FBP: Federal Bureau of Physics #15

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

There's something sincerely credible in a contingent of bullied science nerds concocting an elaborate plan to accomplish what is essentially a grandiose pun:  "THE ATOMIC WEDGIE" (FBP #15: 1).  When Cicero Deluca switches majors to field agent training, he's honestly disappointed by the lack of ingenuity in the jocks' retaliatory pranks.

The field utility evaluation—the "Fuck U 48" to field agent trainees—makes evident just how unfamiliar and unpracticed Cicero is with group bonding.  His role ring-leading the wedgie prank against popular jock Hunter and his subsequent transfer to their program made him a marked man.  The hatred is probably more or less genuine, but, to Cicero's surprise, the jocks have his back even as they force his inequitable risk-taking.  Maybe they want him to fail, or they don't care if he does, but maybe they also need him to make amends.

Then there was the burn out.

As the older, far wiser Cicero-narrator recognizes, "I was still too caught up in my own shit to stop and ask myself why any of them had joined up...and I should have..." (13).  Hunter's personal history, the loss of his sister to a physics-related phenomenon, made Cicero's self-interested career planning seem uneventful.  No less noble, but far less tragic.  When they both rise to the challenge of being actual agents, of warning a local town of the approaching burn out, they each prove their mettle, and each exorcise a few demons.

It would have been easy to kill Hunter off a hero, saving a young kid as an act of restitution for his sister, entirely redeemed.  The truth, as Oliver writes it, is far more brutal and far truer.  He loses his quarterback arm, carves out a lackluster but respectable career as an FBP agent but without the crusading inspiration he once showed, settles into a life built on who he once was, and watches it deteriorate underneath him, alone.

[January 2015]