Heart by Blair
Butler(w) and Kevin Mellon (w)
Heart is a 4-part mini
from Image Comics that tells the story of Oren Redmond, an office worker who is
slogging away at making a name for himself as an MMA fighter. The writing credits belong to
Blair Butler with art duties going to Kevin Mellon. In this debut effort of what is essentially a tale of
trajectory as seen in many a sports story in recent years (with examples such
as Bad News Bears, Dodgeball, The Blind Side, the list goes on) where a person whose
life is going nowhere fast, with little to zero skill in a given sport, decides
to throw in all their chips, train hard and finally their dedication takes them
to ‘The Big Show’ where they eventually compete on a professional level, the
outcome of which being an experience that the protagonist learns valuable
lessons about themselves.
More after the jump...
Heart struggles
to deliver this ‘by the numbers’ approach through four issues of mediocre artwork, clumsy narration, poor pacing and incredibly sparse dialogue,
with most of the storytelling being done through one gigantic monologue from Oren. Every issue meanders through this man’s
short but astoundingly action packed MMA career while he prattles on about every
in and out that the sport has to offer.
He experiences every set-back and meteoric rise that is available to any
single sportsman, leaving him nothing more than an amalgamation of MMA headlines
pulled from The Underground or Middleeasy or any of the larger MMA blog/news
sites; He’s the know-nothing
rookie who takes to fighting like the duck to water, he’s the
submission expert, he’s got the big right hand, he realises he’s fighting in
the wrong division and under-goes a ‘gruelling weight cut’, he under-estimates
an opponent with catastrophic results, has to quit his job because it conflicts
with his new found fighting life style - the list goes on and on and on. Through these trials and tribulations
Oren just talks to the reader, explaining everything that we’re seeing in the
panels. Which suggests that the art is mere superfluity. It reads as wasted potential, while
Blair Butlers dialogue (of which there is little, almost none, between any two
characters) delivers exposition, albeit sometimes clumsy, Kevin Mellon’s art
only serves to reflect the descriptions in every panel. Which only makes the product on the
page even less interesting to look at.
It reads as “Here I am doing this, here’s me doing that” with no
character development occurring at all through dialogue or character
interactions.
What this book does
have in spades is missed opportunities; Blair Butler has created what is potentially
a great ensemble cast. With Oren
as her Protagonist we also have his brother Jimmy, an MMA fighter himself
already. Then a pit crew of
training partners whom Butler takes the trouble to name and provide short but
colourful backgrounds for. And we
have the Gym owner, Monster, who oversees Oren’s obligatory but serviceable
training montages. We see a lot of Oren’s training but still learn very little
about the world that he inhabits and it’s these frustrating inconsistencies
that ruin this series. Oren comes
of as completely self-absorbed, incessantly talking about himself, guiding us
through this world where we’ve been told just enough about the people around us
to know why they’re taking up panel space but not enough to warrant any further
exploration within the narrative.
To have the main character’s brother involved in the story only to
abandon any more connections him and Oren after the first issue was so utterly
disappointing that it tarnished every following page. We’re to believe that there is no story in Oren’s
interactions with the men that he trains with, at least nothing that extends
past being pushed hard, as you’d expect. That and having a man’s groin in his face during Jiu
Jitsu sparring making him uncomfortable.
The gym environment should have been a great source of interactions and
character development but instead nothing was delivered. The fact that panel space has been
taken up by Oren talking about how awesome he looks in his MMA themed designer
clothing when such important storytelling devices are being thrown under the
bus is mystifying.
One of the themes that
runs through the series like a creek under the threat of drought, meaning that
claiming that this series successfully executes any kind of sub-plot is an
incredibly long bow to draw, is that of the limitations of men. In particular the threat of age that
all fighters must face as younger, stronger and more talented men move up to
face them and introduce them to the decline in ability that the majority of
pro-athletes encounter in their mid to late thirties. The subject is brought up and dropped almost immediately,
with a fleeting chance that one of the older men on Oren’s fight team may
become a focal point for a moment only to yet again deny the reader of the chance
for any of the characters other than the lead to be fleshed out even the
slightest bit. Even the thread
that the book grasps to in it’s final chapter; that this sport isn’t for
everybody and some will fail to reach the bright lights through sheer lack of
talent, is so wafer thin and flimsy that when we see that Oren has learned more
about life from fighting than he bargained for it almost feels forced on the
reader in the final pages in a drastic attempt to inject some last minute
depth. This gives the impression
that this story needed one of two things; either stricter editing (an editor is
not named in the book’s credits) or at least 28 more pages for Blair Butler to
give these characters the three dimensional qualities that ‘Heart’ is clearly
lacking.
Mellon’s artwork isn’t
great, but forgivable for a debut effort.
With all professionally published comic books it’s always a shame to see
a sub-standard looking book, particularly when the artist’s style does not fit
the subject matter particularly well.
Mellon’s work could be extraordinary when applied to a subject that does
not require as much energy, fluidity or dynamic displays of human
movement. In this book something
even a little more abstract would have been infinitely more interesting to look
at as we’re forced to read Oren’s every thought. A style with more energy would have not only made the
pages more alive but would have brought some much needed excitement to a book
which held very few surprises.
To summarise, it would
have been considered an easy review to judge this book on its portrayal of MMA.
In fact, if this review was based solely of Blair Butler’s representation of
the sport it wouldn’t score all that badly. It was disappointing to see Oren succumb to Jock culture but
that just is what it is and much like the rest of the book it is done fleetingly, enough for it to be noticed and annoy, but rarely mentioned again and one thing Blair Butler has done well here is to not
sensationalise the sport in the same way the mainstream media finds way too
easy. Even the recent movies ‘Red
Belt’ and ‘Warrior’ couldn’t help themselves from depicting Mixed Martial arts
lazily as a spectacle that it certainly is not, and Butler should be held in good
regard for aiming to create a very human representation of what is essentially
just another sport and the highs and lows of the men who take part in it. But what she unfortunately failed on in
this debut effort was weave any kind of dramatic padding around the lead to
make us care about any of her characters to any significant degree. Sadly disappointing.
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