Glass Hood

It’s fair to say that pretty much all of the books I’ve read from Matt Garvey him have entertained me and with Red Rocket Comet being a bit of a stand out issue in those I threw myself headlong into one of his latest releases – Glass Hood.

Like Red Rocket Comet we get a tale of superheroes & villains that may be over-the-hill but still have old scores to settle and this time around Victor Day, aka Glass Hood, kidnaps his old nemesis Max Marshall, aka Commander Justice, to try and claw back something or anything, from the twenty years he’s just served in jail.  The jail-time is given much more weight when we learn how his wife’s illness influenced the decisions that took him down that road.  It’s a story that could well have been generic but in the hands of Matt it becomes a brand new experience with intricacies that bring the whole good & evil elements into question depending on the perspective they’re given.

The kidnapping and threat are there and feel very real and yet again he’s teamed up with a pair of artists in Grayham Puttock & Stefano Pavan that help capture the present & the past with some glorious art.  Hyper-realistic and recognizable faces give-way to retro style flashbacks that hammer home a different time & a different world when compared to the grim reality the main story is unfolding in.  The thing is, those flashbacks set-up the real roller-coaster of emotions before it’s delivered by a story/art combination to the gut & heart with as much surprise as I think I’ve seen in comic book form.  It’s another nod to Michael Rea for that cover too as it’s another glorious insight into the story that’s about to unfold as it captures everything perfectly.

This new one-shot harnesses the same success as Red Rocket Comet and while it’s got a super-powered theme at its core…..it’s the very human & fragile elements of the key players that give this a whole new level to explore.  Truth be told, I thought that that previous one-shot was a great issue to have on it’s own without something similar coming along but this has proved me wrong (shakes fist in Matt’s direction).  Matt could now write a hundred of these books & I’d read them and if he does I’m hoping it’s all collected in sweet hardback edition so I can run through them again & again.

Head over to Matt’s website to see what he’s working on and check out his online store, the Comichaus website & the Comichaus App for some of his titles.  You can also catch-up with him over on Twitter too – @MattGarvey1981

10/10

G-Man