THE AMBASSADORS #3 (OF 6)
IMAGE COMICS/Netflix
STORY: Mark Millar
ART: Travis Charest
COLORS: Dave Stewart
LETTERS: Clem Robins
EDITORIAL: Sarah Unwin
COVER: Travis Charest
VARIANT COVER ARTISTS: Valerio Giangiordano; Travis Charest
28pp, Color, $3.99 U.S. (May 2023)
Rated M / Mature
The Ambassadors created by Mark Millar at Netflix
The Ambassadors is a new comic book miniseries written and created by Mark Millar. The series focuses on the six people out of eight billion humans who will receive super-powers. Each person will become a member of the international rescue squad, The Ambassadors. Each issue of The Ambassadors will be drawn by a different superstar comic book artist. The third issue is drawn by Travis Charest; colored by Dave Stewart; and lettered by Clem Robins.
The Ambassadors #3 opens in Paris, France. Yasmine Gauvin fears that her seemingly troubled teen son is headed for a bad place. She believes that he may even lash-out in acts of violence at other children. Can the mother-son super-team, Codename France and Paris, save a mother-son relationship and Jean-Luc's future?
THE LOWDOWN: Thanks to a review copy provided by the Mark Millar division of Netflix, I got to read the first three issues The Ambassadors. This is a treat for which I have been awaiting since the announcement of the series last year.
First, I'll say this. The fourth issue of The Ambassadors will have to be really fucking good to surpass the masterpiece that is The Ambassadors #3. This issue may be the most poignant, emotional, and genuinely human work of character drama that Mark Millar has written in his four decades of comic book writing. [I will admit to being crazy about mother-son combos; for instance, I am a fan of authors, David Watjen, and his late mother, Carolyn Watjen, who wrote mystery novels under the pen name “Caroline and Charles Todd” and simply as “Charles Todd.”]
The relationship that Millar fashions for Yasmine and Jean-Luc feels natural and at-ease, in a storytelling sense. Doing that makes the action sequences and also the threats looming against mother and son visceral and threatening. And that last page...
Now, to artist Travis Charest: he just blew-the-fuck-up when he started drawing comics' for Jim Lee's Wildstorm Productions about 1993. After several years of producing stunningly intricate and ornate art, his output slowed. The Ambassadors #3 is the first full-length comic book that Charest has drawn in 24 years, and it's a doozy. In a way, Charest's art here is something like the photo-realism of Bryan Hitch combined with the humanism and sentiment of Will Eisner, as shown in his New York City-set stories and melodramas.
Travis Charest art and storytelling for The Ambassadors #3 is like another step forward in the visual and graphical storytelling evolution of superhero comic books. It is a thing of extreme beauty – some of the pages are both breathtaking and orgasmic – and of power. Also, Dave Stewart's evocative colors really heighten this story's drama, conflict, and tension.
If The Ambassadors has a European graphic album in it, it's this third issue. Beautifully written, drawn, colored, and lettered: The Ambassadors #3 is unexpected, undeniable, and unmatched.
I READS YOU RECOMMENDS: Fans of Mark Millar and of big concept superhero comic books will want to read The Ambassadors.
A+
Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"
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