Captain Midnight: Volume 6 TPB Review: Solid Balance

Nearly every costumed person in the comic book world wants to either save the world, take it over, or completely annihilate it. What is it about this blue ball that make so-called intelligent entities fall into the proverbial god complex? Don’t they realize that time always wins out in the end? Well until that happens Captain Midnight is going to keep fighting the good fight. The thing is who do you start with?

In “Captain Midnight Volume 6: Marked for Death”, Midnight (aka) Albright has the Nazi-like threat of Archon, the demented, mad scientists/creepy-ops force Black Sky and aliens, big, scary and uncontrollable. One of these teams is difficult enough to contend with, but all three, and each with their own agenda? It’s enough for a lone wolf to get a team together. That’s what writer Joshua Williamson does, but these guys have more issues than the Hulk and Tony Stark put together. Literally if you were to synthesize both these characters, they would still have an easier time of it than the group Midnight has to contend with.

Trying to save the only planet you’ve got can mean making domineering choices. That’s what happens with Midnight’s relationship with Helios. A man who speaks in high regard of another man (Chuck) who tried to kill him. It cannot be a coincidence that Helios is named after the Olympian sun god. It will take at least a herculean effort to survive what Midnight wants him to do. Along with Jones and Charlotte and later on another masked vigilante, their leader of this rag-tag band go through several action packed near skirmishes. Who will survive? The thing is that Midnight doesn’t create a team as much as a group of people who hate everyone who wants to subjugate them. Archon seems to be the main target and Williamson could have fallen into a trap of writing a sneering baddie who just picks through the other characters. Instead each scene in this trade leads up to the reader uncovering exactly why Midnight was ripped through time. It’s a story rapt with tension and several hold your breath moments.

At times there are some rough spots. If you’re not paying attention you may not be able to see which masked man is talking. Helios’ garb is distinctive, but there are times when Midnight and X’s forms are in shadow. It makes a reader lose momentum and going back to reread those scenes, the spark and element of surprise is gone. Still, both the cover and artwork by Michael Broussard and company is striking and on many occasions, supersedes the dialogue. The big explosions are treated with just as much care and attention to detail as the intimate moments.

After the main volume there is “Ape-X: The Prime Primate” by Fred Van Lente. The super-engineered gorilla saves a man from a gigantic, mutated sea-monkey. Yes, those things in the back of comic books that millions of children got duped into spending their hard earned allowances for a bunch of crusty-looking things in a packet. You were supposed to put them in water, and then poof, instant pet. But there weren’t meant to be your friends. Just how lonely does a man have to be to create an enlarged sea-monkey, who guess what, wants to take over the world? This one-shot seems to carry on the running theme of world domination. It’s funny while simultaneously being sad. It is also a nice complement to the intricate, big world the reader has just experienced with Captain Midnight. Overall both reads will leave you with the satisfaction that the only world you have to control is your own.