Within
the past few months, both DC and Marvel have made more of
an effort to cater to young readers than they had for a
while. To be fair, DC has had a steady children's line for
years, with titles culled from their corporate Cartoon Network
connection. But to catch the attention of the public, you've
got to rebrand, and get that brand out there.
So
now we have Marvel Age, a slight retooling of the usual
Marvel logo, which has taken to rewriting the work of Kirby,
Lee and Ditko and often simplifying and removing narrative
sense. But the new imprint has tried a few other ideas,
telling the story of Mary Jane as
a teen soap. The girl in question has all the good and bad
moments of a typical teen, except that someday she will
grow up and marry Spider-Man. After three issues, Marvel
has had to put the book on hiatus while it regroups and
figures out how to actually get it into the hands of its
intended audience.
A shame,
really, because though on my first reading it left me cold,
it grew on me. Old-time fans might have trouble reconciling
this high school girl with the one we grew up with, who
even as a teenager had a knowing John Romita face. This
Mary Jane is more real, a little more innocent, and definitely
somebody for girls to identify with. Face it, tiger, this
book ain't for us, but Marvel really needs to find
a way to tell them.
That
them also needs to know Marvel Age has temporarily split
Jubilee off from the X-Herd and
into a California public high school. (Why, I'm so old that
I remember when Kitty Pryde would have been the logical
choice.) Robert Kirkman follows the formula for giving an
X-Man a solo book, character "goes home," which is a little
difficult to do for the long-orphaned Jubilee.
Now
she has an aunt that conveniently did not know Jubilee existed
for years, but who invites her mutant niece to live with
her the minute she finds out. So now the mutant is in an
old neighborhood that seems strange, and she has a few dark
family secrets to uncover. The same thing is going on with
Rogue. Kirkman, however, at least has some wit about
it.
A new
reader might not recognize it as formula. Though inconsistent,
artist Derec Aucoin makes most of the high school students
look believably high school age. It's a style just cartoony
enough that it might attract a manga fan's attention. The
catch is, it's not in a format that kids have come to recognize.
DC takes
their shot this week by launching a new book and a
new look. Yes, the Johnny DC mascot exults in the upper left
corner of the cover, hopefully alerting parents that this
title is "safe" for their kids. Justice League Unlimited
#1 definitely fits the bill, though it does have a plot
that could have ended in the destruction of the Earth.
Kids
should be drawn in by a story that opens with Superman,
Wonder Woman and Captain Atom forcefully quitting the League.
In flashback, writer Adam Beechen justifies the action,
as some mysterious force takes over each of those heroes
and causes them to rampage, doing mostly superficial damage.
Of course, if Zatanna is in the story, you know there has
to be a trick here somewhere, and kids might enjoy the logic
of it (lightly borrowed from an early Mark Waid story in
JLA). Penciller Carlo Barberi manages to duplicate
the look of the show on Cartoon Network while still having
a style of his own, keeping the layouts clean. Inking him,
Walden Wong also makes sure the figures have bold outlines,
almost as if they were cels placed on the paper. It's all
big and bright with action that only hurts the really, really
bad guys.
The
only odd choice is in Beechen's inclusion of Hawkgirl into
the line-up. Sure, all the characters used here have already
appeared on television. Fans must hope for the eventual
return of the Thanagarian Warrior. But knowing the obsessive
nature of kids' continuity knowledge (that's why they grow
up to be fanboys), those that watch the show might be very
confused by her presence. Okay, fine, I want to know
when she came back.
Cleverly,
DC also changes up the advertising and editorial content
in the book. In direct contradiction to their main line,
the company is actively encouraging kids to write letters.
Not e-mails -- actual letters on paper, perhaps even with
crayon drawings. And the back page helpfully points out
what other kids' books they have this month, not just a
spotlight on one. (I'll be keeping my eye out for the "all
Duck Dodgers" issue of Looney Tunes, unless I've
missed it, in which case never mind.)
