Review: Black Market #3

Ray and Denny’s past catches up with them in a number of ways in Black Market #3, but is it good?

Frank Barbiere and Victor Santos have finally hit their stride in Black Market, where Ray and his brother Denny track down Supers to drain their blood for a company called Biochem. The story starts out on November 8, 2012. Ray has agreed to help Denny patch up one of his injured crew members, and the tone of the story is ominous. Barbiere uses Ray to narrate the opening scene and sucks the reader in with an excellent bit of writing: “But all the good intentions in the world can’t fix what I’ve done.” The reader immediately desires to find out what exactly can be worse than what Ray has already done in the previous two issues.

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Review: Black Market #2

Ray and Denny return in Black Market #2, but instead of moving the story forward writer Frank Barbiere continues with a retrospective into Ray’s life before he teamed up with his brother Denny and Biochem.

The book begins with Ray working for the police as a medical examiner; he is performing an exam on a hopeful bank robber. Unfortunately for the bank robber, there was a Super who intervened and did he ever intervene. The bank robber has a giant gruesome hole in his chest! The sequence not only gives the reader a glimpse into Ray’s past, but also provides background on the budding conflict between the Supers and everyday folks, especially the police.

Once Ray leaves work and returns home, his brother Denny shows up at his door begging him to save a man’s life at the warehouse! It seems Barbiere is attempting to rewrite Denny’s return into Ray’s life. Here he has Denny showing up on November 8, 2012, although in the first book Denny appeared at Ray’s house for the first time on June 14, 2013 to proposition him to work with Biochem. This plot hole gets even larger when Barbiere jumps to June 15, 2013 where he introduces Ray to the fully stocked warehouse! Is the reader to presume Ray already knows about the warehouse when he is supposedly first being introduced to it?

Following this gaping hole, Barbiere adds another one. After the ending of the first book, Ray is adamant Denny and Bruiser should not drain too much of Hotspot’s blood and leaves them assuming he will not be killed. However, the reader concludes this is in the past since Ray states on the very last page of book one, “… I Kill Superheroes!” The reader is also led to believe Hotspot is their first victim; this is not the case. Following Barbiere’s excellent back story to Bruiser, a former-hero and vigilante crime fighter, the trio pursue and subdue Electric Lad, but what they do with him is left to the reader’s imagination. Most likely he was killed, but then Ray’s protestations in the first book seem to have little or no meaning.

Despite the plot holes, Barbiere is able to create a sense of anger amongst the common folk towards the Supers. During Bruiser’s back story, the Supers were friendly. Both sides were fighting to clean-up the streets, but once the streets were cleaned the Supers became reclusive, retreating amongst themselves. They were not seen as heroes anymore, but threats to a way of a life.

Victor Santos’ artwork continues to provide a good mix of realism with the fantastic. Shan twirling her hair as she flirts with Ray really emphasizes the good life he had before Denny. While the aftereffects of Electric Lad’s powers on Ray and Denny create a real sense of danger and depict the power the Super’s have over the everyday man. Adam Metcalfe’s colors keep the book lively from Electric Lad’s blue to the glowing red of the Super DNA.

6.0	The gaping plot holes disengage the reader from an interesting story idea.

Review: Black Market #1

Black Market #1 is the story of Raymond Willis, a down on his luck mortician, who is out to change not only his circumstances but his wife’s as well. In order to do this, Ray walks down a path that leads to the Black Market.

Writer Frank Barbiere does a masterful job of connecting Ray to the reader. One of the first sequences involves Ray’s boss Benito yelling at him to finish his work today and make sure he is in before 4:00 a.m. the next day. Not only does it seem as if Ray is being worked to death, but he is struggling to make everyday purchases at what appears to be the local drug store. He rummages around in his pockets as people in line behind him give him impatient stares, stare at their watch and tap on their cell phone as he searches for cash. To make matters worse and create even more sympathy for Ray, his wife Shannon has been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) a disease which damages nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord.

Victor Santos’ artwork is essential in conveying how down on his luck Ray really is. Whether he is chasing after a missed bus, walking to his large brown bland apartment building, or entering his spartan apartment with a number of bills spread out on the nightstand, Ray’s life could definitely use a major improvement.

Not only does Ray have personal problems, but he also has a history of trouble stemming from work he has done with his brother, Denny. However, the past is the past, and when Denny shows up on Ray’s door, he brings a whole new set of troubles that Ray is too easily convinced to make his own.

Meanwhile, Barbiere is also telling an action-packed story. Ray has already made his deal with Denny and is carrying it out. Their objective: a superhero named Hotspot, who is saving innocent civilians from a burning building. The brothers, with the help of muscleman, Bruiser, easily weaken and capture the Super. However, Supers don’t go down easily and Santos is able to be creative with the fight scene having panels subset into the larger page drawings. The design creates a sense of mass chaos and intense struggle with medical supplies and bits of flame flying across the page.

In the end Hotspot is captured, but what Ray, Denny and Bruiser do to him next is what is at the heart of Black Market. The book is only held back by a somewhat confusing narration by Ray that jumps back and forth between timelines. The confusion is apparent during the sequence where Ray is taking care of his wife, but he narrates about events that have yet to be revealed to the reader. It definitely has the reader wanting to know more about the events, but is generally perplexing with the dual timelines.

7.9	Black Market takes the reader into the underbelly of a Superhero universe, where a downtrodden man commits desperate acts in order to help the one he cares so much about.