Ah, a one-week break from mutant-related stuff. Xero ran for 12 issues in 1997 and 1998, focused on a high-level government assassin with the codename Xero. Xero suffered horrible injuries on a mission, and his brother devised some bio-implants that save his life and grant him additional abilities, like moving through solid objects. In his day job, Xero is Coltrane "Trane" Walker, an All-Star-caliber basketball player, and his brother Trent is his teammate and in a sense, p.r. guy. When Trane misses a game, Trent's the one who makes excuses.
Which doesn't make Trent a good man. Over the course of 12 issues, Trane gradually starts to regain his humanity, to start to care about people beyond whether they're immediately useful to completing whatever mission he's on. It's a slow process, alternately hindered and helped by a rival agent named One and their mutual boss, Decker. One wants the top slot in the organization, and Decker doesn't want Xero distracted by things like being a role model in his everyday life.
Trent, by contrast, spends most of the series being a selfish prick. He keeps his brother alive, but there's no sense they really communicate. Trane doesn't confide what he's thinking to his brother, and Trent is busy carrying on an affair with the local sheriff's daughter (who is dating one of their teammates). Trent also narrates much of the series, so it's fair to wonder how accurate his description of Trane's thought process is.
A lot of the book is about perception. As Xero, Trane has an uplink to a satellite that feeds him information. Except that information can be altered, or his prosthetic eye hacked. So he keeps finding himself in situations where he thinks he's facing one person, but it's really someone else, or there's no one there at all. He can't trust what he sees, and steadily can't trust what he knows about the people he works for. What games they're really playing, and where he stands.
When Trane is Xero, he's a blond-haired, blue-eyed guy. Captain America's cousin. Trane himself is African-American, and the first time we see his true face, on a jumbo screen halfway through the first issue, it shows him sweating heavily and staring right at the camera with an intense look, a marked contrast to the placid or indifferent look Xero is wearing at that moment as he works on completing his mission.
Which plays into the theme as well. Sheriff Lake is constantly trying to get Trane to care about other people, because Trane does a very good job of appearing not to care. Trent seems like the more affable one, but he's generally the bigger asshole. He talks to his teammates, but only to insult them. He flat out tells the guys on their bench he doesn't talk to bench people.
ChrisCross draws most of the series, minus issues 9 and 10 (done by Eduardo Barreto), and issue 12 (by Eric Battle). He knows how to switch between small, tight panels for close-ups on Xero or someone else, but also when to go widescreen and splash page for the action sequences (what Xero refers to as 'cowboy crap.') Lots of using TV monitors as complete panels, or shadows to cut panels sharply in half along a diagonal to guide the eye. The prosthetic eye has a red glow or laser effect and that gets used for emphasis or to guide the reader as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment