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The magic of flight brought down to earth.

For me at least, there's something still magical and mysterious about airports and airplanes.  In most cases, taking a plane trip anywhere is such a hermetically sealed experience, where you enter at one point and basically give yourself over to a pilot and attendants until you're ready to walk out at your final point.  Unlike in a car, where you can stop and see things, once you get to an airport, you're stuck in airports and airplanes until you reach your final destination.  Even with layovers, you're stuck in an airport system, maybe only seeing a new city from an enclosed area.  And depending on weather or how far you're traveling, you can be stuck in this system for only an hour or for days, never seeing much more than compressed cylinders or tile floors. 

Air #1 tells the story of Blythe, an airline attendant who has an unusual fear of heights.  Professionalism and doses of Halcion help her perform her job.  On one flight, she meets a passenger who may not be who he says he is.  He avoids giving answers to questions she asks but readily tells her that he knows people in Hezbollah. On the same flight, another "concerned" passanger, a member of a group called The Etesian Front, approaches Blythe and tries to convince her to help his group take back the skies from the terrorists.  The first issue contains stories of hijacking, hidden identities and Blyth's finding out that becoming an airline attendant may be more than just a simple career choice.  There's something else going on in the friendly skies that not even the airlines are aware of.

In Air #1 by G. Willow Wilson and M.K. Perker accomplish they recreate this sealed environment within a comic.  Besides one hospital scene and the opening sequence, Wilson and Perker's story takes place completely within an airline-centric world.  Wilson and Perker create a world of lounges, cockpits and terminals that are more fantastically dangerous and sexy than the real things can be.  There are secret organizations and secret agents running around, part of a complex system. 

A strong concept is overshadowed by two creators trying a bit too hard with this issue.  The concept and ideas in this book are fascinating but the characters are too constructed.  They're forced into roles as opposed to having those roles come out naturally.  Instead of showing us an airline attendant who is afraid of heights, Wilson comes right out and tells us that she doesn't like heights.  Instead of giving us reasons along the way not to trust the mysterious stranger that Blythe meets, the stranger comes out and asks "why do trust me when no one else does?"  And the secret evil organization just screams "evil" right from the start.  We often complain about stories getting spread out over six issues but Air #1 would benefit from a bit more room, where the characters have more of a chance to develop and let the reader draw their own conclusions rather than having Wilson and Perker

There's a level of ambiguity that would actually be welcomed to this book.  The characters are either fully laid out or are left as nothing but mere cyphers, filling in a spot and moving the plot forward.  There is almost nothing left in the characters except for the most obvious plot points that need to be explored in the next issue.  Now maybe some of the character points shown in this issue are misdirection and slight of hand designed to distract us, but everything feels so laid out in concrete and familiar ways that the characters are easy and obvious. 

The creators need to demonstrate more confidence in their work in the pages of Air #1.  It almost feels like they're rushing, trying to cram as much story and character in early for fear that the series won't last too long.  The ideas and concepts in Air feed perfectly off of the love/hate relationship we may have with airplanes and airports (I personally love them) but the execution is rushed and over-developed for a first issue.

Air #1
"Letters from Lost Countries Part 1"
Written by: G. Willow Wilson
Drawn by: M.K. Perker
Colored by: Chris Chuckry
Lettered by: Jared K. Fletcher

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