An anti-police protest turns freaky when police in Dakota City fire experimental new tear gas at the protestors. Oh, they turn into superpowered Bang Babies. Virgil is caught up in this too, and becomes a superhero named Static!
Putting on a costume, Virgil fights back against the insatiable offensive against the Bang Babies And so here we are, at Static, Shadows of Dakota.
Written by Nickolas Draper-Ivey and Vita Ayala, the first issue of this season plunks us right in the middle of Dakota, where the police are overbearing. The homeless are being harassed. It’s action and drama, nicely mixed, kicking off an issue that zaps and punches in a brashly “can’t touch me” manner.
Nikolas Draper-Ivey pulls triple duty as the artist and colourist too, with amazingly realistic art and colouring effects. As a result, the issue reads like ‘real’, or at least ‘augmented and illustrated real’. The shapes, the environments, the backgrounds have the sense of light and shadow, a blurring of reality, a push and pull that bounces nicely off the line art of the characters themselves. It’s like seeing animated TV cartoon characters on top of an RPG game background.
Draper-Ivey handles human figures comfortably here, putting poses in sequence for dramatic effect. Figures who hover in space still obey the laws of mass and gravity, lending even more visual ‘weight’ to the proceedings.
It’s all well handled from my point of view: the drama escalates, the stakes are high, the creeps are low down and nasty, the pages turn quickly, and we are soon ready to read the next issue!
DC Comics, Static: Shadows of Dakota, $3.99 for 23 pages of content. Teen
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