Broken Promise (Ha!)

It's an interesting time to be a fan of the Avatar franchise. The original Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon is long done, the movie adaptation bombed, a new series is coming in the form of the very different-looking Avatar: The Legend of Korra, and now Dark Horse is publishing a trilogy a graphic novels continuing the story of the original characters. Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Promise - Part One is now available in book and comic stores everywhere, and I'm here to give my enlightened opinion on it.

(Check it out, I totally just did a professional-sounding intro to my review!)

So, let's get cracking. Spoilers coming, yo.


The Premise of The Promise
The story picks up pretty much right where the cartoon's finale left off. The war is over, Aang finally gets to tongue-wrestle Katara, and now he and Zuko have to work together to rebuild the world. The Promise focuses on the specific issue of the leftover Fire Nation colonies in the Earth Kingdom. See, the Fire Nation conquered that land over the course of the last hundred years and began seeding its own people into the local populations, so as the comic shows, this isn't simply a matter of shipping the Bad Hotmen back where they came from. You'd think this would be a nice setup for a political thriller with liberal amounts of action adventure, depicting our heroes trying to come up with a compromise that all the colorful human elements can buy into, while fighting against the machinations of the corrupt, the hateful, the irrational, or even the just-plain-evil. Nothing stunningly original, but then, that type of formula is always good for a romp, right? Well, The Promise has decided to take a more unique route. Shallow and rather insulting, but unique.


The Problem of The Promise
See, the title of this story refers to a promise Zuko solicits from Aang at the beginning of the book- if Zuko even spontaneously cracks under the pressure of ruling a nation and turns evil, Aang has to kill him. We can argue whether this is in-character until the pig-cows come home (and the fandom has certainly been doing that, to my satisfaction), but it doesn't change how dumb a plot point this is. To quote Iroh: "AND THEN WHAT?!" If Aang kills Zuko, what happens to the Fire Nation? Who will rule it? Who will keep it from sliding towards war again? Who will protect it from the vengeance of the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes? Will the Fire Nation dissolve into civil war? Do any of these questions come up when the characters are agonizing over the matter of killing Zuko? No. No they does not.


The Contrivance - Part One
"But Loopy," you say, if you haven't been gorging yourself on spoilers, "why is anyone thinking of killing Zuko?" I'm glad you asked that. I don't have an answer for you, but at least you're asking the same question I was. See, the matter of the colonies has a twist: some of the Hotmen born in the colonies don't want to leave their home! This is a very insightful observation, but for some reason it doesn't come up until after Aang and Zuko have been forcibly relocating people for a whole year. A teenage girl only brings it to Zuko's attention by traveling to the Fire Nation, infiltrating the royal palace, and trying to assassinate Zuko right outside his bedroom in his palace's tower. You might wonder how good this girl has to be to accomplish this, but it turns out to be easier than expected. Aside from Zuko and a handful of soldiers, we don't see anyone from the Fire Nation anywhere in the book. There are no advisors, ministers, military command, servants, or anything. (Mai appears once, but she strolls right into Zuko's throne room near the end of the book. Maybe she was on vacation?) This probably accounts for how Zuko could decide to forcibly relocate all the colonists after a single five-minute meeting and not get any feedback on the idea until a disgruntled patriot tries to put a spiked ball in his head. So what does Zuko with this new perspective?

Why, he immediately leaves the Fire Nation so that he can bring the girl home and yell at her father. Granted, her father turns out to be the governor of one of the colonies, but I wouldn't think such a confrontation would be worth the trip. But hey, maybe we don't see any government personnel because they're all running the Fire Nation for Zuko. They must be pretty busy. So, once Zuko gets (yelled at by more disgruntled patriots and also receives) a look at the actual colonies he's dismantling, he does the reasonable thing and rethinks his policy, right? Sort of. Instead, he locks the town down, not letting anyone in or out, and immediately announces to his troops that the whole 'no more colonies' thing is officially being reversed, just tell anyone who asks about it to talk to the hand, yo. Why is he locking down the town, ordering any and all infiltrators attacked, and hanging around the place when he presumably has a day job back home?

So that the gAang can misunderstand and try to kill him, of course!

After a mere week, word of Zuko's rather extreme actions has spread to the point that protestors and terrorists are lining up outside Zuko's new pet colony, preparing to attack and kill him if he doesn't immediately remove all Hotmen from the premises. How did these people hear the news? How did it spread so fast? What does the Earth King think about this? Silly, don't ask questions like that. Comics don't have to be intelligent, they have pretty pictures instead! Aang and company arrive in the midst of this, only having been informed of the change in policy when they arrived on Fire Nation shores with a bunch of Hotmen who seem to be rather upset about getting kicked out of their homes.

Awkward.

So, Aang does the reasonable thing and sneaks into town with Katara. They bypass all the citizenry and reasonably go straight for Zuko. His soldiers attack, because those were his rather strange orders, after all, and when Aang and Katara defend themselves, Zuko rather reasonably gets furious and attacks his friends. Oh, did I keep saying reasonably? I meant incomprehensibly. Sorry about that. They're easy words to mix up. So, Aang rather reasonably decides that Zuko has turned irredeemably evil and needs to be killed right here and right now.

...I did it again, didn't I?

Thankfully, Katara calms everyone down, and they finally have that much-needed talk. Zuko explains his odd reasoning and Aang disagrees, but at least they're behaving like world leaders now and agree that this whole lockdown-quick-policy-changes-assassinating-friends thing is starting to seem a little counterproductive. So they schedule a real meeting with the Earth King to give that whole compromise thing a try. Knowing this crowd, I doubt it will go well, but hey, the first step is admitting that you have a problem.

Oh, wait, that's my addiction to the Avatar brand.

Just in case you think everyone is done being stupid, Zuko decides that this reasonable and hopeful situation is so dire, he needs the advice of his imprisoned father. Remember Fire Lord Ozai? He's the guy who spells 'foreign policy' with only the letters W, A, and R. Presumably, he compromised with some of his subordinates, at some point, although being a god-king with the full devotion of the military might have colored the dealings. Still! Ozai must have some experience that can help Zuko, even if it's advice on signing executive orders in triplicate.

Right?

Then again, maybe we just need a cheap cliff-hanger.


What Went Wrong?
It may seem like a stretch, despite my glowing words thus far, but I didn't really like this comic. I don't get how it wound up so shallow. It was made with input of Avatar creators Bryan Konietzko and Michael Dante DiMartino, and they crafted a cartoon that provided a intelligent, emotionally-unflinching view of war that was still appropriate for kids. It was scripted by Gene Yang, and he's made a number of well done, character-driven graphic novels that have achieved some nice notice. (It was drawn by a Japanese penciler/colorist team called Gurihiru, and they did some obscure Power Pack comics for Marvel? Hey, they can't all be winners.)

Maybe the problem is that none of the creative talent like or have experience with political thrillers. Gene Yang focuses mainly on character conflict in his own works, so perhaps he isn't at his best with characters who have already come of age, or with grand and detailed plots. The Mike and the Bryan created Avatar with a dedicated writing staff underneath them, so perhaps they're not used to doing the heavy lifting on plot development, and Gene didn't realize he needed a firmer hand on the reins. Maybe everyone involved just saw this project as a cheap, licensed cash-in. I hope not, and I'd like to give these guys the benefit of the doubt, but when the potentially interesting character of Kori the Teenage Mutant Ninja Assassin is left as a shallow plot device to change Zuko's mind, I can't help but wonder.


Korra's Spoiler Warning
A major problem with the story is, of course, the fact that we already know how it ends. The colonies will end up becoming a new nation, Aang won't kill Zuko, and everyone lives to about the age of sixty so that they don't get in the way of the new cartoon. Making Aang's promise to Zuko into the driving force behind the conflict is rather silly, considering that there's no tension whatsoever about it. The 'how' behind the creation of the United Republic would be more than interesting enough, but instead, it's being twisted into a contrived conflict between Aang and Zuko for no real gain.


The Art
I don't have much to say, here. Gurihiru doesn't produce bad art, by any means, but it's simpler and more "cartoony" than the art of the cartoon itself. I find it rather strange that the art in the comic adaptation is actually less detailed than the animated version, so, personally, I don't like it, but it's purely a matter of individual taste. The coloring is good, though.


The Good Bits
I don't want to be completely negative. I liked most of the parts focusing on Sokka and Toph. They amused me, and there's a very interesting part where the Earth Kingdom protesters turn on Sokka when he tries to calm them down, throwing rocks and calling him a "Water Tribe savage." Toph, as expected, goes ballistic and stands up for her good friend. I'd like to see this explored further, to find out if there really is some racism in the Earth Kingdom against their one-time allies, and how the gAang deals with it. We also got to see the gAang growing up, and that's nice.


Conclusion
Buy this comic immediately, but don't do it expecting something good. It talks down to its readers, perhaps expecting younger kids to be the primary audience. This is no excuse for poor plotting and characterization, as anyone who's read a Scrooge McDuck comic could tell you, and even worse, it's a betrayal of the original cartoon, which turned a story intended for kids into something this nerdy adult could love. However, as anyone who follows the comic industry knows, there's always hope for a better product on the horizon. It's happened with the licensed Star Wars products that Dark Horse puts out. It's happened with the Transformers comics I'm currently loving. It's happened with any number of superheroes. Support the Avatar brand, and maybe we'll be able to build on this shaky foundation.


Score: C/5