The Surfing the Bleed Review - Incredibles #3 by Mark Waid, Landry Walker and Ramanda Kamarga

Issue three of BOOM! Studios ongoing The Incredibles book by Mark Waid, Landry Walker and Ramanda Kamarga offers a fun, fast-paced finale to the current Jack Jack-fueled storyline that is sure to delight comics fans of all ages.

The script, penned by Waid and Walker, is a thing of streamlined beauty that balances the exposition with enough humor and sweeping action to keep things moving at a brilliant pace. The pair also inject the book with a fair helping of superhero tropes, playing a familiar game with their own set of rules and in the process creating a book that will please longtime superhero fans while offering a good jumping on point for new readers.

The pair of Waid and Landry are joined again this issue by Ramanda Kamarga. Like Marcio Takara before him, Kamarga captures the energy and aesthetic of the original animation while remaining true to his own style. And it's a style that compliments the action in Waid and Walker's script perfectally. Every big action sequence, every facial expression, every nuance of costuming or power represenation is conveyed with serious skill by Kamarga.

The story in issue three closes up the Jack Jack illness storyline and ends with a cliffhanger that leaves readers craving more. And really, that's what I think is best about the BOOM! Kids line, The Incredibles especially. While there is plenty of value to be found in the kids offerings from the Big Two (Marvel, DC), it could be said that the one-shot format employed for most of their books does little to engage young readers in a manner that will keep them coming back for more. Not to sound too mercenary, but one of the most important aspects of publishing comics for kids is making sure that they keep reading the comics you're publishing and in the proccess create a new generation of comic readers. The best way to do that is to give them a book that embraces the traditions of the medium by requiring that they come back each month to get the next installment of the story. BOOM!'s The Incredibles title does exactly that, and that's what makes it the best introduction to superheroes you could possibly give a young reader right now.

If you haven't checked it out, the first volume by Mark Waid and Marcio Takara (The Incredibles: Family Matters) is available in collected form now. With the first volume out, the second volume wrapped up and the third ready to start soon, (oh, and by the way, Christmas and Hannukah are coming up) this is a great time to introduce your favorite superheroes to this great offering from BOOM! Kids.