Posted in: Comics, Marvel Comics | Tagged: Champions, HRL, humberto ramos, mark waid, Marvel Comics, red locust, viv vision

Champions #9 Review: A Day Out With Viv And The Red Locust

Feeling restless, Viv Vision has left her fellow Champions to go to San Diego to do some soul-searching in Champions #9. While there, she discovers the fledgling hero known as the Red Locust, and the two join forces to pursue a drug ring that blackmails its lost and wandering runners into working.

From what that plot summary implies, this comic presents a rather tight and character-focused narrative. It intends to give some introspection of Viv Vision while she goes on this adventure with the new hero, Red Locust.

Does it succeed in this matter? Eh, sort of.

Champions #9 fails to dive too deeply into the character of Viv. We are shown a heartwarming moment she has with her father, the Vision. She experiences similar "cannot compute humanity" problems that her father and many android characters before them have experienced. See also, Data, Ultron, Braniac, Abed from Community, and similar characters.

Where it falls short in character study on Viv, it succeeds in bringing a new lovable hero, the Red Locust. Upholding a long legacy of helping the lost and wandering, the young woman promises to be a good addition to the Marvel cast of heroes should she appear again after this issue. She's charismatic, high-energy, and altruistic. Admittedly, this is a formula shared by many new heroes such as Kamala Khan and Nadia Pym; but it makes for a good first impression for Red Locust, and hopefully she'll get the opportunity to be more fleshed-out later on. She also has a pretty sweet costume.

Viv extends an invitation for the new hero to join the Champions towards the end of the issue. This would seem to imply that she will join them at some point. However, Red Locust keeps talking about helping "runaways" (the words printed in bold ink for emphasis), and with Marvel's Runaways being brought back to both screen and page soon, it seems possible she may be an addition to the comic Runaways roster.

The action is fairly sparse in this comic. The confrontation with the drug runners is over fairly quick, so we don't get to see the Red Locust in action for very long.

Humberto Ramos is a tried-and-true Marvel veteran by this point. While his art is often too stylized and stringy, he has proven to be a good fit for the high-energy and bounding-with-personality Champions comic. This trend continues with yet another visually-appealing comic here.

Champions remains a delightfully consistent Marvel title. Champions #9 is easily recommendable and makes for a good one-off story.

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