Comic Book Review: 'Alpha: Big Time' #3

When they first announced that they were giving Alpha his own series all I could think was that the first issue would give me a one and done feeling and I wouldn’t be following the series.

Boy was I wrong.

Sure we’re only three issues into the story but I’m facinated with how Joshua has been able to write the character of Alpha. In some ways, he has me not only interested in what is going to be happening next but rooting for him. It’s a complete 180 from how I felt about him by the end of his run as having “Spider-Man be his sidekick” as it were. (He’s one of the few characters I wouldn’t have minded seeing Marvel just decide to kill off. Thankfully they had something great in mind.)

The flipside of this enjoyment on the plot though comes with the art. It’s not quite the anime-ish style that they’ve been using on him and really feels more like what anime would be if made with today’s quality mixed with an artist who is doing cartoons from the 70’s tripping on Acid. Needless to say, for me the art in this comic just doesn’t work.

The issue opens with Alpha still in the clutches of the man he put in a coma. He tells him that he’s sorry and the man seems to fall back into his restless slumber. There seems to be electricity in the air when the two touch and I suspect this is key to what is happening.

The next panel shows him in a lurch with his mind a million miles away on what just happened when Spider-Man shows up to borrow his powers for important Avengers business. While this gets him extremely excited to being super-heroish again, it quickly fades as he discovers he just has to hold things while Spider-Man attaches some kind of mechanical device to them.

As was shown in the first issue, this is the Doc Ock version of Spidey and is most likely part of his plan to use Alpha’s powers for his own agenda. What kind of an agenda requires him to be putting metal ‘things’ on rocks in the middle of the desert? Well that’s still a secret we aren’t privy to quite yet.

When he returns home he’s back to being down from not having done anything that he feels productive today (go go teenage angst) when suddenly we see his future love interest, Soupcan, stuck in a fire at her work. He hears her scream and instantly goes to save her. He tries to make it romantic and is completely shut down (at which point I feel like a typical anime vibe plotline starts ot kick in, which isn’t bad here.)

He decides to ramp his power up and see what he can really do with his hearing but then out of nowhere starts to hear everything. It’s far too much sensory overload and being unable to handle it all falls from the building he was sitting atop. Right before he hits the ground though he hears that Soupcan might be interested in him after all and is able to stop himself. This love interest is secured for another issue and he goes to apologize once more to the mysterious robber in a coma.

While he flies off we get the upcoming non-Spider-Man related plot points. First he had tapped the man on his shoulder as he left. This tap shared the same electric spark that happened earlier and the robber mutates into a monster and eats his nurse. Secondly we see a group of people who are behind both the fires and the electical monster that Alpha stopped last issue. They know who Alpha is and want to welcome him to the neighborhood for stopping their plans by kill everyone he cares about.

I’m not quite sure who the ‘villains’ at the end of the book are though I feel I should recognize them. I suppose we’ll find out next issue!