Whatever Happened to the World’s Fastest Man by Dave West and Marleen Lowe- The Review
This story is part of a concept series called Blessed/Cursed and like the title suggests is focused on how even though someone has special powers there are downsides to it. Now being the fastest man in the world could have multiple disadvantages like impatience or the effect it could have on your health like aging fast. It is the last drawback that this story is about but there’s so much more to this comic than that. A bomb is due to go off in an hour and it has a 2 mile radius so there’s no way everyone can escape London. Unless you have super speed. Now if this was the case you could think this story is just about a British and less arrogant Quicksilver but Bobby’s power is to pause time the weakness being that he ages rapidly and cannot interact with the world in any complex way like even opening the door without stopping time. But, this comic is about the negative aspects of powers so while stopping time to save everyone he realises his limitations as it takes him ages to move anyone as he can only stop time so no super speed or strength so he is unable to lift heavy people among other things. The story unfolds slowly and brilliantly with Bobby’s mental health deteriorating after being alone for so long and he starts to discover more about the bomb and the attempts to stop it. I realise I have probably gave more than my share of spoilers but with a story like this it’s hard to be vague. That being said, I won’t ruin the ending I felt it was really strong and it left me thinking what Bobby could have done differently. Lastly, the cover is a story in itself as it’s just like the front and back pages of a newspaper and shows the fictional backstory of the comic with the Tower that the bomb is placed in being unveiled and Bobby’s recent exploits. The concept for this story and series, the execution of it with the back story, the interviews with Accent writers is all flawless.
Now onto the art. Unfortunately, the front and back cover are the only pages in colour (but the book is only £3.50 for over 40 pages). The cover layout like a newspaper is striking and I think without colour on the front cover this great book wouldn’t probably sell as well. But, even in colour some of the art I found lacking. The image of the runners on the back cover is too simple for my liking and the eyes stick out far too much like anime eyes. I’m not a big manga fan when it comes to art so sadly many of the characters drawn in this book aren’t too my liking they remind me at best of Jason Howard when he was drawing Astounding Wolfman as the shapes of noses, hair and the body in general are more abstract not realistic. However, I love the way the artist shows the contrast between the paused world with its classic pencil shading approach to the thickly lined manga style Bobby. You get a real sense of how Bobby is outside time and his ageing, it’s just a shame how it’s not in colour and how the facial features are drawn but this is only an occasion problem on the classic style pencilling. Most of the pages are 9 panels which would normally limit the amount of detail you can put in each panel. But the backgrounds never suffer here and each panel flows effortlessly with a variety of shot lengths to illustrate the story better. Lastly, I just want to mention the lettering it’s very basic and sometimes narration is in a text box and sometimes it isn’t but as there are 9 panels on a page most of the time and there are many wordless panels it fits quite well.
Overall, this is an amazing concept, an original and emotional story, the layout is interesting as well. The art for me is a mixed bag as I would have preferred colour, I don’t like manga style art much but the backgrounds are brilliant and the contrast between Bobby and the paused world is spot on. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone looking for a different sort of hero comic.
