Written by Nick Spencer

Art by Steve Lieber

Colors by Ryan Hill

Nick Spencer has had an interesting month lately with the recent Captain America changes. But as someone who’s read his work since the beginning, I’ve always found his creator-owned material a more interesting expression of his work, without the aid of established characters or continuity as a guiding hand to aid his writing. To be sure, I have enjoyed Existence 2.0, and Morning Glories, however his other book with Steve Lieber: The Superior Foes of Spider-Man is perhaps one of my favorite things he’s ever written, so to see him and Lieber re-team under the auspices of The Fix which looked to be a crime drama/dramedy/whatever genre box floats your boat looked to be interesting. However, truth be told: The Fix is just not doing it for me.

To condense its problems into a sentence might not be fair, but the book is ragingly incoherent. That isn’t to say it cannot be followed, the events can be followed, and Spencer has never lacked for playing around with time in his stories whether creator-owned or corporate. However, there’s a difference between manipulating the order of events in your narrative, vs jumping around just because you can. I’ve never been to complain about plot, characters ought to guide a story ideally, but The Fix spends an entire issue stalling it’s plot in order to segway into the mostly unrelated story of a former teen pop star trying to stay in the spotlight. While a segway into something different can be a fun way of pouring life into a singular narrative, it’s not a technique wisely applied in a story that’s only three issues in, one that doesn’t even bother to spend much time ingratiating you into understanding its needs beyond the immediate needs of the plot.

What made Superior Foes such a great book was that it gave you a look into the lives of the Sinister Six beyond the immediate fix of the plot, which is necessary in order for you to care about them in the first place. Their desires even if stupid, were understandable. Boomerang wants to recapture the life he’d lost as a baseball star, Overdrive has a desire to become a superhero through the bizarre route of becoming a supervillain, Beetle wants to be a big time supervillain like her father, etc. With Detectives Roy and Brundo we don’t know anything about them beyond being in debt to a maniacal anti-vaxxer stereotype. While it’s nothing new to draw thinly sketched out characters to propel a plot, it’s one thing to give you nothing to connect to in a wholly new book. That said, the book has one magic bullet in it’s arsenal and that’s Steve Lieber.

While it’s easy to forget how much an artist brings to the table, Steve Lieber is practically a miracle worker. Pretty much all of the humor, physical, background, or even some of the more inane stuff (i.e the terrifying Pretzels) land pitch perfectly because of Lieber. That also works in reverse too, that same dog is actually kind of intimidating under Lieber’s guidance. Aided by Ryan Hill’s colors, at least some of the nuance, melancholy, and humor that defined that previous partnership. While I do hope that The Fix continues to be more than just a place for Lieber to keep on showing the world why he’s a fantastic artist, so far I’m not seeing much to hope for on the writing end.

2 out of 5 House Explosions