PopSyndicate.com

George R.R. Martin’s Wild Cards novels debuted back in 1986, just when comic books like Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns were showing us that super-heroes could be taken seriously.  With these shared-universe novels, written by a number of notable and well respected science fiction authors showed up, they seemed like the natural extension of those more serious and important comic book stories.  And Wild Cards didn’t have pictures; it only had words so it must have been really important and serious, didn’t it?  Of course, it helped that those stories were pretty good, building a big and colorful world full of Aces (humans with supernatural powers thanks to an alien virus) and Jokers (humans physically mutated by the alien virus.)

Back in 1986, the idea of super-heroes in a somewhat real environment was novel (no pun intended.)  Wild Cards set its story in a world very similar to the real world, introducing super heroes and super powers into a recognizable environment.  It was new and something different.  George R.R. Martin created a great world and along with all his other writer pals, they populated it with a lot of good characters.  And a comic book of Wild Cards seemed natural.  But it’s been over 20 years and the approach that Martin established in his novels has been built upon in comics thanks to books like NewUniversal, Rising Stars, Astro City, Supreme Power and many other books.  That approach has become commonplace, hasn’t it?

Wild Cards The Hard Call #1 focuses on one of the Aces, Croyd, who actually goes into long hibernation periods and wakes up with a different face and different powers.  Now he’s found himself waking up to a murder mystery where he’s the main suspect and another
outbreak of the alien virus that’s killing people as well as making them into Aces or Jokers.  Writer Daniel Abraham turns in a good story that focuses so far on only one small part of the Wild Cards universe.  Instead of trying to come out with a sprawling epic featuring all of the established characters and history, he starts with Croyd, a fascinating character who thanks to his powers, begins anew each time he wakes up from his deep sleep.  As Croyd adjusts to a slightly different world than when he fell asleep, we get to adapt to the new world that this book is introducing us to.  Eric Battle’s artwork serves the story well, even if it is over-inked in some areas.  A descendant of the Image school of art, Battle’s storytelling chops are solid and straightforward.

If there’s a problem with Wild Cards #1, it’s that the idea has become a standard of comics right now.  Comics have caught up with the ideas of the original novels and comics have reworked them already.  And even television has caught up with the books thanks to Heroes.  A comic of Wild Cards has become redundant and this comic suffers a bit because of that.  There’s nothing in the comic itself that’s bad or terrible.  It’s just that its central conceit feels old and a bit unoriginal now even if it does predate most of the comics that have mimicked the book series.

Wild Card: The Hard Call #1
Written by: Daniel Abraham
Drawn by: Eric Battle
Colored by: Digikore Studios
Lettered by: Billl Tortolini

3