Radiant Black #16: More Triangle

Radiant Black #16, written by Kyle Higgins and Joe Clark, with art from Marcelo Costa, coloring by Triona Farrell, and lettering from Diego Sanches, continues to channel the spirit of Ultimate Spider-Man, with this issue seeing the Radiant’s version of the Sinister Six forming and attacking. The book wears that ethos of tearing the hero down on its sleeve, before giving an excellent and shocking twist at the lowest point. It’s an excellent and exciting flow that harkens to a mode of comics that feels rare these days. It’s nice to be reminded of what makes comics so compelling to return to month after month, and Higgins and Clark’s script doesn’t get bogged down in decompressed storytelling, moving quickly through the civvie storyline of Nathan cyberstalking his questionable girlfriend and the resentment Marshall has for the distractions. The tension between them, which Nathan is oblivious of, is simmering and ready to reach a boiling point, based on the book’s cliffhanger. It’s an excellent b-plot that helps to keep the book moving as Marshall goes from halftime show at the high school to battling his new superteam nemeses.

The script does an excellent job of crosscutting between the superteam, which spends the issue trying to come up with a team name, and Nathan and Marshall. It gives a smooth rhythm that gives the book the chance to advance both plots without getting stuck in any one scene. While the Radiant duo talks about relationship issues and high school sports, the villains work to develop a plan to take out the hero. It brings the heat of a heist plotting structure, which is always fun, and results in a pretty successful strike against the Radiant, albeit temporarily. Expect plenty of villain banter on trying to decide the team-up name (R.I.P 5yndicate, which was too pure for this world) and at least a non-committal villain signaling a redemption moment. Radiant Black isn’t a book that’s breaking new ground or turning the genre on its head, but it employs these tropes and expectations to great effect, with the reverence of creatives that respect and enjoy them. 

Costa’s art and Farrell’s coloring elevate that pretty by the numbers script, playing with the visual language of superhero comics to say something new in the medium. There’s a stunning fight sequence where Radiant is smashed by a hulking robot through the floor of a gym and into the pool on the next level. Costa lays out the page as one continuous image but gives the illusion of panels using colored accent boxes around 4 positions as Radiant Falls. It starts with the smash through the floor, then falling midair, hitting the pool, and finally a close-up as Radiant sinks. The choice to accentuate those four stages gives a heightened sensitivity to the progression of movement and breaks up a static page while still giving the sense of scale that comes from the cross-section of two stories in this building.

This sequence, paired with an early fight between Radiant and the sound-manipulating villain Doppler, in which a triangle is used to disrupt the hero’s ability to perceive gravity, proves just how innovative Costa’s layouts can be. That sequence works with the caption boxes and Sanches’s lettering to alter the orientation of the text and SFX, mirroring Radiant’s gravity impairment. Along with that alteration to the word’s orientation, Costa and Farrell do an excellent job rendering the attacking triangle twangs, taking the instrument’s shape, layering it across the page, and using a pinkish-purple to create an oppressive wall of sound. That effect damages Radiant, but also creates indents in the wall behind the hero, carving instrument-shaped gorges into the stone. It’s a fantastic way of showing collateral damage to the space and indicates just how powerful and effective the attack would be in a medium that can’t generate sound.