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Adventure has a new name and her name is “Athena Voltaire.”

This past spring, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Harrison Ford returned to the well, trying to recapture the magic of Raiders of the Lost Ark.  The fedora was dusted off, the whip was oiled down and, to connect with the young kids, a younger, hipper hero was introduced in the form of Indiana Jones's heretofore unknown son Mutt.  For any number of reasons, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull didn't work.  The story could not recapture the magic of the earlier movies.  The computer effects could not recapture the charm of the miniatures and slight-of-hand effects and worse of all, Harrison Ford couldn't play Indy with a straight face.  Since then, there have been mumblings, mostly out of Lucas, that the band could get back together for a fifth film.  If they decide to do another Indiana Jones, I hope someone hands them Steve Bryant and Paul Daly's Athena Voltaire: Flight of the Falcon so they can see how to do an old fashioned, serial adventure story again.

Bryant and Daly's story of an aviatrix caught up in Nazis, pirates, world travel and ancient but powerful artifacts borrows heaving from Indiana Jones.  The book captures the same sense of adventure that originally made the Indiana Jones great.  As Voltaire travels around the world, Bryant and Daly create a new threat around every dark corner as she races against the Nazi's to track down the Falcon, a powerful and secret statue.  As a Macguffin, the Falcon is up there with the Holy Grail in The Last Crusade, the mysterious suitcase in Resevoir Dogs or even the Maltese Falcon itself.  It's a prize that drives the plot forward but like all good World War II era stories, this is really a story of the good guys versus the Nazis. 

One thing that's nice to see is that, for featuring a female protagonist, Athena Voltaire never really creeps close to any kind of cheesecake factor.  When a female Nazi protagonist is introduced early in the story, you could almost imagine some kind of mud wrestling fight taking place between Voltaire and the Nazi in a lesser book.  It's scary how easy it is to see two female characters introduced to the story and think that somewhere along the way that the story would devolve into a catfight.  Voltaire avoids the easy ways to cash in, focusing on the characters and their stories.

Similar to the way that the story shows its influences, you can see Bryant's artistic influences in the book, mostly at the beginning of the story.  Al Williamson and Dave Stevens often creep in during the first couple of chapters but Bryant does more than copy how they would draw and image.  He also incorporates how they would tell stories or layout pages.  As the story progresses, Bryant's art becomes more simpler and his own style begins to overshadow his influences.  The art in the first few chapters is very tight and controlled.  It looks as if Bryant is trying do capture a style, working at creating the image he sees in his own imagination.  By the end of the book, the artwork feels more natural.  It's less studied, looser and more stylistic. 

As much as Athena Voltaire borrows heavily from Indiana Jones, there's a great comic precedent for this series-- Milton Caniff's Terry and the Pirates.  Again, it's the sense of adventure and globe trotting that ties Voltaire's story to Terry's.  Actually, imagine Mike Mignola writing a Terry and the Pirate's adventure and that's probably closer to what the creators are doing here.  Athena Voltaire: The Flight of the Falcon combines a lot of great influences into a story that's adventurous and creates a serial pulp adventure in the pages of a comic book.

Athena Voltaire: Flight of the Falcon
Story by: Steve Bryant and Paul Daly
Art by: Steve Bryant
Colored by: Jason Millet with Chad Fidler


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