The American Way: Those Above and Those Below #4

***Possible Spoilers***

I read the first The American Way, and loved it. It was a nice mix of heroics and government manipulation- something I imagine would be much closer to the truth if superpowers existed in the real world. I've been reading The American Way: Those Above and Those Below since it started, and my reaction has been a bit mixed. I've been trying to sort it before doing any reviews on the issues, but I've decided that maybe those mixed feelings should be part of it. So, here we are on issue #4.

First, I like the art. It's just as nice on this series as it was on the first one. There's a couple of places where heads don't look quite right to me, but I struggle with stick figures, so who cares? Next, the writing has been great- right on par with the first series. There's an odd moment with a word balloon at one point though. Ole Miss (aka Missy Devereaux) is running for office, and Jason comes to talk to her about her would-be assassin. Her assistant, or husband (I forget) talks to Jason in her stead. Afterwards, he asks her, "If there were something more you would tell me, wouldn't you?" The next word balloon is still coming from him, answering, "Of course I would. My days of keeping secrets are over." It's really unclear if that was supposed to be Missy's word balloon, or if he was quoting the answer he expected from her.

Amber Waves- my favorite character, because of the wordplay of her name- has become a snowflake with superpowers and a crackpot cause. That's made her less of a favorite, but since her powers are energy powers, and she's using them to blow stuff up, it makes her still interesting.

Something I really like about this series is that the superpowers had capes and tights at one time, but have since moved on from that, and are now wearing regular, everyday clothes. An idea we're seeing more and more in screen media, like Heroes, No Ordinary Family, Smallville, Unbreakable, and a few others. It just rings true. Superpowers would probably make people celebrities, but they're going to keep wearing suit and tie, or jeans and T-shirts, or whatever, and try to keep living life. In a lot of superhero films where they wear costumes, we see that in real life, most of the time the costumes just look silly. So, most of your superpowered people are not going to make a run on spandex and jump into form-fitting costumes. It's cool that this series is showing that.

On the other hand, the lack of costumes is where my mixed feelings come in. Yes, it's probably more realistic, but I have a hard time keeping track of super characters with normal names without a costume and codename to identify them by, unless they have a really distinctive feature- usually their face. Here, the characters are not especially distinctive, and while I think that's by design, it makes the story drag for me. I continue to read this series, but it's always at the bottom of my stack of comics, because I know it's going to be a slower read, just because I have to remind myself of who's who. That might just be a me problem, but it was a problem none-the-less.

For the score, I'm giving it one star for cool art, one star for great writing, and two stars for a name like Amber Waves. Minus one star for her being a radical snowflake, but plus two because she remains an interesting character. One star for non-costumed super characters in everyday jobs, and minus two stars for it making the characters and story harder to track. I really do think that's a me-thing though, because I don't have problems with prose that involves ordinary people, so okay, plus one star back. Minus two stars for the word balloon problem, because that should have been better. Either it should have been pointing to Missy, or it should have been in quotes, if he was saying what he thought she would say.

Final score: three stars.

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