Joyners #1

Writer: RJ Ryan
Artist: David Marquez
Colors: Kelly Fitzpatrick
Letters: Jon Adams
Publisher: BOOM!

I think popular culture might be over-saturated with complex anti-heroes who happen to be immensely talented. This is a problem when reading Joyners since the first thing the book establishes is that our protagonist, George Joyner, is a brooding genius and the second thing told to us is that he has a complicated relationship with his family.

The biggest virtue of the book is the art by David Marquez, he was pretty good on Ultimate Comics Spider-Man while alternating with Sara Picchelli and Chris Samnee (what a great art team), but here he really achieves a completely unique style. Him and Kelly Fitzpatrick create a world where everything is bright, slick and glossy. On the other hand, the lettering is quite annoying, the speech bubbles are big and blocky and the font is a tad too small. It bogs down a few of the conversations on this book as a lot of space is occupied by word balloons, even if Marquez's knack for drawing facial expressions saves these scenes.

While the art really benefits from the futuristic setting, the plot doesn't take full advantage of it. Ryan might be going for more naturalistic dialogue but the result is not terribly interesting. The few times the book alludes to technology, it is to signify how professionally succesful the protagonist is. Most of the story is framed as Joyner's confession for a crime which isn't really specified, so this issue walks us through George's daily routine. It works fine as an introduction to the character but as I said, it doesn't really pique my interest.

All things considered it's hard to fault the creator for that specific complaint, particulary since I could see how people would like this type of story. The one thing I found truly reproachable was how towards the end a conflict is seemingly set up between George and a character who we'd previously seen for 2 panels. It's hard to muster up a reaction to that. Considering that the story doesn't dwell on its sci-fi elements for too long, it's really going to succeed or fail depending on its characters, thus fleshing them out more would help the book.

While Marquez's art was outstanding, the plot left me really cold. I wouldn't be comfortable dismissing this entirely, J.R. Ryan might have interesting things to say going forward but he needs to figure out a way to tell them in a more engaging manner.