During the battle for women’s voting rights in early 20th century England, suffragette leader Sylvia Pankhurst advised her followers to learn jiujitsu and start coming to meetings armed with sticks. “It is no use pretending,” she told The New York Times. “We have got to fight.” That factoid is the foundation of Tony Wolf and Joao Vieira’s Suffrajitsu: Mrs. Pankhurst’s Amazons (Jet City Comics), a genre-defying period piece about the women who take up arms to gain political power in a world that wants to keep them disenfranchised.
Part of Neal Stephenson’s trans-media Foreworld Saga, which details the secret history of a fictional world much like our own, Suffrajitsu is an exhilarating exploration of the suffragette movement that moves in surprising directions over the course of its three issues. Tony Wolf’s story begins with martial artist suffragettes fighting for the vote in England, but quickly grows to make Mrs. Pankhurst’s Amazons key figures in the events leading up to World War I, casting them as secret agents tasked with preventing an international incident. The first chapter is a captivating introduction to the concept and characters, emphasizing the reality of this struggle for these women before taking a sudden left turn that considerably expands the scope of the story, and later issues continue to impress as the creative team combines political commentary, sci-fi intrigue, pulse-pounding action, and intense character drama in one briskly paced narrative.
Wolf has an exceptional collaborator in Vieira, whose clean, expressive style is reminiscent of the work of Wonder Woman’s Cliff Chiang. He does outstanding work capturing period details in the character and environment designs, and doesn’t allow the overbearing dress of the time to diminish the skill of these women as fighters. Wolf works primarily as a fight choreographer and action designer (including cultural fighting styles design for the Lord Of The Rings films), and Vieira and colorist Josan Gonzales capture the specific action beats of the script with full force. A particularly impressive page in issue #2 features main character Persephone Wright sparring with her uncle, and Vieira uses era-appropriate design elements to heighten the sense of motion on the page with shapes and color.
The script’s juggling act gives the art team the opportunity to really stretch their muscles with different types of storytelling, and political discussions on the floor of St. Andrews Hall in Glasgow are as engaging as big fight sequences in an alpine Austrian castle. The visuals move into creepily psychedelic territory when one of the characters is injected with the hallucinogenic agent soma; Vieira’s linework becomes more exaggerated and his designs more monstrous, and Gonzales takes advantage of the change in perspective to incorporate bold, unconventional colors in his palette. The conclusion of the miniseries suggests that this isn’t the last we’ve seen of Mrs. Pankhurst’s Amazons, which is a very good thing because these three issues lay a strong foundation for much more ass-kicking suffragette action in the future. [Oliver Sava]
The cover of Bucky Barnes: The Winter Soldier #6 (Marvel) is arresting on the shelf. It’s reminiscent of Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun in the best possible way, and Mike Del Mundo deserves a round of applause for the work he’s been doing on Bucky Barnes covers since issue #4. The art is one of the biggest draws of the title, from cover to cover, every issue. Ales Kot’s a talented writer, but he doesn’t show his hand quickly and reading Bucky Barnes requires a certain amount of patience. There are plotlines that began in the first issue that are only becoming clear now, and while that can be a little difficult to manage with weeks between books, the payout is there waiting. Like Kot’s work on the far too short-lived Iron Patriot, Bucky Barnes is about a soldier. First by choice and then by force, Bucky’s always been in that role, and seeing him walk through the arc from warrior to veteran is gratifying and in some ways very intimate. Particularly for fans who may have come into the title after the Captain America movies, it’s nice to see Bucky reach a point in his life where something other than violence is at least a possibility, and Kot is providing readers with a chance to see a character that has aged—a real rarity in comics. But the art is what makes this book stand out.
Usually when an issue switches between artists, it’s either an anthology or an annoyance. But here, Marco Rudy provides the here-and-now for Earth-616, while Langdon Foss and colorist Jordan Boyd deliver memories from another time and place; the switch is key to piecing together how the story unfolds. Rudy has a rich style with unconventional layouts and watercolors, but even read on the heels of Descender it feels palpably different and shows just how far the medium can get pushed by two different artists. There are moments where the natives of Mer-Z-Bow look like they could be cousins of Miracleman’s Warpsmiths, with an almost retro vibe. Rudy does his best work, though, when Daisy Johnson, Bucky’s partner for the moment, and his lover, Ventolin, have a remarkable moment together toward the end of the book. Those pages also mean the issue passes the Bechdel test, even if one of the characters shares a name with an emergency inhaler.
While Rudy’s work tends toward broad and almost psychedelic strokes, Foss, who works with Kot on The Surface as well, has a tighter, more traditional style. He’s got an eye for detail and backgrounds that serves the book and the tone of the flashbacks well, though now and then a facial expression that’s just a bit off distracts from the hard work he’s put in on the rest of the panel. The completely unnecessary Black Widow cleavage halfway through the book was a disappointment. If readers want to jump in on the tile now, #6 is a good starting point, though the story is definitely better served going back to the beginning. Walking the path that Kot and the artists have carefully laid down is worthwhile, and the story they’re telling is fascinating in part because readers can’t be quite sure where they’re headed. [Caitlin Rosberg]