Duo #1-2: To Have and To Hold

This book might be the most literal example of the term “codependency.”

One of the things that I enjoy about the writing of Greg Pak is how he’s able to seamlessly blend the comedic and the dramatic with his characters and stories. It makes for a great reading experience and thankfully Duo follows that standard. Following Kelly Vu and David Kim, Duo is the story about two scientist lovers who merge bodies after an assassination attempt on David. This leaves him with primary control of his body with Kelly occupying his mind, but still being able to feel every sensation and hear every thought that David’s having. This is a very interesting origin story as it forces two people who were already very much in love and never far apart to be much closer than they had ever anticipated and it will without a doubt test their love as the series goes on. 

And thankfully, Pak continues his tradition of creating/uplifting great, representative Asian characters, having previously co-created Amadeus Cho and Mech Cadet Yu and written for the New Agents of Atlas, the new team consisting of Marvel’s newest wave of Asian heroes. While not entirely focusing on David and Kelly’s backgrounds in these initial few issues, it’s good that they’ve been given an interesting and fun story this far. Even the overarching villain of this arc is a non-stereotypical Asian “immortal” and he’s rightfully threatening!

It’s easy to say that characters have chemistry with each other when they very clearly were written that way, but Pak does an excellent job in the first issue of portraying just how close Kelly and David are with artist Khoi Pham’s excellent art. Pham has an astounding way of drawing facial expressions where every loving gaze feels warm and every tender touch reaches right into the heart. Pham also seamlessly is able to rip those feelings away as fire engulfs David, leaving his skin charred while Kelly uses the nanobots that eventually fuses them together to save him while her body is turned to ash. It’s visceral and heart wrenching with faces of pure agony and excellent use of backgrounds to convey the destruction going on around them. 

Pham also shows a variety of skills throughout both issues, being able to show calm moments such as Kelly’s funeral with people milling about, being as sad as possible and also high action scenes that serve as the “testing phase” for David and Kelly’s powers. These turn the tone of the book up to a ten with wide, frenetic panels of David flying at high speeds and brutal shots of him being impaled and then breaking all of his bones before being instantly repaired by the nanobots in his body. But where the art really shines is in the mindscape that is used to convey how David and Kelly can see each other. Pham draws their mind as being squishy, yet ethereal as they cannot touch each other and with a constant darkness hounding Kelly if she loses focus over herself.

Of course, Pham’s pencils are best served by his awesome inker Scott Hanna and colorist Chris Sotomayor. Hanna does an amazing job of making Pham’s line work heavier, giving everything a strong border and adding detail to everything – the wrinkles of David’s jacket, the musculature of his and Kelly’s superhero costumes, and the sludgy, smoky feel of the darkness inside of David’s mind. He also does well with the lighting of scenes by giving backgrounds proper heavy shadows, allowing the environment to have depth and feel lived in. If I had any criticism, it would be that David’s beard looks quite painted on versus looking natural, but that can be excused by the flatness of some of the inks used in the book.

Sotomayor, a true journeyman with a lot of the current Milestone releases, does a fantastic job of breathing life into this book with his vibrant colors. His reds and oranges burn hot right off of the page as seen with the fire that causes David and Kelly’s accident, but his night time lighting steals the show in the second issue with dark blues and greens of night contrasting with the nicely muted gold of David’s costume. It’s a nice touch that really helps to make him stand out, albeit when it’s not covered by the similarly blue colored coat that David wears over it. But his best use of color has to come in the aforementioned mindscape, where the pastel pink of David’s brain is set against the gold and whites of David and Kelly’s costumes. He also seems to add a sheen to the characters in these sequences which I go back and forth with – because it certainly helps to differentiate things from the conscious world, but can also be a bit distracting for the same reason.

And finally, letterer, Janice Chiang, does a fantastic job with the words and sound effects of the book. Word bubbles are excellently placed and convey who’s saying what and when, but they get even better once the mindscape is used. Kelly and David’s balloons are given waves all around and have a shaky aura around them to notate that they’re thoughts – and to even more differentiate them, Kelly’s are colored in blue while David’s are colored in yellow. It’s an inventive and fun way to make dialogue feel unique between the characters. And as I’ve made clear in all of my reviews, I am a great big fan of sound effects in comics as I feel they enhance the reading experience and make things more fun. While Chiang doesn’t use the great, big, bombastic sound effects that take up entire panels, the use of small ones like the SHINGs of drone blades being drawn and the smaller SHANKs and SHONKs of flesh being pierced by said blades really makes you hear the page as well and I love it.