Words & Stuff: Everything is in Order

Yes! I finally have a keyboard again, which means its time to write an article. After seeing some of the horrible libel about The Order on this website, I have decided to correct it. The Order, written by Matt Fraction and penciled by Barry Kitson, is a ten issues series about the official superhero team of California in the Fifty States Initiative. Most of the characters in this team are totally new characters and are all very unique from each other. As this series started, I was skeptical at first because I personally have always had trouble getting into super books if I did not know of the characters themselves. I decided to give this series a shot and I fell in love with it. Each hero with totally different personalities and powers offers a wide range of interaction between them. Also each issue focuses mainly on one character with an interview at the beginning of the book and continues through out the issue by following their actions and mindsets. This allows me, as a reader, to quickly get to know these characters and actually care about what happens to them. Another interesting facet to this team is that the powers each character receives are modeled after Greek gods and that these powers cause great strain on the human body and can only be obtained for one year. And over the span of that year, the team faces many villains ranging from Namor to zombie-hobos, that’s right, zombie-hobos. With each passing issue I came closer and closer in touch with these characters and Matt Fraction continued to create heart aching and action packed scenes in every issue. And then it was cancelled. In pervious podcasts, Scott and myself raised our fists in anger at the marvel corporation for canceling this book but in interviews that seems to not be the case. In January 2008, Matt Fraction stated on Word Balloon, “the book wasn’t cancelled: I chose to end it. Marvel allowed me to choose to leave the stage, rather than to continue on in a state in which I felt was compromised and decidedly unawesome … if you’re looking for the man that killed The Order. It was me.” So Matt Fraction, the creator of the comic, ended The Order… you can’t really argue with that. Though The Order is gone Matt Fraction continues great work in comics such as Invincible Iron Man and Casanova. The Order has allowed me to take a different look at non-mainstream superheroes and has opened the doors for me to books such as Robert Kirkman’s Invincible and Rick Remender’s The End League. The Order will be collected into two trade paperbacks collecting the entire series. This is a book that belongs and every comic reader’s shelf.