Masterpiece #2: A New Heist Story

An eye for an eye? Billionaire Zero Preston wants revenge over a heist pulled against him years ago. So how about a heist for a heist. Masterpiece #2 sets the stage for an unconventional heist story with a teenager at its center.

Emma is watching the movie based on her parents’ exploits robbing Zero Preston when Masterpiece #2 begins. Emma isn’t quite sure what to make of it, but there isn’t too much time to think about that. Her adoptive “cousin” Gleason wants to take Emma and run–try to escape Zero Preston’s anger and the job he wants Emma to do to make up for what her parents did to him. Emma refuses, partly because of the masked man wearing a trench coat that she encountered at the end of Masterpiece #1. Gleason identifies the masked man as the Paragon, someone who ran with Emma’s dad and was notorious for beating up the worst of the rich and famous. Finding out that she now knows two people who used to pull off big heists, Emma decides that she’s going to put together her own crew for a heist.

Masterpiece #2 takes a while to get there, but it commits to being a heist story by the end. The first issue wasn’t explicit when it came to its intentions, and that makes for a good setup here. Emma doesn’t know anything about the world she’s just been thrust into, and her ignorance allows the reader to absorb exposition as she discovers it along the way. By the time Bendis starts setting up the heist, we’ve learned enough to get invested in Emma. The main character of many heist stories is the heist itself–the clever setup, the inevitable complication, the daring escape, and the high or low that comes with success or failure. That isn’t to say Masterpiece won’t ultimately fall into that pattern. But we have a reason to root for Emma herself.

Part of that character insight comes from the issue’s opening: Emma watching the movie Zero Preston made about her parents robbing him. Masterpiece #2 spends a couple pages going down a rabbit hole about Emma not knowing her parents, but learning about them via the movie, but knowing it’s fictionalized, etc. For a character whose world just turned upside down thanks to actions taken by parents she never knew, it’s almost a paradox that feeds on itself. Bendis moves off this navel gazing quickly, but the sequence has a weird, almost abstract quality that drives curiosity from the jump.

The issue finishes up with an obligatory “who do we have and who do we need” sequence. Bendis and Maleev put it together as three pages of trading cards, nine on each page. There’s The Brains, The Leader, The Gadgets, and so forth. He starts with Emma’s parents’ crew and moves on eventually to her putting together a crew. The first page is the very attractive fictionalized version of the original crew. The second is the real version of that crew. The third is Emma’s current crew with five blank cards. It’s a fun and straightforward design.

Masterpiece #2 opens with scenes from the movie. The choice to use page-width horizontal panels that tracks the story vertically down the page gives this sequence as much of a cinematic feel as a comic book can deliver. Herring uses a very bright color palette for the movie sequence, almost a blend of pastel and neon. It’s a huge style departure from the first issue and creates a lot of energy to open the issue.

Most of the rest of the issue is consistent with the style Maleev and Herring used in the first issue. Maleev’s linework is restrained which works well because he can sometimes ink heavily. He’s not going for a grimy feel. And certainly the style works well for younger characters. Herring’s colors, though a largely subdued and occasionally dark palette, also don’t go too far into a grimy, dirty, used style. For what is setting up to be a (potentially unconventional) heist series, this is almost uplifting. This series isn’t going to be a lighthearted jaunt. But it’s a visual departure from a lot of crime oriented stories.

Masterpiece #2 is at times a verbose book. Readers familiar with Bendis won’t be surprised by that. Most of the dialogue comes in the form of quick exchanges between characters with smaller dialogue bubbles. Reed often sandwiches the bubbles together, and it does create a sense of urgency in reading the issue. But at times Reed’s choices create cluttered panels that steal the visual thunder from the art.