Original Sin #1 – 8 – Review

By: Jason Aaron (Writer), Mike Deodato (Artist), Frank Martin (Color Artist), VC’s Chris Eliopoulos (Letterer), Julian Totino Tedesco (Cover Artist)

The Story: “I spy with my little eye” … something postmodernly existential.

The Review: We should have known better. The Original Sin “event” series was originally billed as a mystery surrounding the question of “Who Shot the Watcher?” But we should have known that detective comics are more of a DC thing (quite literally, if you think about it), and remembered that Marvel/Timely’s origins has always been in monster and horror books. In that perspective, it makes total sense that this event has been in essence a suspense and horror title. Think about it. We have giant eyeballs being held aloft and, in the final issue, acting as if they’re alive. We have repeated stabbings and blood, obsession with death and secrets, some esoteric alien beings, and, ultimately, one of those “horrible irony” twisted endings for the main character.

The tone for the whole series is also one of eeriness and bleakness. Deodato has a heavy, ponderous style, and chooses detailed scenes that nevertheless rely on large areas of flat ink/deep black. Most of the action, and in Issue 8 throughout, is set in areas of ruin. The colors are similarly muted, except for the occasional burst of color or display of power, and often those are kept in a darker range of purple or reds. If there was a soundtrack based on the art alone, it would be tense but brooding, with a little motif teasing you while holding one key note for several beats to tinge the whole story with an unsettling feeling. Maybe read the comic again with some John Carpenter in the background….

As effective as the tone and genre is, it makes for a strange entry in the “event” style of comicbook marketing. It’s perhaps outside the scope of this review to comment on the nature of event-driven comicbook marketplace, but suffice to say that Original Sin is less like its predecessors of Infinity, Fear Itself, or even Civil War. I would argue that it’s more akin to something that started it all thirty years ago in 1984: Marvel’s Secret Wars. It’s more of a Limited Series, one that takes characters from a variety of corners of the Marvel Universe, bounces them off each other, and its effects ripple through the line of titles. In fact, as Original Sin progresses, it becomes less about the assemblage of characters, and even about the villains, and about only one in particular: Nick Fury.     

This is somewhat a fault as you look over the series as a whole. True, Fury is present in some form from the very beginning, but as intriguing as pairings of Dr. Strange and the Punisher are, these characters are marginalized as it becomes all if, when, or how Fury interacts them. Even the Winter Soldier, who arguably should be rising in narrative importance as Fury is descending, is shuttled to the side after one big moment, only to reappear in a kind of epilogue with no explicit transition into his new role. Fury’s final fate fits very nicely with the tone and genre as I’ve explained, but the set-up and ultimate abandon of other characters will leave many readers unsatisfied. It’s like they were buying a ticket for the movie Psycho in 1960 because they really want to see Janet Leigh…

And because this Fury limited series simultaneously gave Nick a retconned status quo, took it away, and gave him a new one, even Nick Fury fans might feel unsatisfied. There doesn’t seem to be a reason for the retroactive “Unseen” job title that Nick Fury takes on. Sure, it sets up our story and starts Fury on his path of self-destruction, but since it’s just made up for the sake of starting path of self-destruction itself, it comes across as unnecessary.

Interestingly, it does make sense that Fury and the Watcher would be so at odds. Fury, the man who must interfere as much as possible, and the Watcher with his characteristic standoffish-ness. I see a commentary here on the modern superhero mythos. In 2014, when society is bombarded with more information than ever, with lack of privacy such an issue, and personal information flooding the streets as if from an exploding eyeball, which is the appropriate response? Nick argues that the Watcher is choosing poorly, but his own solution is driving him to destruction. The Watcher, too, is simply too tired to continued, having seen “too much” and would rather give up than to continue being awash in information. The comic, unfortunately, contains no answers for us, except for the existential horror that this dichotomy will be our fate, that we are shackled to it (or like the Orb, it’s been grafted inescapably to us.)

This lack of answer, to me, is the really unsatisfying element to Original Sin. I do enjoy the Marvel Universe’s more “realistic” vision of the world, the kind of world-building that sets it apart from the Golden Age vision that birthed DC’s, but usually there’s always been heroes that somehow showed us how we could rise above. Spider-Man’s responsibility, Captain America’s optimism, Iron Man’s drive, the X-Men’s camaraderie… Here, we are given no heroic ambition to overcome the “horror” of the world, and instead our heroes merely succumb to it. It shouldn’t be that the only person with a vision for bettering herself/the future is the villain Exterminatrix.

The Bottom Line: It’s been a great example of tone with a singularly well-crafted vision from the creators. Unfortunately, in order to create that tone, several plot elements have to be tenuously connected, at best, and various characters trotted out but ultimately abandoned. I would like to end on a more positive note about the series overall, but as I’ve been writing, I’m realizing I keep using the word “unsatisfying” too often. It’s a present nicely wrapped, but I feel stuck with an expensive sweater I don’t want to wear and that I can’t return.

Grade: B-

-Danny Wall