The opening splash page of Madman Atomic Comics! #12 contains more kinetic energy in that one page than most of this incarnation of the Madman comic has. A worm’s eye image of Madman jumping up into the sky against a backdrop of criss-crossing power and telephone lines is a wonderful image. Ever since he brought Madman back, Allred has appeared to be more concerned by the story idea and concept, exploring his perennial questions of life, death and identity through more characters than just Frank Einstien. While there’s been some nice art in this series, the art has always served the concept of Allred’s story instead of being an equal part of it. Just look at the issue that was one long panoramic image spread out over the entire issue. It’s an energetic book but it was also gimmicky. It was a piece of art created out of an idea rather than out of a story.
For at least a page of Madman Atomic Comics! #12, Allred doesn’t let his high concept get in the way of a fantastic image that works perfectly well as part of the book as its own stand alone image. With the power lines streaming in at least three different trajectories and Madman leaping through space among them, there’s an easiness and an innocence that is usually a part of Allred’s work but that has been missing lately.
That easiness quickly disappears as the next page begins Allred’s latest experiment in storytelling– two stories running parallel to eachother; one in the upper half of a page and the other in the lower half. The upper half shows Madman trying to get home, even as some odd forces are determined to keep him from getting there. This section of the story has an excellent flow to it, continuing the movement from the first page as Madman gets bounced around on his path. The bottom half shows the undoing of one of the odder moments of this series– the separation of Madman’s girlfriend Joe from Luna, another superhero of Atomic City. It wasn’t that long ago that Allred baffled readers by combining the two into one body and now you’ve got to wonder why he did it and why he’s already abandoning it without ever really exploring the idea.
This issue almost feels like Allred is trying to correct his course but that assumes that there was something wrong with the course this series was on. That’s not quite an idea that I’m 100% behind yet but wtih the separation of Joe and Luna and the return of a character who had a major influence on Madman back in the early days of his series, the ending of this book feels like something that Allred would have done years ago. In the light of the different creative paths that Allred has tried to follow lately, this issue’s events are odd backward steps, almost erasing some of the more emotion moments of this series.
Madman Atomic Comics #12
“Madgirl!”
Written and Drawn by: Michael Allred
Colored by: Laura Allred
Lettered by: Blambot’s Nate Piekos
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Tags: Madman, Michael Allred