FBP: FEDERAL BUREAU OF PHYSICS #2
What did the
iFanboy
community think?
Pulls
Art by Robbi Rodriguez
Colors by Rico Renzi
Letters by Steve Wands
Cover by Nathan Fox
Size: 32 pages
Price: 2.99
It’s a rescue mission into a dimensional anomaly. Five people, including the CEO of a company recently under SEC investigation, get sucked into a Bubbleverse on an elevator in their work building. Teams of FBP agents are shot (uncomfortably, with science) into the neighboring mirror world to retrieve them before the whole thing explodes in less than 30 hours. Prodded by his increasingly suspect partner Jay, Adam agrees to volunteer, despite having just escaped a dangerous anti-gravity episode in the previous issue, for which he’s still bandaged.
It’s an unfortunate consequence of hard sci-fi storytelling that great ideas can get a little hampered by necessary exposition. The Bubbleverse is a great idea, but for the agents “a little rusty on H. G .I.’s” (read: FBP’s readers), we’re treated to a debriefing to explain the fantasy physics and stakes of the phenomenon. That it remains interesting is a credit to Oliver’s ideas more than his prose style. But once we get to the Bubbleverse, Oliver’s vision and Rodriguez’s whimsical art style really shine. It’s a clean, brightly colored world occupied by kind-of people who ultimately have no real definition and absolutely no identity. The play-doh fusion of the falling construction worker and the passing pedestrian is simultaneously grotesque and humorous, particularly the surprised reaction of her furry dog.
FBP’s weakness so far is easily its character development. In Part Two we begin to get flashbacks and character history which, although compelling, elaborate the characters themselves proportionately little. In part, no doubt, because the complicated conceits of the sci-fi, the characters have been a little neglected. Their actions, particularly those of Jay and Cicero, are worthy of the conspiracy mysteries that they imply, but if FBP really wants to establish its footing, it’s going to need to make me care about them all more than I yet do.
Art: 3 - Good
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It was very generous of you to give this issue a 4 (for effort?). I found it a very dry and trying read. Oliver hasn’t made me care about a single thing here and this issue hardly built on what he gave us in #1. This issue really felt like a bad Chew knock-off (even more than issue #1) and I’m not interested at all in the science because of how it is delivered (words straight out the book?). It feels cliche. I’m not knocking your review at all, I think it is a very fair and accurate review of the book, but a 4 for story is surprising (I found it more a 2+/3-). It just fails to deliver on what could be something cool, and instead ends up flat and boring. The artwork is pretty nice to look at though.
Yeah, so I wasn’t paying much attention when I dropped down the scores. The 3 was for story; 4 for art. Impressive of you to actually call me out on my mistake. I certainly wouldn’t bump a score for effort, but I think I find the ideas more interesting than you do. Here’s to hoping that once some of the sci-fi ideas settle in a bit, there will be less clunky exposition.
Impressive? Cool. Just hope I didn’t come across rude with my 2 cents. I actually like physics a lot (big stuff like wormholes and dimensions to small quantum probability- once again dimensions) I just don’t like how it is being incorporated or portrayed. Admittedly its all pretty dense and difficult subject matter for comics (especially monthly- maybe this would be better tackled as a series of OGNs?). I won’t be picking up #3 anytime soon, but I’ll be checking comments and reviews to see if they can put it together. Thanks for opening up the convo with your review. It was well-written.
I agree that the weakness has been the empty-ish characterization… but the ideas are great. I want to like this more than I do right now, but I’ll give it another issue. Great review!
This wins cover of the week again. Nice save. LOL!