Issue: Incorruptible #5
Release Date: April 28, 2010
Creator/Writer: Mark Waid
Artist: Horacio Domingues
Colorist: Andrew Dalhouse
Cover(s): Rafael Albuquerque, Dennis Calero, Jeffrey Spokes
Letterer: Ed Dukeshire
Publisher: BOOM! Studios
Max saves a Jailbait lookalike from being kidnapped, and uses her in an attempt to keep the Real McCoy out of harms way. And fails. Presumably.
So my biggest problem with this title so far has been with the character Jailbait, and to my surprise she was absent for this entire issue. Sort of. The entire story was about her and how Max wants to make sure she’s safe now that she’s run off in an adolescent fit, and the story was still pretty middle of the road because it’s about a character I don’t care about and actively want to punch in the mouth. What I care about, what I’m interested in, is why Max turned from Dark Side to Jedi (really, we haven’t actually gotten into this, in my opinion — maybe I’m just asking for too much of an explanation) and how he plans on stopping Plutonian.
Instead, we get Max saving a random girl (I’m going out on a limb and guessing she’s supposed to be a girl since she makes the comment about Jailbait getting too old for Max and Max needing to find a younger replacement and not because she looks like a “girl”), dressing her up in Jailbait’s costume in order to get the baddies in Max’s world to think the real Jailbait is still safe by his side. As any female who’s had a thing for the bad boy can tell you, once you leave the side of said bad boy you’re pretty much fair game for his enemies. I guess Jailbait never picked up on that little factoid in her many months (years?) of dating Max Damage.
One thing that got me a little “huh?” was that the police are still after Max. I’m unclear on how much time has passed from issue #1 and this issue, but I was under the impression that everyone pretty much knew that Max switched sides and started batting for the Good Guys. Also, why do they keep wasting bullets trying to shoot down a guy with diamond hard skin? While I’m all for pointing out how dumb anyone can be sometimes, this Keystone Kop behavior is kind of ridiculous and not interesting for me. My first read through, I saw the “OPEN FIRE!!” balloon and just skipped ahead without reading the rest because I don’t want to read about an entire squad of Federal Wildlife Marshal Willenhollys emptying clips at a guy who makes the bullets ricochet off towards God knows where. You’d think Aramadale would have told these guys to pull their heads out when dealing with Max because if Joe Blow didn’t have it hard enough trying to survive between Plutonian showing up and melting him out of existence and the second string baddie, he also needs to worry about some cop’s bullet bouncing off of Max’s impressive pectorals and straight into his forehead. Actually, this makes me wonder why they have panels of anyone shooting at Max at this point.
There is a different artist handling the panels this issue. I’m not sure if Domingues is going to be the artist for this title from here on out or if it was just a one-shot thing, but his art was nice, if a little more cartoony than Diaz’s. Max does look a lot younger to me in this issue than he has in previous issues, while the random “girl” looks about the same age as him. Domingues does a great job of making the city look barely held together and grungy, and overall does a nice job of handling things in Diaz’s place.
“What’s in the boooooox???”
Rating: 3 / 5 Stars
