Heroes Reborn gets blurry in Heroes Reborn #3. As Hyperion runs ragged with his rogues, speedster Blur takes center stage in the third installment of the “main” series. Written by Jason Aaron, drawn by Federico Vicentini & Ed McGuinness, inked by Mark Morales, colored by Matthew Wilson & Matt Milla, and lettered by Cory Petit.
Jason Aaron says, “F*ck it, I’m doing Flash Stuff now!” in Heroes Reborn #3.
Literally sprinting with the momentum of the Hulk-flavored second issue, Heroes Reborn #3 drops us right in the middle of an ongoing Blur title; merging the Speed Force nonsense of a fairly competent Flash run with the Mighty Marvel Magicks of some of its trippier staples like Doctor Strange and early Iron Fist issues.
Like always, a reader’s mileage will vary on these obvious riffs on other characters, but Heroes Reborn #3 continues to lean the title hard into extranormal weirdness and the event is starting an upward spiral because of it. Though we were introduced to mystic speedster Stanley Stewart in the event’s opening, issue #3 pulls him into rack focus, complete with a hyper-verbal and occasionally charming narration from writer Jason Aaron.
He is Blur, the mystically-powered and Ancient One trained “world’s fastest mortal”, tasked with running the dimensional planes and keeping track of magic-powered enemies that the Squadron Supreme is called upon to face. Enemies like the Silver Witch, a deadly cross between the Chaos Hexing powers of Wanda Maximoff and the speed of her brother Pietro who was killed in battle with the Blur. Aaron provided us scant touches of this dynamic in the opening, alongside Blur’s introduction, but Heroes Reborn #3 shows us just how freaking WEIRD all this stuff ACTUALLY is. And it’s absolutely wonderful.
For one thing, Aaron’s speedster seems to be an oddly compelling mixture of Wally West’s wonder and determination against the zen and holistic grit of a Danny Rand or Stephen Strange. The constant gabbing of the narration can get a bit grating in parts, sure, but the sheer wildness of the adventures he describes coupled with the casual nature in which he talks about stuff like Ursa Major ruling over a Grizzly City and microscopic Ultrons, battling throughout Hyperion’s organs, is just really delightful.
Artists Federico Vicentini and Matt Milla also very much show out here in Heroes Reborn #3. Tackling Aaron’s latest gimmick with majorly Steve Ditko-inspired splashes and scene transitions, Vicentini and Milla go really buck wild with the vast visual possibilities inherent to Marvel “magic” users. Spanning sometimes millions of years in a single page, the art team shows the readers just how insane the scope of a magically powered speedster can really be, pinging him and the Silver Witch in a deadly race across reality. A few times, however, the images can be a bit disoriented, unanchored by the usual points of view you see in comic book set pieces. But for my money, that’s more a feature than a bug as I am always up for my comics looking just a little too insane for me to fully grasp.
It DOES however put into stark contrast the more by-the-numbers approach of the artwork of Ed McGuiness and Matthew Wilson, who again provide the series with its’ Avenger Assemblin’ back-up stories. This time focused on new Phoenix, Echo, who has been again recruited by Blade and Steve Rogers and who also realizes the world is slightly wrong from her cell in Ravenscar Asylum (the Heroes Reborn Universe’s answer to Arkham).
Overall, it’s fine enough and does give us the really fun single image of Blade wearing a Red Cross t-shirt. But after the dizzying weirdness of the main story, it’s hard not to feel anything but let down by how pedestrian it feels. Another mistake carried over from the second issue, which also had a similarly deflating transition between its main story and backup.
But even with that downshift and the apparent randomness of the characters that can and can’t realize that the world is “wrong”, Heroes Reborn #3 starts to move this event into genuinely interesting territory. Supported by the odd inspirations and remixes Jason Aaron is developing and truly striking artwork in the main story, Heroes Reborn #3 might just be the first essential reading for Marvel’s latest Summer event.
Zachary Jenkins co-hosts the podcast Battle of the Atom and is the former editor-in-chief of ComicsXF. Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside all this.
