Takio

The first in a series of graphic novels by the team behind Powers, reviewed here recently. It’s smaller than comic format, hardback, 96 pages. The story is about two young sisters (7 and 13), who bicker with each other in convincing style, and then gain superpowers in an accident, the first people in their world to do so. The accident is caused by the scientist father of the older girl’s best friend – and she also gains the same powers. The father and his associates are after the girls, since they have immediately become a valuable resource, and his daughter sides with her dad, more from desperation than love, and there are plenty of signs that she is likely to regret that.

I said about Powers both that I loved Bendis’s dialogue and the extra space its expanded page count offered. The longer format here is even better for both – plenty of time for the discovery of the powers, experimentation with them and conflicts with the bad guys, but still ample room for pages and pages of the sisters talking, wherein the younger one is hugely enthusiastic about the new powers and the idea of their becoming superheroes, while the older is more troubled by everything that’s happening. The dialogue really sparkles here, full of wit, fast paced, catching the voices of the sisters beautifully.

Oeming changes his style a little for this, making his cartoony figures rather less blocky, appropriately for the far younger central characters, going for a bigger-eyed style, a bit more manga. He also opens up more, with far less use of solid blacks, a brighter style generally, helped by colourist Nick Filardi. He handles the spectacular moments superbly as well as the conversational sections.

The characters and story are full of charm, very likeable and fun, and I can see this being a big hit with a younger audience without any special interest in superheroes. I hope so, as there are too few new comics aimed at younger readers, and the big two in particular tend to do them pretty poorly, perhaps because most of the best creators show little interest in producing such comics. I think the age gap between for instance Disney and the superhero-plus-complex-continuity-dominated mainstream (or between the Beano and 2000AD over here) has played a significant part in the plummetting sales of comics in the US and UK. There was far less of a gap 50 years ago, when the Superman titles in particular were aimed at a much younger audience than has been the case since, and I think the big two could really benefit from some comics targetting those growing out of Donald Duck but not ready for or economically suited to epic X-crossovers and the like. This won’t happen if they aren’t done well, so it’s a real pleasure to see a comic this good aimed at that kind of audience.