Brought to us by the team of Jay Faerber, Jon Sommariva, and FCOLOR, Gemini is the story of a superhero who doesn't know he's a superhero! Dan Johnson works a regular job and has a boring life - even by my homebound standards - but when activated by a secret organization, he becomes a nigh-unstoppable weapon against crime.
Great concept, beautiful execution, Gemini is a really great romp that emphasizes every tenet of the superhero genre with a slight spin to great effect. What non-creative people, both in and out -side of the industry, sometimes forget is that pop genres have specific trappings which pretty much have to be included; working with the cliches of a genre is far from "hack," it is working within the genre - and there is a huge difference.
While Gemini has a pretty unique twist (I'm sure it's been done before - everything has - but it's outside the norm and very well-executed), the superhero genre - like all genres (horror, sci-fi, fantasy, etc.) - has certain fixtures that define it and if those elements are absent, then the project does not fit the mold. And, believe it or not, truly talented creators can work with these standards and still make them special; working within a genre without becoming hack or cliched is far harder than doing anything else - it's the same thing as singing a song made famous by someone else and "making it your own." Anyone can write a silly slapstick comedy, a maudlin tear-jerker, or your basic coming-of-age/slice-of-life story, but it takes a truly exceptional talent to craft a horror piece that actually scares you or superhero comic that doesn't make you wince whenever "it's clobberin' time."And Faerber does exactly that: Gemini is your basic boobs, biceps, and brawling superhero comic book, replete with a superhero "sub-culture" that co-exists outside the normal citizenry, a hackneyed catch-phrase, a cutesy yet complicated love triangle, a secret organization working behind the scenes, requisite (and copious) fight scenes - everything you expect, and want, from a superhero title! But again, it doesn't come across as trite.
Aside from that, the dialogue is smooth and interesting - there's not a clunker one here, except when there's supposed to be - the characters are easily recognizable with an acknowledged depth we have yet to see (and are not reassured exists by insipid inner monologues), and the interplay is believable. Very nicely done.
The art is exceptional, but it definitely fits into the Image mold. If you don't like the Image style, then Gemini is not for you. However, The Dread Crosshatch was thankfully not omnipresent (it's still manages to crop-up from time to time), so it is not one of Those.
However, Gemini allows me the perfect opportunity to pick a nit that bugs me about a lot of comics nowadays, particularly in manga and Image titles: the backgrounds and background action should not distract from the foreground!
Remember when comic books had panels where only the interacting characters in the foreground were portrayed in full-color - all of the background was washed in a muted tone (gray or blue, or whatever)? That wasn't just because they were working with toner and it was easier and faster to do that way; that's because you don't want the reader to have to squint and use his thumb to find the foreground!I just got done praising the Power Pack minis for their inclusion of detailed backgrounds, and Gemini features fantastic sets, but the level of detail in Gemini is far greater than that in the PP series, so the backgrounds actually take away from the whole thing in this case: too busy, too loud, too much! If you are going to present the backgrounds in full-color, then at least make sure the cats in the foreground are more active than those in the back!
You might hate me saying it - I know most Image fans will consider this blasphemy - but break-out your How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way book and turn to pgs. 116-117. Commit this to memory and apply it directly to the characters in the foreground - ONLY! If the protagonist and antagonist are yelling at one another in front of a crowd in which a couple is kissing while three guys are playing cards, two others are wrestling over a sandwich, a group of kids are trading cards, and three dogs are nipping at one another... you get what I'm saying? Now put everyone in this panel in a different colored shirt and some have jeans and others have slacks and some are wearing shorts and that one's got a hat...
Okay, end of lesson.
Great panelwork, though you can drop the gutters when you break out of the layout (free-standing and overlapping panels don't need borders) and fluid narration, not to mention action sequences! Sommariva is a born superhero artist and Gemini is a great forum for his talents.
I hate that the word "fun" is considered a death-knell for superhero comics, because if I had only one word in which to describe Gemini (yeah, I get it; this is long - I GET IT!), the "F-word" is the first and only one that comes to mind.
Gemini is a fun, fast-paced, simply fantastic comic that I eagerly devoured and it ends with one of the greatest cliffhangers I've read in a while! When I came to the final page, I literally exclaimed aloud, "Aw NAW!" I can't wait for the next installment.
Highly recommended!
© C Harris Lynn, 2008
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