favorite fight scenes: Finesse vs. Taskmaster

Avengers Academy, which was cancelled in November (sob), was a monthly staple for me during its 39 issue run. The premise centered around a group of at-risk, super-powered youth who had been tampered with by Norman Osborn, and were taken in by the Avengers and schooled so that they would become heroes, rather than villains. Jeanne Foucault, aka Finesse, was my favorite from the very beginning.

Finesse has the ability to physically replicate any action she observes, whether in person or on video. She's also a polymath, and a genius, but she has tremendous difficulty understanding the feelings and emotional responses of herself and others. Finesse was captivating to me specifically because this social and psychological disconnect. On the surface, she's an ocean of calm, but underneath, she's often just as unsure and uncertain as her cohorts. In issue nine, she seeks out Taskmaster, a mercenary anti-hero with identical powers, wondering if he might be her birth father. A fascinating exchange occurs. Jeanne herself doesn't visibly emote much, but we get to know her so much better than we did before anyway.

Firstly, to state the obvious: This is a masterfully illustrated fight. . Mike McKone's pencils are clean, dynamic, and elegant. The action is well choreographed, capturing the effortless athleticism of these two characters, and giving us lots of interesting angles and well detailed backgrounds. Jeromy Cox's colors are lovely too, adding a lot of dimension and tone to the scene. Despite the fact that we're not getting an exact blow-by-blow on every page, it's easy for the reader to track the motion and positioning of the surroundings from panel to panel.

At the start, Taskmaster drops in on Finesse, who sought him out, and attacks her. You would expect that perhaps Jeanne would either become upset OR that she would regard him with her usual callousness, but she does neither: she stutters, and reveals her true purpose.

I like to think that's something Jeanne wanted from him equally as much as information about her parentage. She's never faced someone in combat with her exact skillset before (and in fact, she and Taskmaster might be the only two people in the world with their freaky superpower.) It seems as if perhaps there's a lonely part of her that just wants to connect- not just because Taskmaster might be her father, but because he's "like" her, and nobody else can perfectly relate to her (or so she believes*.) I wonder if Taskmaster wants that too, given that he has few friends and a history of memory problems (something that, later in the series, may become an issue for Finesse, as implied by a possible future timeline). He can remember actions he watched on videotape twenty years ago, but not often names or faces or people unless he's recently encountered them.

I'm tempted to show you the entire fight here, but I don't want you to feel like there's any excuse not to go right out and get the trade paperback.

My favorite part is this bit at the end. The dialogue is reminiscent of a martial arts movie, implying that fighting styles are as distinctive as fingerprints. That particular trope is often used to convey how superior in combat one character is to another, or to give an action sequence some emotional narrative before the big finish. Interestingly, it feels a little different here: it feels true and it feels personal. McKone's art is amazing here, especially in that last panel: you just know Jeanne learned that move from Iron Fist.

I can absolutely picture Valkyrie shifting her weight like that (in the page to the right) and tossing her sword. And that stance in the bottom panel is pure Steve Rogers, with his hands up like a boxer, getting right under his enemy's guard.

(Does anybody else think of Edna in the Incredibles yelling about "NO CAPES"?)

And just like that: we're set up for a fight in the future. Not now, but someday, if Jeanne decides to remain an Avenger, this is going to happen again.

Taskmaster leaves us with the idea that Finesse's power is as much of a curse as it is a gift. I'll always wonder what we would've seen for her in the future if Marvel hadn't cancelled it.

*Gage tests this later on when X-23 is introduced into the main cast. It's awesome.

Superior Spider-Man Issue #1 Reactions

My first review on this blog! I hope you'll forgive me for writing about Spidey twice in a row. Warning, there are scans under the cut.

favorite fight scenes: the amazing Spider-Girl versus the amazing Spider-Man

It's ironic to me that I've been so often distressed in recent years by the lack of positively portrayed female heroines in comics. When I was eleven, my local comic book store was full to bursting with them. This is a short fight scene, but I've always loved it.

Back in 1998, Marvel started a line of alternate universe comics, called "Marvel 2", exploring a possible alternate-future generation of heroes. The most popular of these comics was The Amazing Spider-Girl, a title a) ran longer than any other female character solo book Marvel has ever had so far, and b) survived both the collapse of the Marvel 2 line and cancellation a landmark three times throughout the course of it's run, eventually ending in 2009. The premise centered around Peter and Mary Jane's daughter, May (nicknamed "Mayday") who inherited her father's spider-powers and became Spider-Girl (while dealing with the ordinary things that suck about being a teenager.)

To me, the best thing about the series was its blend of realistic tension with superhero fantasy. As a kid, I identified with May. Unlike the vast majority of superhero characters I read about, most of whom were orphans or aliens, May was an only child who came from loving and supportive two-parent, middle-class household, just like I did. I also identified with her insecurity. Mayday spent a lot of time trying to do the right thing, and a lot of time questioning herself. She did have confidence, but she always agonized over her choices as she made them, even while she faced forward. As a preadolescent, I had no sense of scale: every big thing that happened felt like it was something that would always be important in the Grand Scheme of Life. None of my choices were life and death as Mayday's were, but they felt big because I'd never experienced them before. Such is the short sighted narcissism of youth.

One of it's high points of the series for me was in issues #10 and #11 in which May accidentally traveled back in time only to bump into dear old dad in his teenage heyday.

Naturally, it isn't long before Mayday sneaks off to slip into her second skin, and of course, this happens:

Pat Oliffe's artwork is wonderfully fluid and dynamic here, and Tom DeFalco nails the classic Spidey wit. A bit of Peter's  false bravado comes through, something Mayday doesn't get to see from her dad when he's training her or yelling at her to do her homework.

(Love the McFarlane inspired webbing!!! Because I am that kind of nerd.)

One of the things I now love about this scene is something subtextual that I totally missed as a child: Mayday doesn't know that constant fear and teenage insecurity are ever present pieces of what makes Peter Parker into Spider-Man (particularly in the classic Lee & Ditko Spider-Man comics on which this version of Peter's past is obviously based.) Spider-Man was not an Avenger in the early days (and didn't officially become a team member until 2005) and, as is revealed later, he and Johnny Storm hadn't even developed their legendary  making-breakfast-for-each-other domesticity bromance yet. If Spider-Man was in trouble, chances are he was on his own.

Before they can continue, Peter takes off to save someone. I love that. Don't you love that? It's so true to the character. It's the way it had to go. Spider-Man talks a big game, but Peter's defining quality is that he's never chosen personal pride over his obligation to Do the Right Thing once in the years since Uncle Ben died.

As for Mayday, it takes her another ten or so issues or for her to decide that she's truly equal to the task of being Spider-Girl. Like all of us at sixteen, she doesn't understand that our true strengths are usually things we fail to appreciate about ourselves because they're so instinctual that we take them for granted. She is every inch her father's daughter.

(The scene here is collected  in the first volume of Spider-Girl trade paperbacks, and is available for purchase used on amazon for as little as $3 USD.)