Radiant Black vol. 4: Two-in-One

Radiant Black isn’t just one person anymore after the events of vol. 3 – it’s now two.  Or rather, two people, Nathan and Marshall, sharing the suit and the powers.  They’re managing this new setup pretty well, until the powers start glitching out.  That’s a bad thing by itself, and it becomes worse when a huge Evangelion-esque robot shows up in Brazil and they have to team up with Radiant Pink and Radiant Red (now in prison after the events of her miniseries) to take it down.  Things don’t settle down from there as they’ll have to figure out where this robot came from, take down the evil Radiant weapons dealer from the previous volume, and Nathan is going to have to make some hard choices about what he wants to do with his future.  After the coming interstellar war, that is.

I wasn’t too keen on the action from the previous volume, but it was nice to see one of the main bad guys from that arc be taken down here.  In fact, the volume overall is a step back in the right direction for “Radiant Black” as there’s a lot of successful buildup towards the “Catalyst War” arc that’s set to consume the next volume.  The giant robots that appear are one thing, but it’s more interesting to observe the dynamic of friendship between the title’s co-protagonists.  Nathan and Marshall make a good team together, but I really liked seeing the “Return to Existence” business at the end of the volume.  If nothing else, it’s clever that their specific brand of superpowers depend on them actually talking to each other and working out their issues before they escalate into dumb melodrama.

Other than that, there aren’t any huge, game-changing surprises for this series in vol. 4.  It’s just trying to deliver some solid superhero action, character drama, and buildup for a major storyline all in one go.  What we get here doesn’t reinvent any of those things, but it does them all solidly enough that I’m curious to see where “Radiant Black’s” first major event storyline takes it from here.