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The Five Fists of Science
I don't remember when I first heard about The Five Fists of Science, but I liked the idea immediately.
 According to this book, in 1899 Mark Twain and Nikola Tesla decided to join forces and formed a plan to bring peace to the world. Basically they wanted to create an immediate arms race using a huge mechanical suit that stood four stories tall and carried a monstrous gun. Sell one to every major country, and just like the nuclear arms build-up in the 70's and 80's, the warring nations would be held in check. At least that was the plan until J.P. Morgan, Thomas Edison, Guglielmo Marconi, and Andrew Carnegie heard about Tesla's and Twain's grand scheme. Morgan, Edison, and company were in the process of building an office tower that would actually serve as an antenna to summon Lovecraftian monsters from a realm vibrating on a different frequency than Earth's. They don't want world peace; they want to take over the world. Ideals clash, comedy ensues.
With that storyline how could things go wrong? Especially when it was being written by Matt Fraction, a rising star in comic books whose previous books I had really enjoyed. The Annotated Mantooth! was pure lunacy that was funny without being stupid and Last of the Independents was a tightly scripted action caper that was a great read. Plus, though I haven't read any of it yet, I've heard nothing but good things about his book Casanova. So I was surprised at how much I didn't really enjoy The Five Fists of Science.
The set up is great, and that might have been the book's downfall. Maybe Fraction tried to do too much too quickly. He had too many ideas that he tried cramming into too short a book. Either reduce the amount of famous characters from history and off-the-wall ideas that he tried to work into the story or extend the length of the book so there is time to develop character and story. FFofS runs so fast you barely have time to grasp what's going on and who the players are. Scenes ended too quickly. In fact many times I thought I had inadvertently skipped pages because things were reading so oddly for me. If felt like I was missing parts of the story. It was really quite frustrating.
The art doesn't help the book much either. I can tell from the sketches at the back of the book that Steve Sanders has got some major chops when it comes to penciling, but somebody ruined his work with the coloring on this book. I don't have a copy in front of me now, so I can't check, but whoever it was that handled the coloring wasn't doing Mr. Sanders any favors. Pages were too dark and the colors muddy. I can understand trying to give the book a certain color muted or sepia-toned feel to capture the historic setting for the story, but at times I couldn't make out anything that was going on in the book. It was bad.
I had really looked forward to reading this. I had such high expectations. I'm not giving up on Fraction, though. I still think he can deliver a good story. This just one of them.
posted by Brendan | 4:39 PM | permanent link
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I'm a Child of the 80s wandering through my days with his lovely wife and three kids.
Comics, movies, and pop-culture are the usual topics covered here, with a generous sprinkling of sports and family life. |
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