Review: Livewire #4

Livewire, the ongoing series from Valiant featuring Amanda McKee as the titular character, generates electric intensity through its first story arc. The stakes have always been high for Livewire because her tele-technopathic require levels of mastery and control that must be maintained at all costs. The one lapse that readers know of was a near apocalyptic event ”“ temporarily sapping the United States of all of its electrical power, “throwing the country into turmoil.”“ Of course, this event makes Livewire, public enemy number one. And the series is animated by the powerful forces that are intent are hunting her down and killing her.

Vita Ayala (writer), Raul Allen and Patricia Martin (artists) deliver the goods on every page and in every panel. Livewire #4 finds Amanda captured by fellow psiot, Pan whose abilities were overlooked when they were young acolytes in Toyo Harada“s army super-powered humans. Now he is all grown up and all mercenary madness. He wants to kill Livewire because he is jealous of her. It“s a sibling rivalry of sorts that gestated when Harada was alive and still training psiots. He chose Amanda to be his right-hand woman/second-in-command and Pan never got over it. His entrenched jealousy doesn“t prevent him from pushing Amanda into (and through) a powerful process of self-reflection. Their physical battle is everything a comic battle is supposed to be ”“ flashy, too wordy, and visually spectacular. But through it all, the conversation and Livewire“s internal thought processes throughout reveal the kind of depth that will compel readers to keep coming back for more.

At the core of Amanda“s internal conflict is an unanswerable query that too many comics/heroes/universes tend to simply take for granted. Do the needs of the many ALWAYS outweigh the needs of the few? Most heroes ”“ most comic book creators tend to answer “yes”“ to this query ”“ and in many cases this is a matter of fact reality of the superhero genre. But Vita Ayala and company dare to challenge this accepted and often unquestioned assumption. You might be surprised at where Livewire ends up in her thinking on this matter and her experiences might change your thinking on it too. But there is no mistaking that this is a unique and uniquely spectacular book about the challenges of being the most wanted and the most powerful superhero in the world. 4.5/5!

[yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

(W) Vita Ayala (A) Raul Allen, Patricia Martin (CA) Adam Pollina