Guest review by Run The Comics 5K's MATT LOWDER . . . . .
STEALTH, Volume 1 (Image Skybound, 2020) Contains Issues #1-6
America's strongest superhero for decades is getting dementia. It's a wild premise when you think about it. When Tony Stark or Bruce Wayne get old and maybe don't know when to "step away" from the mantle, how freakin' scary could that be when their mental faculties impede their ability to discern who is villain, who is not, and what day it is? Yikes!
Stealth's son, Tony, has no idea who his dad is, but he's about to. And Detroit's villain, The Hand, who had a run-in with Stealth in the 80s, is hunting Stealth now, about to get him due to Stealth's slip ups.
It's a painful, well-told, violent, and timely action hero story. The tech/sci-fi angle is something I enjoy. For fans of Marvel's Black Panther (comics) or The Falcon (MCU) or Luke Cage (Netflix), try this. I read this blind -- not knowing that the son WASN'T Stealth, so the reveal in Issue #1 was clever and frankly knocked me out of my chair. Mostly, every issue had me guessing and did something fresh.
Stealth is one of 2020's most socially-aware books. It features an almost entirely black cast, but the focus is never just on that African-American experience. Nothing feels tokenized, phoned-in, or motivated by agenda. It's just a great story with great layers, one that is influenced by the experiences of Detroit and the perspectives of it's characters. It's awesome to see an original black-superhero with a compelling backstory, specific motivating factors and challenges, and never soap-boxy. This was great!
Art is good. Color is good. Line work and ink is excellent. It's gritty, with exaggerated facial features, and smoothly guides the eye from page to page, never cluttered, never confusing.
In a year with a lot of unrest and politics to say the least, this seems like it's done really well for all superhero readers who primarily want a story that hooks because the plot has hooks. It's human, urban, and the story itself is a reaction to clear real-world inequities. The American experience never got in the way of the comic, but the symptoms therein realistically informed it's trajectory. It's edgy, sharp, relevant to the "moment," and somehow completely accessible.
The 6th issue took a quantum leap into revealing how the technology originally came to Stealth, and it was a bit rushed and underdeveloped, so the ending is a bit clunky. Everything else was original and fun - I savored and read every page with baited breath. This is a good book with excellent moments, and I hope that Kirkman and Image do an arc #6-12 where Tony takes over his aging father's suit. 4/5
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