Sunday Splash Page #192

 

"A Prison of His Own Making," in Fearless #2, by Mark Sable and David Roth (writers), PJ Holden (artist), Nick Filardi (colorist), Kristyn Ferretti (letterer/designer)

What if you could stop being afraid? What would you do? What would you do to be able to maintain that feeling? That's what Fearless is looking at. Adam up there has several phobias and severe anxiety since he was a boy. Then he was introduced to a tutor who suffered from a similar problem, who designed a drug that takes away fear. Adam used it to become a vigilante, named Fear of all things, but he wasn't the first person Lionel tried to help, and when that person returns, Adam has to see how much he can accomplish on his own.

Sable and Roth draw parallels between Adam and Victor (the first person Lionel tried to help.) Not just their anxiety issues, but that they're both sons of privilege, with fathers who weren't understanding of their conditions. In a sense, both of them are trying to live up to the notions of manhood their fathers represented, but also pushing back against it. Victor took standing up for himself to the extreme of killing his father. Adam isn't that extreme, but when he isn't beating up criminals, he's behaving like a fool in public. Crashing sports cars in the fountains of hotels he owns, stuff like that.

Holden tends to use very straight, solid panel borders when things are under control. Then, as Adam's fears take hold, the panels begin to tilt, the borders grow shaky, the gutters fill with black. Characters swell up and become monstrous, Filardi uses increasing amounts of red. Our perspective of things falls to pieces as he does.

At times, Victor seems to have more control. He claims his father's empire, replicates the drug, and offers it to everyone. This is, of course, just to get them hooked so they'll do anything for more. And the reason he can stand to appear magnanimous is he'd found another crutch. Something meant to render him safe from everyone and everything. He'd substituted one crutch for another. Adam seems more convinced he's nothing without the drug, and even his eventual triumph ends up not being what it seems. Which is probably an accurate portrayal. Just because you overcome something once, doesn't mean it's necessarily beaten always and forever. True for addiction, I assume also true for anxiety disorders.