Echo #3 Abstract Studios Review by Russell Burlingame |
Three issues in, and Terry Moore's Echo is finally starting to really take shape. The characters are textured and sophisticated; the implications this issue regarding Julie, the book's central character, are that she's damaged and flawed in a way that you don't usually see in your heroine (although Moore's own Katina Choovanski in Strangers In Paradise would certainly qualify).
While the relationship between Julie and her estranged husband has seemed stereotypical, and the conflict clear-cut, in the first two issues, this new issue reveals a look at her husband for the first time. Rather than a goblin, he's a man with a well-reasoned argument and a genuine gripe. While he may be in the wrong, it's not because he's a horrible person who hasn't tried to make it right. And what that means for the book is that the kind of complicated relationships that made Moore famous on SiP and that Marc Andreyko excels at in Manhunter, will be part of the chemistry of Echo.
The main plot--that of a symbiotic, atomic government smart suit that has attached itself to at least two bystanders who were in the area when its previous occupant was incinerated--is moving along slowly while Moore develops the characters; Julie went to the hospital to get her spontaneous, metal breastplate removed but when that failed, gave up and slept with it, displaying a kind of cool I don't think I could muster in her situation (I'd be moving to the next hospital up the road, thanks very much). The second bystander, finally revealed at the end of issue three, appears poised to be the first major "supervillain" faced by either Julie, or the government agents who are hunting her, or both.
And therein, really, lies the problem with Echo. Terry Moore on superheroes just seems...not right somehow.
After years of toiling in relative obscurity to deliver the best book on the shelves, one certainly don't begrudge Moore his right to make money. And obviously superheroes are where most of your American comic book dollars are at. But with Runaways and Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane coming down the pike, it seemed that with Echo we might get something a little more down-to-Earth and a little less like the backup story to Jimmy Palmiotti's Adam Strange titles.
Moore's dialogue is sharp and his art is on-target; the only weakness is that maybe his characters sometimes look TOO much like those we've seen before in SiP. An Army soldier who has been wandering through the last couple of issues in search of the truth about what happened when Julie got her "powers," would be hard to differentiate from rock star Griffin Silver if the two of them wore the same clothes. An aging, somewhat chubbier Francine--seen in some of the "flash-forward" issues of Strangers in Paradise--can be seen clearly in the face of Julie's sister (excepting her blonde hair). It may be these similarities that make it hard to accept that a woman can fly (as it's implied in this issue that Julie will be doing).
Ultimately, though, if Moore can keep doing what he's doing--that is to say, if he can focus more on the characters, their motivations, flaws and conflicts...reveal the contents of Julie's secret, shameful box and the dark past that killed her sister's children...Echo will continue to be a must-read, even if lightning springing from the hands of a Terry Moore creation seems a little off-kilter.
Page last updated on May 24, 2008