In Gail Simone’s first issue of The Movement, we got to see the dynamics of life in Coral City – a police force corrupted by degenerates and the young supers who have banded together to try and take on the task of actually protecting and serving the people, including mentally disturbed people who think they’re possessed by demons. Now, in The Movement #2, the relatively straightforward battle lines get murkier, as we see that it’s one thing to say you’re going to stand up to The Man, but something else entirely to actually go about doing it.
Having recently captured some awful cops who were threatening to sexually assault teenagers, they’re now going about giving these mooks a tour of their headquarters, illustrating to them the social ills that have resulted from the absolute corruption of the government and its appointed officers of the law, to which they seem callously indifferent. After locking their prisoners up, the “war council” (made up of the emotion-rider Virtue, who seems to be the leader, the earth-mover Tremor, the aggro wing-woman Katharsis, the broken demon kid Burden and Mouse: Prince of Rats) has to come together to figure out, well, why the hell they captured these guys in the first place, and what they’re supposed to do with them.
This is where we start to get into the weirdo character dynamics that tend to make Simone’s group books work. Mouse is torn between mourning the loss of his favorite rat and eating its corpse. Burden has a head chock full of religious cult propaganda which makes him think he’s hellbound. Tremor thinks it’s all a mistake, while Katharsis wants to beat the shit out of their prisoners before sending them back topside, as a message, and Virtue reminds her that that is just the sort of treatment they’re trying to fight. That’s no dice with Katharsis, though… or “Kulap Vilaysack,” as is apparently her real name (as well as the name of an actual working comedienne, weirdly), and while the rest of the team goes to locate “the witch,” she goes out for a direct assault on James Cannon, the developer who apparently is the secret ruler of Coral City. In that attack, we find out that Katharsis is also a cop, and that Cannon seems like a fairly on-the-nose sort of villain. And we also larn that “the witch” is Rainmaker from Ye Olden Gen13.
It’s always a bit of a bumpy path to get a new title full of original characters off the ground, and The Movement feels like a concept that’s going to need some time to find its legs, and Simone has certainly earned enough trust that we believe it will. It’s got a lot of strong ideas, some cool concepts and combustible personalities, but the dynamics are a bit murky at this point, and it doesn’t quite feel as sharp as it should yet. There’s an exchange where Burden proclaims he’s possessed by the dark lord of hell, and Kulap rolls her eyes and thinks she’s dumb for “hanging out with liberals,” and that kinda doesn’t make sense. But Simone will get there. Also of note, part of the underground crew is a wheelchair-bound woman calling herself Vengeance Moth. Perhaps destined to become a new Oracle?
The art from Freddie Williams II is pretty solid, if also a little murky here and there. Strong where it needs to be. It might take some time and some doing, but there’s enough to like about The Movement that we can bear with it during its growing pains.
