If nothing else, THE BROTHERHOOD certainly has a good central
idea. It's been quite a while since the Marvel Universe even toyed
with the idea of a grassroots mutant organisation. There was a
campaign group in the seventies called Monster (you don't want to
know what it stands for), but they were kind of cuddly. The
Brotherhood's concept is that they're a terrorist movement. And
that opens the door to all manner of interesting story
possibilities.
Yes, The Brotherhood has a strong central idea. Mind you, to
pick an example completely at random, so did Mutant X. It's all
in the execution.
On the strength of its first issue, The Brotherhood could still
go either way, but there's nothing here that really scratches
the surface of the premise. Mind you, maybe this wouldn't seem
quite so familiar if Marvel hadn't done all those publicity-
seeking interviews explaining at length pretty much everything
that's to be found in this issue. But there you go.
This issue, Michael Asher, a Normal Teenager, is recruited into
the Brotherhood by their guy who specialises in recruiting normal
teenagers. He's named Fagin, in a particularly obvious literary
reference. The story consists partly of Michael being normal, so
as to emphasise the point that he's normal, and partly of Fagin
delivering a glorified manifesto speech to him (the gist of which
is that the world's awfully unfair to mutants and gosh, they
ought to get together to overthrow society and replace it with
something unspecified). None of this is unreasonable for a first
issue, but it doesn't take us much further than the publicity had
already taken us.
The story wheels out all the stock devices to assure us that
Michael is a normal teenage boy - by giving him an obsessive
interest in sex, a reluctant girlfriend, and a skateboard. He's
evidently going to be a our point of view character, and perhaps
he'll get a bit more interesting once he gets to be a fish out
of water. Fagin's speech is also fairly standard stuff, and
doesn't entirely bode well for the series. If the Brotherhood
are going to be the focus of a series, they need some kind of
political platform which makes some reasonable sense. Fagin just
gives us a load of unconvincing "what did society ever do for you"
solipsims, and no real positive plan at all. In the Marvel
Universe, it's not really that difficult to come up with a
plausible platform for mutant terrorists (if the government and
the legal system won't lift a finger to protect them, why should
they feel any obligation towards it?), and this area really needs
work if the series is going to come off.
Art comes from Essad Ribic, who was responsible for finishing off
Children of the Atom, with inks from Kent Williams. Williams'
inking is more sketchy than I'm used to seeing over Ribic, and
the effect is loose but rather good. There's also some rather
good colouring work from Avalon Studios, who have either gone back
to hand colouring, or have really brought computer colouring on
from the days when it was just an excuse to have digital moons
overhead. My only real criticism of the art is that Michael
comes across looking way too old for the story. He looks about
twenty-five, when the plot obviously wants him to be fifteen.
As for the big question - is it Howard Mackie - I reserve judgment
at this stage. For the most part the dialogue doesn't quite sound
like his, and the plot's rather more coherent than he usually
achieves. On the other hand, clunking elements like the two
goths who are obviously preparing to shoot up their school (of
which the less said the better) and closing lines like "You are
in for the ride of your life" do have the ring of Howard Mackie
to them. If it's him, though, it's the best thing he's done in
years, so that's a sign of hope.
