Image Comics brings you an sci-fi superhero comic about a video game streamer who is basically turned into a superhero from an unexpected turn of events in Radiant Pink the graphic novel.
So whatever happens if you take inspiration from a Puerto Rican superhero that is popular around the states, have such a story based on another world, set up a plot between time and space, and have such a streamer into an athletic vigilante, you get this comic right out of Static Shock. So there exists another comic that is focused on a world that somehow combines reality and fantasy. However the good thing about it, is that it’s published on Image, yeah. From all the comics that I’ve reviewed, I think that publishing on Image is the best publishing platform where everything makes it so awesome. The comic is written by Meghan Camarena, and Melissa Flores and illustrated by Emma Kubert and French Carlomagno. Meghan is an American Youtuber who goes by the name of Strawburry17 and is also a television host, actress, and comic book writer, she has worked on numerous videos, web series, and films as a Youtuber. Sorry, I’m not a fan of making Youtube videos and I don’t watch them a lot. And Melissa is a producer, writer consultant, and creative executive who is best known for her prolific work with the Power Rangers brand, The Unleashed, and her upcoming Image comic series The Dead Lucky. So there are some different teams who worked on creating this comic, but the artists, I’m going to give you info at the end of this review, I wanna focus on the comic first.
The front cover shows two women who are in their hero suits, however, the artists decided to make the whole cover art pink all over, the background, the crumbling planet, and the details of the two main characters. Speaking of, what I see so far, the main character from the right is almost dressed like Spider-Gwen because the costume design never took my eyes off whenever I think about the recent Spiderman movie. And the character from the left almost reminded me of the villain of Kim Possible where she is all green. And either way, this is very satisfying to look at the front cover seeing them working together to save the planet. On the back of the book, there’s a quote by Matthew Aguilar from Comicbook.com who wrote: “Radiant Pink rides a wave of delightful energy thoroughout… it all makes a series that no Radiant fan will want to miss.” That would make much more sense if any other reader wanted to read this comic so bad with all the action going on because I’m more into strong women who has a sense of justice and a better way of thinking just to keep moving forward.
So how do you start off with a superhero story? It starts off with the dark room with a computer screen scene kind of cliché where the main character started streaming while she’s playing a game. It’s like the beginning of “Save Yourself!” comic from Boom! Studios where the main character starts off playing a game about three heroines who are suddenly turned evil. This scene however it’s like watching the Hispanic version of Markiplier who just screams “YESS!! LIL CAT SUPREMACY!!” as if her life depends on it. But in reality, she stays in her room all day streaming getting enough subscribers that she literary needs to go outside and get some Vitamin D, in other words, thanks grandma for giving such an important advice to your granddaughter to stay healthy. So the days after that she gets herself a heavy routine of her being a streamer, while she does her daily life like going to the gym, hiring a photographer, being a celebrity, and all of that when she started streaming, her cat jumped over the microphone and broke it.
The next scene is where references gets real, she goes to a fictional Best Buy in Indiana to find a microphone replacement, but this dumb worker claims that the microphones were sold out. But the old man has a good point telling the main character to relax and take their time, because most of the people I know who are artists, gamers, podcasting, and such, do all solo, but doing all that takes patience and grit just to get more attention to their followers. However right when he’s about to fix her microphone, he showed her a strange light that is glowing inside an empty store right out of nowhere. But right when she touches that light, she just space-jumped to another dimension with a superhero suit.
Oh, and this is one of the superhero comic book series where the character starts using teleportation powers to save people’s lives and to have fun because she actually does her stream for a living while she puts on the Radiant suit just to fight bad guys and save people which is more similar any Spiderman movies you’ve watched while this comic gives you a rollercoaster of weird vibes and probably it’s all trail and error. For example, there’s this part of the comic that reminds me of Spiderman Into the Spiderverse and Across the Spiderverse. It starts off an terrorist attack inside some hospital and then Radiant space jumped inside the building just to rescue people from the building collapsing. She saves the kids, the nursery, and the elderly, but when she rescues the last person, her powers just went haywire and they are sent to another dimension. And as soon as her powers started working again, they teleported from one place to another where everything is nothing real. And I guess the rest of the comic is all trust and betrayal between the hero and the villain because the antagonist has been wearing that strange weapon on her body as a weapon. They make love to each other and somehow they fought against each other at the end of the story which is very insane.
Supposably, the comic makes it something to have both fantasy and reality combined because the employer from Best Buy showed the main character that strange light that no one had ever seen before. I mean who would have thought that someone would ever find something so bizarre and instantly learns how to teleport from one place to another? Even though, the main character has no patience because she has to keep up with her streaming and somehow a miracle will happen to her.
So this comic is illustrated differently by two artists which is Emma Kubert who did the rest of the comic while French Carlomagno did the prologue. If I were to choose someone who illustrated so well on this comic it would be Emma, because whenever I started reading the first chapter, the line art makes it much more thicker and the coloring looks more brighter. And somehow whenever I turned to another page, the backgrounds of the comic changes as if you were suddenly reading a different comic. However there’s only good thing why I like about her art style is the characters’ expressions, and I think it would be a good expression study because whenever I see the main character’s face, she looks cute and happy, but when she’s in trouble she gets this shocking face while shes wearing that Radiant mask, and so does her family when they react that they saw a terrorist attack on the news. There are some amazing things to draw the character’s expressions to define their personality. And the action scenes of this comic are just like every other comic filled with every dynamic pose that you could come up with by using some references.
So Radiant Pink is a story filled with some rollercoaster of dimensions created by a single woman who started wearing a superhero suit, it’s really so much fun to read. I wouldn’t have thought that this comic existed about a Hispanic video game streamer who turned to be a hero to save lives with teleportation powers and somehow made friends with an enemy in a different dimension which is moving to the readers just until she finds a way to get home. If you rather read another superhero comic about a female hero with teleportation powers then this is for you.
Newsdesk