Cross Bronx #4 (of 4)

Released: December 6, 2006

Publisher: Image

Writers: Michael Avon Oeming & Ivan Brandon

Pencils: Michael Avon Oeming

Cover: Michael Avon Oeming

Variant Cover: David Mack

 

 

 

On a second reading, I was able to get more out of the whole series, but. There is just so much more that this series could have been that the limited four issues weren’t able to provide.

 

Marta, the comatose woman, the ghostly killer, finished off all the men who had hurt her in the last issue, yet she kept killing everyone who even knew those men, including children. Faced with the truth, the mother makes a hard choice to end the violence, but not before a final confrontation between Marta and our two buddy cops.

 

The series just couldn’t fit in enough emotion in the characters, enough plot into their actions to make them fully realized personalities. Tico, the wild partner, stands as the most egregious example of a cast of characters that wanted desperately to be more than Oeming and Brandon gave them space to become. It’s hard to criticize a comic for not being longer, but there is no way around the fact that in the short time given, only Aponte and the mother are fully formed characters. This would normally be alright if the story didn’t ask us to care about these other characters so much, especially Tico, whose role is so underwhelming that I found myself hardly bothered by what happened to him.

 

The story itself is full of moody atmospherics, a staple of Oeming’s urban stories, and the scenes unfold with well planned dramatics. It wasn’t the logistical execution that was ever lacking, it was the story itself. I just didn’t feel the emotional power I know the writers really wanted to come across. It wasn’t void of it, just not enough of it.

 

The imagery and symbolism within the story however are noteworthy and well-done. Most of the symbolism is basic Christian crosses and what not, but the moths are a nice touch that symbolize the ghostly killer’s attraction to the evil deeds, the flame of vengeance those drug dealers embodied for her. Maybe I’m stretching a bit. Maybe I’m just injecting symbolism where there is none, like when I think the broken mirror in the bar that Aponte is looking at himself in is a sign of his identity crisis of whether not he should be a good cop or a good husband. See, a little symbolism will lead you to see things that may just be extras the writers included for the hell of it.

 

So where does that lead us? Powerful imagery with a good execution of graphic mechanics without an equally powerful story, that’s where. The story ends removing any hopes for a sequel, squelching any hopes of fleshing out this world of Christian mysticism. Color me unimpressed.

 

Rating - 5