Comic Review : C.O.W.L. 2
While Geoffrey Warner intimidates a journalist into whitewashing both his personal history and the history of C.O.W.L., the C.O.W.L. operative Grant Marlowe is crushed by his own tween-age son’s antagonism, a loathing that paints black all his father’s accomplishments. When Grant and his partner Eclipse are called in to handle a crime boss’s superstrong henchman, Grant’s melancholy boils over, and seeing red, he steps outside of his weight class and gets messed up.
A mole at C.O.W.L. sold blueprints to super villains, and Agent Pierce, apparently at home in gray areas, is ferreting out the culprit while at the same time trying to keep the media in the dark. As we know from the first issue, after taking down the last of Chicago’s superpowered threats, C.O.W.L. is in labor and contract negotiations with the city so this is a sensitive and political time for the group. Last but not least, Arclight, this book’s “Golden Boy,” steps into the spotlight, and we see he is in the job for the benefits including the perk of superhero celebrity status, which he uses to make a good impression on the most attractive women he can find. There are some subtle strokes to the conflict in these scenes, but overall there is much less ambiguity in the second issue than in the first, and more of the supercharged monochrome morality one expects from the superhero genre. Artist Reis also cuts and dries these scenes in a monochromatic format, and the storytelling has a powerful dramatic unity. As in the best sequential art, the writers, the artists, and the readers are all on the same page.

Geoffrey Warner, our resident übermensch—a bona fide Machivellian Ozymandius—threatens the journalist Randall.
After two issues, what we have here is not so much world-building as glaciation; the story seems to hit a wall as it crawls along, and the plot still mainly lurks under the water. One thing that is clear is that superheroes in C.O.W.L. don’t live in the four-color world of golden age and silver age comics, but instead work a tedious, mind-numbing job. Unlike Justice Machine, another narrative with a world in which the heroes are government workers, these heroes have less belongingness and more alienation, ennui and malaise, and they are prescient enough to see the writing on the wall. They have not just drives, but insecurities, anxieties, and family drama that fuel them. Admittedly, there is the sense that these beats have been hit before, that these notes have been rung many times over, that Higgins and Co. are preaching to the choir a parable with which fanboys are very familiar. Still, monotony is avoided in skill of execution and joy of performance, and this is a variation of impeccable virtuosity and contagious enthusiasm. Although superheroes no longer need to expand realism or self awareness in the genre, C.O.W.L. continues to make its point with the rhetoric we expect due to familiarity with other postmodern superhero comics.
C.O.W.L. #2 might still be available at your local comic shop, but you can also buy a digital copy directly from Image Comics or on comiXology.