George Pérez hits a home run with “Sirens,” his new creator-owned comic published by Boom! Studios. Striking from various times and places, Pérez delivers a story that looks every bit as good as his landmark work on such titles as Wonder Woman and Scarlet Witch. This new six-issue run has got it all. We begin in Iceland in 1104 and a ragtag group of Norsemen marauders have grown impatient with Fanisha, a mysterious mystic, who had promised them a treasure to be had at a legendary cave. Little do they know, Fanisha has plans of her own.
Written and drawn by Mr. Pérez, he shows you how it’s done. The art and the script have an appealing rugged quality. There’s a toothy texture to the artwork. There’s a matter-of-fact simple elegance to the dialogue and narrative well-suited for fantasy. For this comic, we have a team of sirens who travel through space and time on a mission to stop a sinister force out to enslave planets across the galaxy. And the biggest thing standing in the way of the sirens is themselves since they don’t know exactly who or what they are. Pretty trippy stuff, huh?
The above image of Fanisha telling the Norsemen where they can go is one of the quieter moments in this comic that rapidly gains in complexity with each new character and layer of activity. This won’t be anything new for Pérez, of course, having worked with Marv Wolfman on the major mid-1980s DC Comics event Crisis on Infinite Earths. For this comic, we are dealing with nine sirens, not the entire DC Comics universe!
It is quite a fun interplay between sirens from different eras including a schoolteacher in the Wild West who knows how to handle a gun; a Roman gladiator with a taste for blood; and a hybrid human/android who taps into all the sirens. We just keep going from one setting to the next and gather interconnecting links. It’s done quite well and, if you just lose yourself in it, you sense a rhythm, at times playful, forceful, and just plain fun. You really get caught up in it. You will end up rooting for these sirens and hissing at the villains as they emerge.
Sirens is available as of September 17. Visit our friends at Boom! Studios right here.
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