White Tiger #1 (of 6)

Released: November 15, 2006

Publisher: Marvel

Writers: Tamora Pierce & Timothy Liebe

Pencils: Phil Briones

Cover: David Mack

 

Continuing our theme of female novelists writing comics, we have the debut of the new White Tiger written by Tamora Pierce and her husband, Timothy Liebe. What is odd is that Pierce is known for young adult fantasy novels, this is an urban, martial arts/crime comic, but Pierce is known for strong heroines and bringing her on for that may not be a bad way of creating one, however cynically you might view Marvel’s top down handling of it.

 

Pierce has done a good job of not being too wordy and allowing the artist to tell the story too. She certainly has lots of inner dialogue but no more than Ennis’ Punisher and certainly a lot less than Claremont at his worst. The only trouble she has is a series of panels in the middle of the book where Pierce transitions awkwardly across the page with the captions hindering the leap forward in time rather than helping it. Other than that, she allows the action to breathe, even if she and/or Briones have difficulty showing hand-to-hand fighting. Martial arts is a hard concept to show in comics and still keep it under ten panels a page, but even in this area she’s good enough for the story’s purposes.

 

Really, no kidding, this is a rational, well put together comic that hits all the basics needed for competent story-telling. We get adequate flashbacks to Bendis’ Daredevil scenes that were integral to making Angela Del Toro become the White Tiger. We have it firmly set before the Civil War so Pierce doesn’t have to deal with any of that foolishness.

 

To top it all off, this first story establishes all the right story conventions such as a villain that ties into both the superhero cameos and Angela’s F.B.I. background. Angela gets her first low-level thug fight, her costume, and her first supervillain fight that even ties into the gangster who killed her partner. More importantly though, this first issue establishes Angela as a concrete personality with a real motivation to be a superhero and a strong enough will to be believable and amiable as a superheroine.

 

The overarching villain is your typical gangster overlord who’s behind the scenes and working through proxies. He’s come to the U.S. to plunder now that he’s used up the Soviet Union. Right there is the ties to the Black Widow and the F.B.I. that are needed to give the book a proper supporting cast. The best scenes are the ones between Angela and the side characters, like her scene with a fellow F.B.I. agent as they discuss the crime-boss or when Angela is getting her new costume and is asking how she’s supposed to pee in the thing.

 

The tone of the book certainly isn’t anything like Daredevil’s, this is a novice superhero story played relatively straight with clear, clean art (as opposed to Daredevil’s gritty, realistic art). But that works for me here, the idea is to set her apart from the parent book and potentially reach an audience of Tamora Pierce fans who will find this art more accessible. I don’t know how far that statement can be taken but I can at least see the logic behind it.

 

This is a great, solid start for a book that had a lot of potential pitfalls, but it isn’t terribly unique, as far as novice superhero stories go, or extremely flashy. Yet, it’s won me over for the limited series at least and I certainly am having fun.

 

Rating - 6