into manga for Marvel and I think its a pretty great idea soliciting actual mangaka for the work. Its really givng the book a best of both worlds flavor. 4 out of 5!

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

AERO #2
Writer:Â Zhou Liefen (adapted by Grek Pak)
Art:Â Keng