Comic books have mostly gotten rid of thought balloons, which today’s writers seem to consider nothing but exposition in words as opposed to action. Except today’s writers have also started using narration a lot and they use it’s all for exposition too. Super-Skull’s surface emotional weight is all in the narration. I’m not sure if writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach was being lazy, but I doubt it. Narration seems like a good idea, especially for a comic like Super-Skrull, which needed to be a few issues longer than its four. Super-Skrull, in the first two issues, is funny. The character is a big mean jerk and the story looses him on bad guys. Grillo-Marxuach makes a few attempts at morality, but they all fail (and the resolution to that thesis is particularly ineffective from a moral standpoint, though amusing to read).
Super-Skrull works at an abbreviated pace and the scenes are well-chosen for effect. It’s an event comic book and in those terms... well, I’m not reading the overarching event so I don’t know if it works in those terms. It works in its own and ends up having some resonance. Grillo-Marxuach also uses the narration to get immediate audience sympathy for the characters and--again--I see the need given the constraints, but Super-Skrull seems to be written in a way it could not work without the narration holding it together, which isn’t a good thing. Note the use of the word ‘holding.’ Except the conclusion, the story’s at its best when it either isn’t relying on the narration or the narration is meant for humor. Grillo-Marxuach is a funny guy.
Greg Titus’s art does both the humor and the space technology, but he doesn’t do faces well and then does quick cuts between faces and there’s no distinct between subjects of close-ups. There are a few of these moments in each issue and it isn’t particularly distracting because it isn’t hard to pick up the story (and, usually, the dialogue reveals the character’s identity), but I’m sure the artistic intent was not to confuse the reader. Otherwise, Titus’s art is enjoyable and helps make Super-Skrull a fun, involving, and weighty read. It’s manipulative as all hell (the guy’s trying to save his estranged son’s planet from destruction and he isn’t particularly smart), but it works.
