Matt
Fraction may just be the best comic writer out there right now. I know this is
a bold statement, despite the "may", but I have been really
impressed.
Part of
that is that I have been able to read a lot within a fairly short time period,
so I have more to go on than with many writers. It was Comixology again. They
had a .99 cent Matt Fraction sale, and having heard good things, I went for it.
That meant 12 issues of Defenders, 5 issues of Hawkeye, 17 of the
Immortal Iron Fist, and 10 issues of The Order. (I also picked up
Young Avengers #6 later for more on Hawkeye.)
I started
with Defenders. The Immortal Iron Fist issues take place before
the Defenders issues, which I realized later, so there could have been
some advantage in reading that first, but that is fairly minor.
That leads
to one of the things that Fraction does exceptionally well, but let me
backtrack. I think that I don't like superhero comics. I can't back that up
based on how often I get captivated by superhero comics, but in my mind that is
not what I prefer, and there are reasons for that. It has to do with the larger
than life situations where huge cataclysms happen, and important relationships
and deaths happen, and then it all gets reset, and also the repetition as you
need to be reminded once again that Wolverine heals fast or that Peter Parker
was bitten by a radioactive spider. (I guess some of that is also preferring
limited runs to ongoing series, but again I can't prove that I really do.)
The Matt
Fraction reading was full of pleasant surprises because he kept handling these
things brilliantly. There were things that I understood better about some
developments in Defenders after reading Immortal Iron Fist, but
it was not a problem. There are plot elements in both Immortal Iron Fist
and The Order that seem to be influenced by Marvel's Civil War series,
which I have heard of, but not read anything on, and that was not a problem.
There were little phrases and nods, but not hammering over the head with
explanation or leaving unsettling gaps. That alone is a nice trick.
Also,
having recently read the first issue of a complicated multi-character
team-forming arc that just felt loud and messy, I am impressed with the
innovative and effective way that The Order was laid out. The interviews
as framing devices were interesting, and despite multiple characters and a lot
going on, it was easy to follow. The stakes were clear, the plot threads could
be followed, and it all worked.
One thing
that resonated with me over and over again is how much I liked different
characters. That was certainly true with Clint Barton in Hawkeye, which
I was expecting, and with Henry Hellrung and Pepper Potts in The Order
and Jeryn Hogarth in Immortal Iron Fist, where I really had no
expectations. It was also true with Stephen Strange and Betty Ross in Defenders,
and I was not expecting that at all.
One thing
that bothered me in some of my early Spider-Man reading was that I felt like
the writer didn't really like Spidey, and he was favoring other characters over
Peter Parker. That was also my first exposure to Dr. Strange (it was in a
Dormammu story).
With Dr.
Strange, they started out with two minor characters who didn't like him. One is
a jerk, and he speaks (thinks, actually) what may be the funniest line of the
series "You even sleep sanctimoniously." And you laugh, because it
feels true, but that is the jerk. Then, a little later, the more sympathetic
character, Molly, tells him "I wish
you knew, just for one second, how you make other people feel." And he
does. You have met a former lover, you see him as more human, and he becomes a
sympathetic character, instead of an annoying one.
Fraction is
good at finding the humanity in his characters. Their vulnerabilities are
realistic, and their biggest vulnerability may be caring. That was where I kept
finding myself caring about the characters, when they cared about others - from
team members in danger to pizza-loving dogs.
It was the
characters that got me into Defenders, but then the plot kept getting
bigger and more over the top, as tends to happen when you have all of these
people with ridiculous powers. Fraction made it make sense, for how all of
those many powers and anomalies could happen, and it was perfectly logical,
though still huge. And then he undid it.
It should
have felt like a cheat, but it didn't. Some of that may have been the desire to
have things come right again, because, as previously stated, they care and you
care, but also, the way he undid it was beautiful, and was summed up in a
beautiful line.
"This
time one small act of kindness made all the difference, because in the face of
all our nightmares kindness is the most impossible thing of all."
Matt
Fraction is smart, and he has heart. It's a winning combination.
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