I love super-heroes, and I love soap operas. So why don’t I love Noble Causes? There are a few reasons.
While it borrows heavily from both genres, it doesn’t really do anything particularly new with them. Soap opera subplots have been incorporated into super-hero stories for ages, and Noble Causes doesn’t seem to be taking the overlap any farther than it’s already gone. It’s less action-driven than the average super-hero title, but it still falls back on the same conventions – the squabbling super-team, the hero as crime suspect, interpersonal tensions surfacing during a crisis. As a result, it seems more like a pastiche of genre standards than a fusion into something really unusual.
As to the soap elements, writer Jay Faerber lifts his character architecture from Dynasty. We have the alpha-male patriarch (Doc/Blake), the bitter matriarch (Alexis/Gaia), the troubled son (Steven/Rusty), the fish-out-of-water good girl (Krystle/Liz), the venomous bastard (Adam/Frost), the wild child (Fallon/Zephyr), the trampy spoiler (Sammy Jo/Celeste), the son of a rival family who fits in better with the protagonists (Jeff/Krennick), and the rival patriarch who diddles his enemy’s daughter (Cecil/Draconis). I don’t intend that as a criticism, as Faerber is hardly the first to appropriate Dyansty’s model, and it’s an excellent starting point.
The criticism comes in where he takes those archetypes which, again, is nowhere really unusual. The Nobles are more muted versions of the Aaron Spelling’s Carrington clan. Gaia focuses on image more than power. Zephyr is promiscuous, but she hasn’t much in the way of a personality beyond that, and her pregnancy seems to have sidelined her almost entirely. Doc has as much Reed Richards in his DNA as Blake, and Celeste doesn’t really have the instincts or drive to deliver any really vixenish mischief.
The character who isn’t a Spelling model is golden boy Race, but he has his own super-soap underpinnings. Race is back from the dead, a turn of events common to both genres. It’s tricky to evaluate the success of this move. On one hand, it was difficult to understand why widowed Liz would stick with her contentious in-laws. On the other, Race’s return gives her a reliable guide through the Noble weirdness, which mutes her reactions, makes her normality less disruptive, and leaves her less of a gateway character.
In a similar way, Gaia’s micro-management of the Nobles’ public image seems like a misstep. By focusing her efforts on covering for her scandal-prone clan, she somehow mutes my interest in those scandals. They lose dramatic power, coming closer to tabloid fodder than painful or defining events in the characters’ lives.
It’s hard for me to go through an issue of Noble Causes and not think of other comics where this material has been done just as well, if not better. Krennick’s kinks and the possibly related serial murders call to mind similar stories in Powers and Top Ten. As Rusty and love interest Cosmic Rae head off on a mission with ex-wife Celeste and estranged brother Frost, lots of bits from Avengers and Legion of Super-Heroes come to mind. Doc’s odd behavior in these two issues triggers any number of memories, calling up a list of standard solutions (one from Grant Morrison’s New X-Men in particular).
I’m not sure the art does the story many favors. I’m glad the title is back in color, but Fran Bueno’s illustrations aren’t really working for me. Bueno’s visuals are very reminiscent of Michael Avon Oeming, but without Oeming’s polish. Some of the faces are bizarre (even on characters who are supposed to be conventionally attractive), and that takes me out of their interpersonal drama. I wonder if this story doesn’t beg for more conventional, “realistic” art along the lines of Phil Jiminez rather than Bueno’s stylized approach.
I do want to like Noble Causes. I think its premise – down-time interpersonal drama – is an appealing one, but I don’t think Faerber has fully realized it. Too much standard super-heroism is in evidence, and the characters aren’t developed much beyond stock types. As it stands, there’s nothing here that can’t be found in a dozen other titles. The book needs to carve out a more specific niche for itself.