FBP: Federal Bureau of Physics #14

"Standing on Shoulders," Part 1 (of 2)
written by Simon Oliver
art by Alberto Ponticelli

"Six weeks before I'd have said you wee crazy… …but here I was… …inciting my very own nerd insurgency."  (FBP #14: 12)

What do you get when you isolate the nation's top young physics minds, a band of mostly socially ostracized high-school science nerds, and the nation's most elite young pre-cadets, those destined to be what amounts to the physics special forces?  A really awkward academy.

Knowing what we do about Sen—that she would eventually undergo sex reassignment surgery to fix her "indefinable square peg, round hole thing" (6), as Cicero calls it—it's no wonder that as a student she would feel an unusually strong compulsion to fit in, and she tried to accomplish this by innovating an extensive catalog of "field agent" jokes, which she would deploy in deliberate ear-shot of the most intimidating among them.  It's perhaps understandable, but it amounts to so much bullying of its own.  And that's a refreshing twist on the age-old nerd-jock animosity:  the nerds are the instigators.  When the "jocks" respond in a different kind—a wedgie of unprecedented proportions—Cicero goes on the offensive, and organizes his insurgency.

But Cicero's real insurgency is to defy the categories and stereotypes themselves.  As he himself puts it:  "We're all a product of our environments.  Our sense of self shaped by the world and people around us…  If you're told you're dumb, or smart, or ugly, or pretty enough times, it becomes what you are, or at least how you see yourself… which more often than not is one and the same… …What you're told is what you become." (13-14).  The retribution prank against Hunter is the first chip away from the person Cicero had been told he was and the first step toward the person he would become.  Dangerous and reckless, perhaps, but also brilliant and innovative and practical.

FBP #14 also marks the unfortunate departure of series artist Robbi Rodriguez, whose clean, stylized lines were instrumental in establishing its tonal character and sleek sci-fi sensibility.  Alberto Ponticelli takes over, and though we've yet to know how he will manage the series' central characters, his work here with younger Cicero is some of his most consistent.  His lines are heavier, his faces more brawny and less chiseled, but generally strong and expressive.  Where Ponticelli proves himself Rodriguez' inferior, however, is in his design for FBP's unusual physics phenomena, which Rodriguez imagined with impressive mind-blowing non-realism.  Ponticelli's one real opportunity here—Hunter being sucked into a localized gravity field (20)—is disappointingly just about how I would imagine it.  His cooperation with colorist Rico Renzi, however, doesn't miss a beat.  (The full-page illustration on p. 13 is a colorful treat.)

[December 2014]