By Graig Kent and Adam Prosser from Rack Raids

Trade Winds - Vaistron tpb (SLG Publishing)
by Graig Kent

Here in North America, we pretend ourselves to be a refined culture. We snobbishly poo-poo foul, “blue” humor and those that enjoy it, saying it’s cheap and easy because it is crude, offensive and “low-brow” (I know the wife and I spend our days chiding my stepson for his obsession with discussing bodily functions). But, in recent years, the edge of gross-out or offensive humor has been pushed to the teetering point where it’s threatening to topple over into art. Comedians like Sarah Silverman have been straddling that edge for some time, waiting for the audience to catch up and push it over. TV shows like South Park and Curb Your Enthusiasm (and the bulk of the Adult Swim lineup) are all about finding the line in the sand and stepping past it. Ever since the “hair gel” scene in There’s Something About Mary cinema has been flirting with more and more extreme (and extremity-based) humor, even spilling over into art-house cinema with fare like the Aristocrats. What it comes down to is the boundaries are broadened and it’s harder (and, actually, disappointing) to shock just for shock’s sake these days, it takes a real talent to make the shocking funny and the funny shocking.

Vaistron is, yes, extreme, and there are moments that are visually or verbally toying with bad taste, but what could have been a simple sight-gag gross-out is actually a farcical and highly enjoyable sci-fi romp in the vein of Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill’s Marshal Law. The story is set in the futuristic metropolis of Vaistron, which resembles visually the cities in, say, The Fifth Element or Blade Runner, which is to say highly industrialized, with towering skyscrapers and abundance of flying cars. The city itself is a hole, a pit of degradation, perversion, and idiocy. The future has not been kind.

The protagonist of the story is Gabriela Bukowsky, a “road killer” (the book’s colloquialism for a highway robber or bandit) who’s having a rough go. Her last haul got brought down by the Cripo (police) and she escaped with nothing but her life and what was left of her ride. Looking for a get rich quick scheme she decides to kidnap for ransom the current girlfriend of the city’s most prominent billionaire playboy. Of course, nothing goes right for Gabby as her subject is of less value than she thought, and her victim decides to turn the tables on her, setting a swarm of bounty hunters upon her while also indirectly forcing the police to inanely impose martial law on the city. Gabby’s got more than her fair share of tough-guy moments (she’d give Sin City’s Marv a run for his money), she’s one hell of a tough customer (literally) with a no-nonsense attitude and the biggest brass balls you’d ever find on a lady. A childhood trauma made her the way she is, but, in the context of the cesspool that is Vaistron, there’s really nothing all that wrong with her.

The opening scene, which is later revealed to be Gabby’s origin, is more than a little distasteful, which the book takes a while to recover from, but the spirit and tone, which is equal parts wild, absurd and hilarious, reaches equilibrium by the midway through the second chapter (I went from grossed-out to engrossed [sorry] over the span of the first 40 pages). The dynamic between Gabby and her porn obsessed droid, Rekoton intones a much deeper relationship than initially perceived and once introduced to their mad scientist doctor friend (a regular Dr. Strangelove), the rationale for their personalities are made abundantly clear. But as enjoyable the snide quips of the main characters are, it’s the surrounding environment of Vaistron that make the book even more fun. The religious Freeminder cult, the buffoonish Mayor and Cripo, the cannibalistic denizens of the the streets, and the bounty hunters (chief amongst them the clueless superhero-physiqued, unkillable bounty hunter named “The Rob”) all serve to bolster this bizarre world. And upon reading the Naked Gun-esque sequence featuring Grand Imperial Dragon of the Order of Baracus at the beginning of the third chapter I felt like parts of this book were written with me in mind (seeing a billboard for Kompressor in the background also filled me with glee).

Oh for sure it’s a bleak future environment if you’re really to think about it, but the rough-and-tumble ride which Gabby barely survives only increases in entertainment as it progresses, and will serve as more than enough distraction from any kind of serious thought. Written by Andrew Dabb, Vaistron is morbid, gross, twisted, outrageous, hysterical and exciting. It’s not something everyone will enjoy, but the fusion of Heavy Metal-style European sci-fi and the more bent Japanese and Korean anime (memories of the similarly extreme sci-fi action-comedy Aachi and Ssipak came flooding back while reading this) is something not routinely seen from North American comics.

If there’s a stumbling point for some, it might not be the content but Quebec artist Boussourrir’s line. It’s not the most pristine looking, but believe me he gets every iota of Dabb’s script across (and more, adding in a plethora of visual gags on billboards and in backgrounds that only a dementedly savvy mind could come up with). He’s got a highly stylized, cartoonish sensibility which isn’t the most attractive, reminding me highly of (again) Kevin O’Neill, but I think it works very well for this type of in-your-face action-comedy. When you’re setting is unseemly, and your characters filthy, and the situations somewhat repulsive, a clean, realistic art style is the last thing you want. Though there’s plenty of nudity and grotesquenesses, none of it is alluring or beyond cartoonishly repulsive thanks to Boussourir’s art, it’s just cringe-inducing funny.

Is Vaistron a tough sell? For a mass audience, probably. Fans of grindhouse cinema will no doubt be familiar with the rhythm of the book, which is so sharp in its presentation/exploitation of trash culture that it swings right around the “bad” territory and well into “good” again. Were it more European in look/feel, it might be seen as more refined, or were it more manga in visuals and/or dimensions, it might attract a larger swarm from bulge-eyed crowd. But like our continent, it really fits smack in between the the two comic cultures. It’s a product of a North American pop-culture as influenced by others, and I think the people that find their way to this book through honest reviews and recommendations will heartily enjoy it.

FOUR OUT OF FIVE VIKINGS

Trade Winds - Gunplay OGN (Platinum Studios)
by Adam Prosser

Any work of historical fiction runs the risk of romanticizing the past, but these problems are magnified when viewed through the lens of progressivism. In particular, several of the more exciting, swashbuckling periods of history—the ones that make natural settings for adventure stories—also happen to be the settings for some of the gravest atrocities, and featured attitudes that would make any modern person flinch. The old west is one of the trickiest eras to tackle in this regard; it becomes impossible to ignore the fact that, if your hero is a white American of the period, he or she (usually he) is bound to be complicit in some absolutely horrific acts of racism, including the persecution of African-Americans and the genocidal campaigns conducted against Native Americans. Even without actively owning slaves or indulging in acts of murder and rape against Indians, these characters are part of a historical process which made these heinous acts possible (and which, in turn, raises hackles in regards to our current historical context here in North America). It should be noted, of course, that nothing was ever simple, and there were white folks who believed in equality and parity with the other races back in the 19th century as well, but stories of the period frequently overcompensate to a laughable degree by having their heroes be, essentially, modern men and women transposed back to the era. Or else they ignore the issue entirely, something that doesn’t do much good either.

But of course, the alternative—to deal with the racism and oppression of the old west head on, as part of the story—raises its own set of problems. First and foremost, the fact that it’s likely to be a pretty brutal tale, and not very palatable to a mass audience. Nevertheless, this is the route that Jorge Vega, Dominic Vivona and Priest have decided to take in their original graphic novel, Gunplay. While the result is not for the faint of heart, it’s honest and right-minded in how it deals with the issues above. And, oh yeah, it’s a pretty darned good supernatural western into the bargain.

The tale is told in two interweaving parts, hence the two writers (and for that matter, two art teams). One is a comic, opening in classic media res format with the hero, supernaturally cursed “Buffalo Soldier” Abner Meeks, about to amputate the arm of his young white captive, Finnegan S. Lightly. This is intercut with the events immediately preceding it, where we learn how Finn, a preacher’s son with a supernatural gift of his own, fell afoul of Meeks. Vega scripts and Vivona draws this part of the story, detailing Abner and Finn’s flight from the law as well as Abner’s quest to rescue his long-lost love. The other section of the book is a text piece, done in classic “Penny Dreadful” format, written by Priest and illustrated by Kevin Mellon, telling of Abner’s early life and how he got to his current situation. The two stories overlap somewhat in time, never actively contradicting each other but challenging the reader to unravel the exact timeline of the events portrayed (the Penny Dreadful covers some of the events between the two timeframes depicted in the comic).

And both parts are pretty brutal. Abner is the classic western badass with a nightmarish past full of torment, made all the worse by the nature of his curse (which I won’t give away here, but suffice to say it’s pretty much damned him), and he’s forced to wade through rivers of blood to get to the one thing he still cares about, the daughter of the Chiricahua chief who raised him, Auh-Kchtaih. But the violence is made far worse by the level of inhumanity to man on display here, from lynchings to the razing of towns occupied by people who had the wrong skin colour, to the constant, hateful use of the word “nigger*” (even by the putatively heroic Finn). I mentioned that it was appropriate to deal with this kind of issue instead of avoiding it, but I will say that Vega and Priest sometimes veer a little too far in the other direction, making this something akin to a blaxploitation story set in the old west.

Of course, a lot of those blaxploitation movies were great, and that holds true here as well. If you can stomach the brutality, you’ll find Gunplay to be a sincere and effecting tale of horror and adventure.

*And yes, I believe it’s important to demystify the word by using it dispassionately in the appropriate context instead of tapdancing around it.

FOUR AND A HALF OUT OF FIVE VIKINGS

Trade Winds - 2 Guns tpb (Boom! Studios)
by Graig Kent

I finished reading through the 2 Guns trade paperback, making my way from front cover to back in one concentrated sitting, likely a dumb looking smile across my face the entire time, that is until I got to the back cover where the publisher spills a heaping helping of the stories plentiful surprises when that expression went to a constipated look of dismay. “Why would Boom give away that much of the story,” I wondered, “when so much of the enjoyment of the book is tracing through the many twisting revelations it dispenses.” I was a little dumbfounded.

Of course, I realize that a story like this is difficult to sell without giving something away, and, to concede, there are still many, many more head spinning turns writer Stephen Grant delivers beyond that. But still, what I loved so much about reading this story the first time around issue by issue was the way each chapter managed to switch up perceptions and compound, building a decidedly energetic brain-tease that’s unrelentingly entertaining. What I realized, though, is I did just read through 2 Guns and it was no less entertaining the second time around, so I do admit the reveals on the back cover still won’t hamper the story. It’s as much in the execution as the ideas themselves (that said, if your interest is piqued, and it should be, avoid the back cover when you purchase this).

Bobby Beans’ old boss, kingpin Manny Greco, just walked from his trial, the key witness a no show. As much as that might anger or trouble him, right now, Bobby Beans, with his new partner Mark Stigman, is planning a bank heist. But after a troubling visit from Greco, the heist must go down sooner than planned, and Bobby Beans’ troubles are only compounded by the fact that he’s actually Bobby Trench: undercover FBI agent, and Greco knows it. The bank he’s robbing also apparently happens to be a key front for Greco’s operation, and his new partner isn’t exactly what he seems either. What happens after that, involves multiple levels of government and military agencies, a lot of smart-mouthing, plenty of action and even some sexiness. I’ll leave to the reader to discover the ins and the outs of the story, but it should be said it moves an engrossing breakneck speed, where loyalty and trust are constantly in question from all parties involved. It’s a bit of a theme, I’d say.

The art by Mat Santoluoco is clean and angular, using a thin, simplified line in a style not unlike Mike Avon Oeming’s on Powers. Along with Santoluoco’s animated style, the book benefits greatly from Popart Studios’ colors, as they punch up the visuals with vibrancy that keeps the art and story from ever feeling heavy.

In every respect 2 Guns is colorfully executed. The dialogue is effortlessly punchy, Stephen Grant channeling Elmore Leonard after overdosing on repeated viewings of Infernal Affairs. Everything Grant deposits in this story is loaded with premeditation, and it’s a dense array of crosses, double-crosses, triple-crosses and so on. There’s a momentum to the story from page 1 that doesn’t let up until it’s over. Convoluted, sure, but deliriously enjoyable.

FOUR AND A HALF OUT OF FIVE VIKINGS

Trade Winds: The Amazing Joy Buzzards in: Here Come the Spiders (Image)
by Adam Prosser

Comics are naturally suited to absurdist humor. I think this is because they can combine visual gags with density of information, balancing a madcap, breakneck tone with coherency. You’re never going to miss a line in a comic because you were laughing too hard at the last one. On top of that, of course, you have comics’ ability to seamlessly combine realism and exaggeration, so that if a characters’ head explodes or if she jumps over the moon in one panel, it can seem like the most natural thing in the world. Both western comics (starting primarily with Mad Magazine) and Japanese manga (starting primarily with Osamu Tezuka, natch) have made use of these techniques, and there’s a new trend in comics that combines the two regional sensibilities to produce some extremely funny comics. The standard bearer for this new school is Scott Pilgrim, but there are other comics similar in style, such as Josh Lesnick’s hilarious webcomic Girly. Now you can add The Amazing Joy Buzzards to the list.

This comic is best described as “Scott Pilgrim meets Buckaroo Banzai”. Like both of those characters, the Amazing Joy Buzzards are rock ‘n’ rollers who get involved in zany, ridiculous adventures, though in this case it’s because the AJBs are unwittingly working for the CIA, in the person of their manager Dalton Warner. The Joy Buzzards consist of lead singer/chick magnet Biff, mute, hairy bass player Stevo, and brainy drummer Gabe, plus their (possibly imaginary) Mexican wrestler pal, El Campeon. The group lives in Mount Rushmore, from whence they issue forth to rock out and fight evil. Much over-the-top strangeness ensues, from pink robots nursing a vendetta, to one of the band transforming into a gigantic gila monster, to a murder mystery on the set of the AJBs’ first movie, to a hair-raising car race.

The book manages to be deadpan enough that, every so often, you’re lulled into almost taking it seriously, and that’s when some new bit of ridiculousness comes at you. Writer Mark Andrew Smith is smart to keep the emphasis squarely on the ridiculousness, but he’s also able to give the book a heart in the form of Gabe’s budding romance with the daughter of their brilliant scientist friend.

The real star of the book, though, is Daniel Spencer Hipp, the artist, whose charmingly loose and expressive black-and-white pages give the book its charge. Hipp has a mastery of expressiveness and caricature to which “cartoony” simply doesn’t do justice. Stevo, for instance, has no visible eyes, and his speech bubbles are filled with images that suggest things instead of actual words, yet his every flickering emotion is conveyed clearly to the reader (well, he’s a deadpan sorta guy, but you get my point). More crucially, Hipp has a knack for conveying action clearly and in such a way that you always know where everything is AND you’re drawn into the action. The highlight is probably the car chase, which is as pulse-pounding as any Hollywood movie, while containing sights that would never be shown on the silver screen. I don’t care how great special effects get, you’re never going to be able to pull off the sight of a guy samurai sword-fighting a gang of vampire robots on top of a race car screeching towards the finish line in live action and have it be as hilarious as it is here.

That last sentence probably said everything you need to determine whether this comic is your cup of tea. This is the “director’s cut” edition comprising the first two volumes of the book, so it’s probably the best bargain, though it’s also available in two separate editions as well.

FOUR AND A HALF OUT OF FIVE VIKINGS

Trade Winds: Jack Kirby’s OMAC: One Man Army Corps (DC)
by Adam Prosser

Would it be gauche of me to start this review by linking to my ongoing blog project, Fourth World Fridays? I do so not for the sake of blatant shillery (well, maybe a little) but as a reference point for my feelings about Jack Kirby. Like a lot of beginning comics readers, in my youth I tended to write him off as that old guy who created the Marvel Universe, which was cool and all, but the comics themselves were clunkily written, drawn in an unappealingly abstract manner, and just generally weird and campy, a product of an earlier age. The fact that a lot of his work wasn’t really available in a convenient form until I had mostly lost interest in superheroes didn’t help matters much. But I kept hearing him referred to as a genius by people I respected, and I slowly developed a grudging appreciation for him once I was able to put his work in the correct historical context. Then I started to get downright impressed by how many conventions of the superhero genre, and comics in general, Kirby had pioneered long before I was born. Scratch a “bold new idea” in superhero comics, and chances are Kirby did it in some form back in his heyday, though his aims were often thwarted by the conservative types who ran the publishing houses.

But I didn’t truly start to appreciate Kirby to his fullest until I started the Fourth World project. I had read and enjoyed most of The New Gods in another form, but to read the whole Fourth World Saga in complete, four-volume form, parsing everything with relative care instead of lingering on the frequently awkward dialogue and sometimes baffling plot mechanics, is to be forced to admit that, yes, Kirby was a genius. And there’s a noticeable upward trend in his work of this period, too; even his writing became more polished and clear as the issues went on. I honestly think that if The King had been polishing his writing from the beginning instead of having to learn it in his late forties, he would have ended up as qualified a writer as anyone in comics.

Unfortunately, Kirby’s vision was ahead of its time, and the Fourth World Saga ended too soon. Kirby, disappointed, kept plugging away at DC, cranking out concepts that generally didn’t take, though they stuck around for years and in some cases hit it big in later hands, like The Demon. The last of these was OMAC, the One Man Army Corps, and it’s one of Kirby’s best works, even if it lacks the insane ambition of the Fourth World or the classic relatability of his Marvel characters.

The story is set in a bizarre future which Kirby calls “THE WORLD THAT’S COMING!” In some ways, it’s a near-perfect culmination of pop SF elements from throughout the 20th century; it even manages something of a cyberpunk feel years before cyberpunk was officially invented. The world is in a tentative period of peace and stability, apparently brought about by the great world powers holding each other in check. Armies are outlawed, and the Global Peace Agency maintains the balance, but with the caveat that they’re not allowed to employ force of any kind. Needless to say, this is making their job pretty difficult, and numerous super-criminals and petty tyrants are popping up to destroy the balance, and that’s where Omac comes in. The GPA officers select office drone and all-around schmuck Buddy Blank to be the recipient of “remote control electronic hormone surgery” (!) by a sentient orbiting super-satellite named Brother Eye. He’s transformed into a literal one-man army who can provide the GPA with all the muscle it needs without breaking the détente, and goes forth to do battle with a host of bizarre criminals over the course of eight issues.

One of the most interesting things about Kirby’s work is that it’s all basically one long continuum of ideas. If he had to end a comic (and he frequently did), he’d create something new with a similar sensibility but an original twist, and keep developing it in the direction he had been headed. The Fantastic Four, for instance, are a logical outgrowth of the Challengers of the Unknown; the Fourth World titles all evolved naturally from his Marvel books (particularly Thor), and so on. OMAC apparently began life as an idea for a reinvented Captain America comic, in which Cap was reborn in the future. The comic also continues the wild beat poet style of prose Stan and Jack had developed at Marvel, combined with Kirby’s cosmic, trippy ideas and a frequently satirical edge. Oh, yeah, and it’s incredibly action-packed and kinetic, in classic Kirby fashion, often to an insane degree. (As Chris Sims pointed out, there’s a panel here in which Omac punches seven guys in the face. Simultaneously. With one fist.) In some ways, this comic is a perfect distillation of what made Kirby comics so appealing, and this hardback collection is long overdue. Its only real flaw is that it ends so abruptly (Kirby left to return to Marvel, and DC didn’t feel the book was strong enough to continue without him) in the middle of a cliffhanger. Of course, as with almost any superhero, the torch has been carried for years since, and frequently fumbled, but these eight issues remain as a near-perfect little testament to just how far ahead of his time The King of Comics really was.

FIVE OUT OF FIVE VIKINGS

Trade Winds - Dark Horse Heroes Omnibus (Dark Horse)
by Graig Kent

There was a plethora of new superhero universes created in the 1990’s, thus there was sea of capes and tights in that chromium age to wade through. It seemed that during the speculation boom everyone was trying to get in the game: Malibu’s “Ultraverse”; DC’s Milestone and Impact imprints; Image’s various creator-owned universe; Valiant-come-Acclaim’s universe; Jim Shooter’s Defiant; Neal Adam’s Continuity and I’m sure many others I’m completely forgetting about. Dark Horse had made itself a name by respectably handling such cinematic properties as Aliens, Predator and Terminator (certainly much better than subsequent cinematic outings would), while also providing a home for writers and artists to try their hand at creating their own properties (Sin City, Hellboy). That they too would toss a hat into the superhero ring wasn’t much of a surprise, but the manner in which they did was.

Sure each publisher had something different to offer, a different theme or hook to separate themselves from the rest, and Dark Horse’s “Comics Greatest World” (CGW) wasn’t much different. Like Valiant or the Ultraverse, CGW aspired to weave a tight continuity, the main difference was Dark Horse had put together a brain trust (Mike Richardson, Barbara Kesel, Chris Warner, Jerry Prosser and Randy Stradley) that spent two to three years planning the universe and its characters, rather than bringing disparate creators together and seeing what they came up with then striving to tie it all together.

What came out of CGW was four different, compartmentalized environments for the character to inhabit and cross-over into, and it was noticeable almost from the get-go that these environments, and not the characters, were really the stars. Arcadia was a degrading city scape, an average big city which had begun to decay due to political corruption and its mafia scene. Golden City was an experimental utopia that no doubt wouldn’t last, either from pressures internal or external. Steel Harbor was a sludge pit, a city overrun by gangs, and where the divide was obvious between the haves and have-nots. Cinnibar Flats was a military base where, in the late-1930’s, a UFO embedded itself into the Earth, and subsequent to 1940’s nuclear testing, became the epicenter for the paranormal population eruption.

The original “Comics Greatest World” mini-series told a somewhat unified tale over 16 issues, each locale receiving a four-issue focus as written by one of the CGW brain trust (with Richardson providing a single page prologue set in the 1940’s that spanned the entire series), and each issue introduced a new character. It was evident that some of the characters were undeniably more interesting than others, that some were created to lead their own series while others were strictly conceptual or background figures, and that some were just better designed than others.

CGW started off with one of their strongest figures, X, Arcadia’s hardcore vigilante (melding the aesthetic of Batman with the ruthlessness of the Punisher), following up with the Pit Bulls (easily the weakest concept introduced in CGW), Ghost (which would prove to have the most longevity as a concept) and Monster (self-descriptive). Golden City featured Rebel (the ugliest superhero design you ever shall see, a mullet AND a mowhawk?), followed by Mecha (the first of many man-with-symbiotic-alien-entity characters in the line), Titan (the obligatory Captain Marvel/Superman analog) and finally the team book Catalyst: Agents of Change led by Golden City’s matriarch, Grace. Steel Harbor followed, leading in with the notorious Barb Wire, the Machine, Wolf Pack and Motorhead, all of which I remember being much cooler 15 years ago. Finally there was Cinnibar Flats, housing the creatures of Division 13, the Japanese giant robot-inspired Hero Zero, demon hunter King Tiger (the sole magic-based character), and the Heretic from Out Of The Vortex.

Each character/team is competently introduced, a difficult task given the 15-page span the writers had to do it in, also saddled with the over-arcing story of aliens investigating the after-effects of the Heretic’s experiments from the 1940’s (ie, the superpowered beings inhabiting the earth). X, Catalyst, Barb Wire and the Heretic each dominate their respective locales, and that they would each subsequently have their own series was obviously by design. Golden City and Catalyst were, at the time, the weakest concepts, given that the marketplace was skewing towards grim and gritty rather than the struggles of maintaining a Utopia, but now days as a concept it fares quite well. In fact Arcadia and, moreover, Steel Harbor seem more trite, given how well worn dark and dangerous has become. The artwork for the first mini-series was provided by numerous sources, most solid contributors, like Eric Shanower, Doug Mahnke, Adam Hughes, Paul Gulacy, and more. The covers were even more impressive, by mostly superstar talent from Frank Miller, Art Adams, and Mike Mignola to Jerry Ordway, Dave Johnson, Walt Simonson and more.

Overall CGW remains an engaging project, both from a comic-book history standpoint, and as a story, the unfortunate side is it’s meant as an introduction, leaving dangling threads everywhere for the respective series’ that sprang from it to pick up, including no finite resolution to the overall story arc that continued in the 12-part Out of the Vortex series.

The follow-up mini-series to CGW was Will To Power, a more character-focussed tale centering around Titan, who is extremely powerful but also naive and easily manipulated. Much in the same manner as CGW, Will To Power was presented as 12 weekly 16-page chapters, each locale (written by their respective brain trust writers, again with Richardson providing a one-page prologue for each chapter) receiving a 3-issue arc where Titan faces off with the heroes of that area. The overall story is quite enthralling, as Titan’s power grows along with his dementia, he becomes apparently unstoppable. Richardson’s 16-pages of prologue give the greatest sense of where his character is coming from - slowly revealed over the span of the mini - while each of the writers does a good job escalating the threat level Titan provides. The weakest link, however was the need for Titan to be transitioned to each of the different locations, abruptly ending any real conflict until the finale (although each sub-arc picks up nicely upon his arrival).

Again, if not more so, Will To Power, strongly presents the CGW design, the four-landmarks structure of the “Dark Horse Heroes” universe, and when read together it truly does highlight that fact. The artistic angle comes together somewhat tighter with the 3-chapter structure getting a dedicated artist in most cases (Mike Manley in Arcadia, Terry Dodson in Golden City, Chris Warner for the Vortex).

It may not have had the decades of history behind it DC or Marvel had, and it may not have blossomed into lasting or, frankly, highly memorable creations, but surprisingly, it all holds up pretty well and remains solidly entertaining. I have a personal bias towards dead universes so I find CGW to be even more intriguing now than I did 15 years ago, and some of the loose threads from the first miniseries have piqued my interest enough to hit the bins. The Omnibus provides a very concise and affordable place to begin if you ever were curious about Dark Horse’s superhero line, and its a great place to start if you’re looking for some back-issue bin-diving to do.

Full disclosure: I didn’t actually acquire a copy of the monstrous 488-page collection, but rather I shuffled off into the cellar and retrieved the original bagged-and-boarded issues of Dark Horse’s “Comics Greatest World” and Will To Power mini-series. Yes, I purchased these series on their initial release, in a weekly, 16-page, $1 ($1.25 Canadian) format (do the math, here: there’s essentially 28 issues here, which in 1992/1993 dollars was worth $28. At a cover price of 24.95, you’re already saving $3, not accounting for inflation or interest. Not bad at all).

THREE OUT OF FIVE VIKINGS

Trade Winds: Tom Strong Book Six (DC)
by Adam Prosser

Ahhhh…at last.

Alan Moore’s post-Watchmen career arc has been fascinating to me. Despite his punk-rock attitude, he was famously dismayed by what happened to the superhero genre in the wake of his masterpiece; rather than providing one take among many, the “Watchmen” mentality of deconstructionist, “real world” superheroes existing in a dark, dreary, morally ambivalent world in which all the zany fun had been drained out quickly became the default position for the genre. Moore responded first by ducking out for a decade or so, working on “From Hell” and some other projects that didn’t get off the ground. Then, when Image comics came along, he took advantage of their anarchic mentality to return to superheroes on his own terms. First he toiled forgettably (for him) on stuff like Spawn and Wild C.A.T.s, but then, starting with 1963, he launched a series of retro, silver age-style comics that represented an attempt to reconnect comics with their vast and interesting history. The culmination of this came in theABC line, embodied by two comics: Tom Strong and Promethea.

Tom Strong was essentially “Doc Savage with richer subtext”. An instantly iconic adventure strip character, Tom was a superscientific strongman born at midnight, January 1st, 1900, and raised to be the ideal human by his rather cold-hearted father. After his parents’ death he was raised by a lost tribe on a remote jungle island, then picked up the mantle of scientist-adventurer and proceeded to have a century of adventures (thanks to a life-extending medicinal plant) with his family and companions. His adventures were an encapsulation of comics history over the course of the 20th century, involving everything from Nazis to space travel to lava people to parallel realities. What was really great, though, was the way Moore wove strong characterization into the background. Strong’s credo is one of optimism, rationality and a determination to solve problems; his greatest strength and his greatest weakness is that his upbringing left him emotionally detached and sometimes coldly logical; his family and friends, especially his wife Dhalua, have redeemed his humanity, but his thought processes can still be slightly strange, at least in the more serious stories.

Unfortunately, this aspect of the book is quite subtle, and when Moore left, most of the writers who took over focused more on the “high adventure” aspect of the stories. This volume collects the final issues of the series, written by various writers, and while there’s plenty of fun stuff here, only the last story, written by a returning Moore, gets to the heart of the character. The initial two-parter is by Michael Moorcock - yes, that Michael Moorcock - and it’s a fun tale of piratical adventure across time and space involving some of Moorcock’s own characters, though unfortunately it slips into incoherence in a few key places; I don’t know if that’s Moorcock’s fault or artist Jerry Ordway’s, but the procession of events in some of the action panels don’t make a lot of sense. Joe Casey scripts a story about a journey into the electronic brain of Tom’s robot butler Pneuman, which is fine but forgettable. Much better is Steve Moore’s (no relation) The Spires of Samakhara, in which Tom finds himself in a real-world lost city that seems to be based on an old pulp story; Moore does a great job of capturing the surreal style of some of the more obscure early pulp stories.

Peter Hogan wraps up a story that he had begun in volume Five, involving the return of an old, supposedly-dead lover of Tom’s, along with an old, supposedly-dead villain; while the resolution is in keeping with the book’s style and subtext, it’s a little bit limp and relies a bit too much on contrivance. The problem with non-Alan Moore Tom Strong stories is that there’s something weirdly superficial about them; they “fit” well enough, not just plot-wise but emotionally as well, and yet there’s something hollow about everything. I think it’s the fact that, without Alan Moore’s propulsive long-form story arcs, the book lacks momentum. It’s just a series of disconnected events, without a firm authorial hand to tie it all together.

But the final story is scripted by Alan Moore himself, and wraps up some plot threads left over from the books’ main run, so it’s got to be great, right? Well, yes and no. You see, Tom Strong is part of a “universe” of books under the ABC imprint, and those books came to an end that was tied into the other major comic, Promethea. Promethea was a frustrating comic, often brilliant, but it was meant as a vehicle for Moore’s odd ideas about mysticism and creativity, and those sometimes overwhelmed the actual narrative. When Promethea triggered the apocalypse in the final issues, instead of being an exciting climax, it turned into a fourth-wall breaking lecture about Moore’s spirituality, and the plot was completely suspended. The final issue of Tom Strong, unfortunately, revisits this storyline, so that while there are some interesting plot threads wrapped up (including a plot twist which I’d guessed earlier, but which was expertly set up and paid off) and a nice emotional catharsis for Tom, the issue is uncharacteristically static and devoid of action. Even if you think that’s fine for Promethea, it simply isn’t true to Tom Strong; he’s a guy who would go out swinging, even in the face of Armageddon.

All of which isn’t to say that this isn’t a fun book, full of imagination and old-fashioned adventure. It’s just a shame it was never able to satisfactorily wed the emotional and the physical in the way Moore seems to have intended. The result is a book some might find enjoyably angst-free, and others might find lacking substance - but it’s certainly worth a look to anyone who’s followed Tom’s adventures up to this point.

THREE AND A HALF OUT OF FIVE VIKINGS

Trade Winds - JLA Presents: Aztek The Ultimate Man tpb 1 (DC)
by Graig Kent

Back in 1996 Grant Morrison wasn’t THE Grant Morrison he is today. The Grant Morrison of 1996 was Arkham Asylum’s Grant Morrison, or Doom Patrol’s/Animal Man’s/The Invisibles‘ Grant Morrison… all very Vertigo, which to the core superhero contingent meant “weird”, and rightfully so. ’90’s superhero readers weren’t into weird… they were into shoulder armor, excessive ink lines, big boobs and lots of titles that included the letter “x” (I’ve recently been inventorying my comics collection and you’d be surprised how many titles there were with the letter “x” in it that weren’t at all mutant related). Similarly, Mark Millar of 1996 was not the Mark Millar we know today (which, given your particular disposition towards his writing might be a good thing)… he wasn’t The Ultimates‘ Mark Millar or Fantastic Four’s/Wanted’s/The Authority’s Mark Millar, no, he was rather just “who the hell is” Mark Millar.

Anyway the two Scots superstars paired up for a few assignments in the mid-90’s which, I think for many fans, culminated in this briefly lived but cherished original superhero concept. Say what you will about the 1990’s (and I talk a lot of smack about the era) DC did try a lot out a lot of concepts which you have to give them credit for (although, similarly, they pulled the rug out from under a lot of concepts before they really had a chance to get a foothold). Of course, much of them were utter trash (I don’t think anyone’s bemoaning the loss of Gunfire or Xenobrood [there’s one] or Firebrand, but I’m sure I’d be surprised) but then a few gems, like Chase, Xero [there’s another] and Primal Force barely lived long enough for the devotees to rally a counter-cancellation protest.

I missed out completely on Aztek at the time - which is surprising given my ’90’s predisposition to trying out pretty much any DC title - and I have had intentions to get to it, having heard nothing but good things about it over the years since cancellation. Obviously the names attached to the title carry more weight than they ever did, and Aztek’s role in Morrison’s seminal JLA run (or his appearance in the Justice League Unlimited cartoon) I’m sure more than perplexed the many fans who hadn’t read the title, so a trade has been long overdue.

I wasn’t certain what to expect out of Aztek, even though I literally just re-read Morrison’s JLA issues (lots of seeds planted for Final Crisis, fyi), Aztek’s role in that series was minor, and characterization of him is almost nil. The opening page of the first issue finds a stark, full-page pin-up of a dorky looking character called “the Piper”, and the revelation that follows is he’s a former supervillain being blackmailed into re-emerging by robbing a bank and facing the local super-hero, a psychopathic Punisher-analogue called Bloodtype. From there we meet a young, blond man, obviously our hero, who’s come to the city named Vanity on a mission: to wait for the Shadow God to appear and confront him. It’s not a very proactive mission, so this man searches for an identity, a job, an apartment, and it’s clear that he’s not stupid or naive, but he is a stranger to the surroundings.

Convergence: he winds up at the bank which the Piper has come to hold up, and Bloodtype has come to annihilate the criminal. Transforming into the avatar of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl, he intervenes, although, unlike most superheroes, it’s not with force. Instead, he talks, resorting to fisticuffs and other such actions as a last resort. Everything turns sour for both the Piper and Bloodtype and our hero winds up becoming the city’s new protector and obtaining the secret identity of the Piper: Dr. Curt Falconer.

Throughout the series we learn how distinctively different a superhero Aztek is. For starters, he’s just doing the superhero thing to bide his time, just as he’s doing the secret identity thing. It’s almost as if the Shadow God can’t appear soon enough for him. Along the way, he meets Green Lantern, Batman and Superman, as well he’s put through his paces facing off against numerous, newly-created bizarre villains as well as the Joker. This isn’t a story though of a young man who’s new to his powers and inexperience in fighting or tactical combat or problem solving. No, it becomes fairly clear that, while young, Aztek is clearly expertly trained in using his powers and resolving problems other than by force. The series actually has a fairly comedic undercurrent in exploiting the typical problems of the new hero by clearly acknowledging that Aztek is more than up to any challenge he faces. There’s no “gosh wow” to him, just the occasional moment of “huh, never dealt with this before” (which happens more often in his private life than in his superhero life, such as his complete inability to interact women). There’s an over-arcing reason for all that happens to the character, and it’s partially revealed here (and expanded on a bit more in JLA).

The environment Aztek calls home, Vanity, is a strange place, a city constantly under development, and apparently the map of the city changes virtually daily. I got a sense that there was a greater mystery being built around the city itself (as the mystery of Aztek, his homeland, and his benefactors are all laid bare by the series end, if quite unresolved), and that there was something malevolent about the city itself, the film Dark City coming to mind.

The first three issues featured backmatter which would prove inconsequential by the series end, but the second issue’s superhero registration card is utterly hilarious, while the third issue’s book review offers insight into Vanity’s creation (and creator).

It is unfortunate that the threads Morrison and Millar were sewing within the series will ever get left unfulfilled, and since Aztek’s self-destruction in Morrison’s final JLA issue, there’s no real means to go back to Aztek’s supporting cast or any dangling plot threads. However, the series doesn’t exactly end with a huge question mark either. Issue nine presents a few snippets of what would have come, but issue ten (purposefully) inaugurates Aztek into the JLA and allows things to move forward from there (however little things actually did move forward). That said, Vanity is a very curious place which will never be the next Metropolis or Gotham, but could easily fit with the Opal City/Coast City/Keystone City etc. mapping of DC’s America. Another (Morrison-written) hero should surely take residence there so that it’s unusual landscape can be further explored.

Nothing in Aztek: The Ultimate Man is typical, even spoofs of superheroes don’t do this entertaining a job of toying with conventions. Though character died in the year 2000 (JLA #41), built into the character already was the notion of legacy, so I won’t be surprised if we see Aztek reemerge. This was a fine and fun enough read to make for a character worthy of being nostalgic about. Certainly a standout amongst most comics of the 1990’s, and barely feeling dated, if at all.

THREE AND A HALF OUT OF FIVE VIKINGS