Written by Aaron Gillespie, Scott Snyder
Illustrated by Andy Kubert, Klaus Janson
Published by DC Comics
“Sorry, Moses — I didn’t realize how cool you were under pressure.”
This book is so much fun.
And the art is good, the script is excellent – it’s just great, fantastic immersion storytelling. Good comics.
Scot Snyder seems to be in his element with the Challengers. I said this last time – maybe even more so than over in Justice League. Which may be saying something
Maybe it’s because the Challengers is a smaller team, and 4’s a magic number. Or maybe because the canvass he’s working on feels like more of a blank palette.
But that however is not entirely true, is it?
Because Scott Snyder has a plan. And because he has a plan, you can bet that somehow everything that is happening in this book is sure to be interconnected with everything else that‘s happening everywhere else in the DCU. There’s a cameo in this issue which is definitely gratifying – and entirely sensical too – but it serves as well to highlight well just how off the chains everything everywhere might actually already be.
Looks like Scott Snyder will be introducing us to our cast of characters one by one, one issue after the other. It’s good storytelling, and he’s building instant heroes with this team, almost as if he has a talent for it. I find it most gratifying to have him focus on Moses in this issue, and that backstory is an excellent piece of work allowing us, among other things, to help answer the pressing question of what exactly can happen when you find yourself drafted beyond death into a Mission: Impossible/Navy Seal-on-steroids/super techno-mystical strike force team, in which your best possible chance of any control, has everything to do with how you are going to respond to all that is happening.
Moses, it seems, is a man who needs to learn what he needs to know.
Who, for example, are the Keepers of the Dark Frequency? And how do they connect with everything that is happening? What does a horde of Negative Mans (not, surely, a multiplicity of Hushes) have to do with all that? What are we doing with two teams of Challengers now? And who are the bad guys exactly?
Anyway, we know who the good guys are. Or anyway who know who we’re rooting for. Snyder makes that easy.
Our band of hapless heroes. Except, not so hapless perhaps.
I’m looking forward to more answers and to more storytelling. Hopefully some of Bunyan, aka Krunch, next issue. Because who exactly is this guy so comfortable tossing about roundhouses several fathoms deep?
That sort of strength sounds legendary.
Bring it on. More Challengers!
(OK – maybe not too many Challengers. Wait, who are the Challengers?)
Next time: Negative Frequencies
