Vanish vol. 1

Donny Cates’ ambitions at Marvel may be on hold for now, but he and his “Venom” partner Ryan Stegman are delivering a new creator-owned title from Image.  “Vanish” is a series that takes a lot of stylistic cues in its art from the publisher’s early 90’s era.  Given how Image titles from that time were only known for their art (when they shipped) that is not a selling point for me.  However, Cates’ involvement means that there’s going to be some actual substance to the flash that Stegman is providing, right?  Well, kinda.

We’re introduced to the title’s protagonist in a fashion that’s quite dark, bordering on edgelord-y.  Oliver Harris is walking home late one night with an interior monologue detailing all of the booze and drugs he uses just to get through the day.  Then he’s attacked and about to be mugged by a couple of randos when one of the local superheroes, a kid who goes by the name Battle Rocket, shows up and saves the day.  Which is a real lucky break for Oliver.

Or, at least it would be if it wasn’t for the fact that the brand on Oliver’s shoulder starts reacting to Battle Rocket’s presence.  It turns out that the superhero isn’t who he appears to be.  He’s actually part of a group from Oliver’s past, when he was the Chosen One and saved his world from villains like this kid used to be.  Now that he knows they’re back, Oliver decides that his new mission in life is to finish what he started.

The thing that struck me the most about “Vanish” is how good a job Stegman does in making the comic feel like it came straight out of the 90’s minus the worst excesses of the era.  We get characters who don’t have garishly over-the-top physiques or who seem determined to over-emote at every possible moment.  The storytelling is also easy to follow with the splash pages feeling like natural extensions of it rather than the point in itself.  Even the level of detail feels consistent from page-to-page.

Stegman also has a solid enough design sense where the superhero characters look like believable archetypes of the form.  He may not go completely over-the-top in depicting the fight scenes here, but when they happen they still hit hard.  The artist also does his best to sell the quieter moments, such as when Oliver tries to explain things to his wife without telling her what’s actually going on.

That bit of familiar tropiness is part of what hinders “Vanish.”  Being a drugged-out alcoholic should buy us some suspension of disbelief for the bad choices Oliver makes in this first volume, but that only gets you so far.  Just about every decision he makes here feels like it’s leading him down the wrong path in a way that feels driven more by the demands of the plot than solid characterization.

Which is surprising given that Cates has usually been really good about grounding his characters in relatable situations even as they encounter fantastic circumstances in his previous work.  While I’m not saying that you have to be a drugged-out alcoholic to understand what Oliver is going through here, there’s something off about what the writer is trying to do here.  It comes back around to the introduction we get regarding the character which feels like it’s trying to be dark and edgy for the sake of such.  That feeling permeates the whole volume and it makes the whole experience feel irritating rather than invigorating.

That could be down to the fact that there’s a big disconnect between Oliver’s past self and his present self.  Without giving too much away, the story sets up a large gap between them in the first issue which makes it hard to reconcile the two.  The impression is that we’re meant to assume the character’s life just went to hell after he did his big thing, but I’m left feeling that there has to be more to it than that.

Which is something I hope to see explored in subsequent volumes.  Yes, I’ll be buying the second volume because not only do I have some hope that Cates will showcase the kind of writing that got me to follow him, but also because it’ll contain the second half of “Vanish’s” opening arc.  I’m not saying that doing an eight-issue opening act is part of the problem here… buuuuuut it doesn’t look to have done this title any favors.