The sub-zero wind chills finally broke on Monday. Unfortunately, they were replaced with freezing rain, coating roads and parking lots in lovely, deadly ice. If I had any damn sense, I would have just called in sick on Monday, but I didn't. Anyway, the ice has melted, though now we just have regular rain. But the state's still in a drought, so I guess we can use rain.
But while it's damp and chilly, we can look at some comics from the last two weeks.
I haven't gotten issue 15 yet, but apparently Reed's time travel stunt worked out eventually. He probably forgot about it being a leap year or something. The family is still living in Arizona (why?), but with a teleporter built into a closet to get to the Baxter Building if they need to. Choosing to willingly live in Arizona is a peculiar choice, but I guess the "science explorer" super-team is used to environments inhospitable to human life.
In the meantime, this issue's about the kids - Franklin, Valeria, Jo and Nicki - starting public school. The Richards' kids science teacher assigns everyone to discuss how the inventions Robert Boyle predicted that have come to be actually happened, but they decide to show off by solving one that hasn't. Namely, creating a universal solvent, without realizing if it eats through everything, how does one contain it?
The remainder of the issue is the kids scrambling around trying to solve the problem without alerting their parents. Like on one of those '80s sitcoms, when one of the kids gets paint in their hair and the others attempts to fix it only make the situation more ridiculous. Except with the fate of the world at stake, as opposed to being sent to bed with no dessert.
It didn't exactly make me laugh, but it's nice North's actually going to try and use the kids, after
shuffling them off to Buffalo for over a year. Guess I should wait to
make sure this isn't a one-off event before saying that. This is a dialogue heavy issue, but Mortarino's up to at least keeping it interesting with the body language and postures of the characters. The comedy beats North goes for are more dialogue-based than art-based, but I don't know if that's a reflection on Mortarino or just how the issue worked out. There's a couple in a silent montage of the kids trying to create the solvent, where we see them arguing, then consulting wikipedia in the next panel, but most of the humor is Reed glumly reflecting his tacos aren't as good as Raul Richards of Earth-234952.
It does work as a done-in-one plot starring these characters (at least as I understand them.) Valeria and Franklin are both used to seeing crazy science stuff and having it turn out OK, and they're at an age to be really interested in being popular, so sure, they'll try something like this. Nikki and Jo are still relatively new to Earth, and Franklin and Valeria are like older siblings, so they don't recognize when a bad idea is getting out of hand. They'll raise the possibility of telling the parents, but won't act on their own, only ask Frank or Val if they can.
The Power family vacation at the beach house where the kids first gained their powers. Franklin Richards is going to join them, but he's had one of his prophetic dreams about mean aliens. He doesn't want to bug his parents, so he waits until he's at the beach to warn the other kids. Which presumably means no FF around to help when a space pirate Snark shows up, chasing her cousin and the Power Pack's Kymellian friend, Kofi.
One space pirate doesn't seem too daunting, but it seems the bigger problem is going to be keeping the Power's parents from finding out about their powers. Simonson writes in a few arguments between the kids about telling their parents, to the extent Alex tries using the presence of the FF at lunch to gauge his parents feelings about if their kids had powers. (It doesn't go well.)
Kids trying to be what they think their parents want is likely to be a recurring problem, as Franklin's acutely aware that his powers frighten his parents, and the Snark princess Djinna admits that she's not the warrior that her parents need. She's clever, and an inventor, but her people's culture demands a fighter, and that's not her. The kids each confronting that problem is probably the "storm" they're going to encounter.
Brigman's child characters do look like kids, even the alien ones. Katie and Franklin are very round-faced, still a lot of the baby fat, and Djinna and Kofi have that gangly awkwardness in the length of their limbs that's normal in human kids, at least. There's a three-panel sequence where Franklin's watching his prophetic dream as his beds floats from one panel to the next. Woodard leaves Franklin colored the same as in the panels before and after, but the dream is covered by a brown filter, heightening that this isn't real (yet.)
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