Updated on July 28, 2019
A Hereafter, Sum, and New Grit City: The Work Of Geremy George
We are truly living in a new golden age of comic books. With the possible exception of the original Golden Age, there has never been a greater variety of titles and authors of graphical fiction.
The downside to this bounty of creative work is that it can be tough to sift through all the noise to find exciting new creators. This is especially true in the DIY scene of comics. Indie creators have access to all the digital art and publishing tools that mainstream creators do – they just lack the same platforms to promote their work.
Allow me to do my own small part in promoting an exciting new creator by highlighting the work of Geremy George. I first met Geremy through his comic shop, Stargazer Comics. I had been a regular for over a year before realizing that he not only dispensed comics – he created them as well. I caught up on his work via his website, and was elated to find out that he started producing them in print as well.
Geremy creates his comics in a bold, photorealistic style, using the stark contrast of black and white to paint science fiction landscapes. So far, he’s worked with some near-future science fiction themes, exploring the impact that revolutionary technology will have on society. Dystopian stories in comics are a dime a dozen these days. But rather than tread this well-worn ground, Geremy chooses to highlight the hopefulness of technological possibility, even if his settings do have a tinge of the sinister about them.
Another aspect of Geremy’s narratives that I really enjoy is his ability to weave parallel narratives through the writing and art. For example, in “A Hereafter,” his script follows a preacher’s sermon that occurs asynchronously to the narrative told through the art, yet complements the themes of permanence and impermanence expressed in the short vignette about a new mnemonic recall technology.
Geremy’s work “Sum” doesn’t have the same linear narratives as his science fiction work, but it really does highlight his ability to put together a stunning photo collage. This comic is a meditation on all the evils of the material world, and a philosophical head trip. This one is worth picking up for the incredible photo manipulation spreads.
If I’ve piqued your interest, you can check out Geremy’s work in digital form at www.geremygeorge.com.
Updated on June 5, 2018
Doom Patrol: The Best Silver Age Marvel Comic That DC Made
The year is 1963. A major comic book publisher releases a title about a group of heroes led by a mysterious wheelchair-bound genius. They have amazing powers, but are shunned by society. Their freakishness and noble purpose strengthens their bond as a family, although they do bicker and fight among each other. They battle giant robots, evil geniuses, and entities with freakish powers that rival their own. What title am I talking about?
Partial credit for answering “X-Men,” but I’m referring to the fabulous freaks of DC’s Doom Patrol. The similarities between the two series are remarkable, and it certainly wasn’t unusual for comic book creators in this era to borrow from one another. Arnold Drake and Bob Haney, the original writers of the series, were known admirers of the early issues of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s Fantastic Four. At the time, DC was the biggest publisher of comic books, but were suffering from the waning popularity of superheroes. They still owned the million-dollar intellectual property of Superman, Batman, and other golden age heroes. But, early-1960s DC stories were stiff and stale. They relied on wacky situations instead of interesting characters. Superman or Batman would get into an absurd situation, everything would be resolved by the end of the issue, and the status quo would return until the next wacky adventure.
In 1961, Fantastic Four #1 permanently changed the nature of superhero comics. In a classic example of greatness being achieved by a guy trying to get himself fired, Stan Lee took his assignment of emulating DC’s superhero books, and wrote a story that he wanted to write. One that had characters with flaws – they bickered, experienced personal growth, and acted like actual human beings instead of backdrops for the situation of the month. Marvel didn’t become a success overnight, but they started gaining a lot more traction in the market compared to when they were churning out quick and simple horror and sci-fi stories. This new method of storytelling really caught on with readers who were looking for a little more sophistication in their superhero stories.
Two of these readers were currently employed at DC Comics – Arnold Drake and Bob Haney. They picked up an early copy of Fantastic Four from a stack of research materials and were blown away. They went to their editor with a renewed passion, wanting to tell these kinds of character-driven tales. And of course, they were turned away.
It took two years, but eventually they got their way. In 1963, a generic adventure title called My Greatest Adventure was waning in popularity and heading for cancellation. Arnold Drake was brought in to save the title by converting it to a superhero format. With the help of artist Bruno Premiani and his fellow writer Bob Haney, Drake created the Doom Patrol to fill that need. 
Here, Drake had the creative freedom that he wanted to create a DC comic in the Marvel manner. The title was already headed for cancellation, so how could he screw it up? Instead of square-jawed and noble heroes, he created a team of freaks that went on trippy adventures and were shunned by society. Characters grew and changed with each issue, and were defined by their relationships with each other. This wasn’t exactly new – Lee, Kirby, and Ditko had already been doing this for a few years with Fantastic Four and Spider-Man. But this was a relatively new development for DC.
In a remarkable coincidence, the first issue of X-Men was published just a few months after the Doom Patrol’s debut. I already mentioned the similarities above. We may never know if Stan Lee blatantly ripped off the premise, or if this was just another example of similar creators arriving at the same conclusion independently. Either way, I think it’s telling that both the Doom Patrol and the X-Men have both experienced a boom in popularity after experiencing a relatively quick cancellation in their original runs. The 1960s weren’t ready for this kind of absurd and/or allegorical storytelling, but modern audiences are hungry for it.
While Grant Morrison’s run of this title rightly gets the lion’s share of critical acclaim, I think the silver age run deserves some accolades as well. The amount of character development and risk-taking was highly unusual for a DC comic of this time period. It didn’t really work for its time and place, but the issues do hold up over time in ways that other silver age titles don’t. Plus, this series planted the seeds for the excellent runs that Morrison and Gerard Way have published more recently. In fact, Arnold Drake stated that Morrison’s run was the only one that truly captured the original intent of the series (alas, he did not live long enough to see Way’s run). This series was also a first step in the Marvel-ization of DC. They moved away from the stiffer, situation-based stories, and actually let their characters grow organically. This led to better stories for fans, and a real sea change in the growth of comic books as a serious literary medium.
Updated on March 6, 2018
Kirby Covers: A Master Class In Dynamic Storytelling
I went to Emerald City Comic Con this last weekend and had some great luck in picking up some silver age Jack Kirby work. I filled some gaps in my ongoing project of a complete run of Fantastic Four, and found some pretty good deals on some Fourth World titles (especially 15 out of the 18 Kirby issues of Mister Miracle). Having several of these issues in one place got me thinking about how Kirby was a master at creating dynamic covers that draw the viewer into the story before they even pick up the book. It’s well known that Kirby had an eye for action and was probably the most intensely dynamic artist among the comic creators of the silver age, but I’d like to take a moment to focus in and appreciate some of his work on covers.
In the early days of comic books, a good cover was critical for sales. Before we had local comic book stores, the target customer for comics was newsstand browsers. With so many titles from so many publishers, it could be tough to get attention for your book. You also had to give your readers a taste of what was inside the book in order to entice them to read the whole issue. Since most comics were one-shot stories, you couldn’t rely on the likability of your main characters or the obsessiveness of your audience to sell books. This story sample on the covers led to some pretty bold and weird silver age covers. Here’s a personal favorite of mine, Blackhawk #199:
If the prospect of a ragtag team of World War II flying aces being reduced in size and assaulted by weird mummy insects doesn’t pique your interest, then you have no heart.
Jack Kirby had plenty of experience with this style of expository cover, since he had been putting out this kind of work since the 1940s. Consider one of his early covers, Captain America Comics #1, from 1941:
This cover is full of action. The eye is immediately drawn to Cap’s infamous Hitler Punch, front and center. But action is taking place throughout the cover. Bullets fly from both the foreground and background. The giant TV screen in the backdrop highlights an exploding munitions factory. Bars in the window bend inwards in all directions, hinting at Captain America’s exciting entrance into the scene. Even the expressions on the characters hint at action – Captain America’s muscles bulge out of his neck, and Hitler lets out a howl of pain as he gets a fistful of freedom from our hero.
As dynamic as this cover was, it was still an early work and Kirby had not yet settled on his unique style. At this point in his career, he was still a comic publisher grunt, shackled to a “house style.” As his career progressed, he got more and more leeway to lean into his strengths and evolve his style into a more exaggerated and dynamic one.
Fast forward twenty years to the title that invented modern comics:
At this point, Kirby had definitely evolved his style, but the characters were still a bit stiff. The way he laid out the scene was impeccable, though. Front and center is a frightening threat bursting out of the ground, drawn in that inimitable Kirby monster style. Bystanders flee in the background, highlighting the urgency of the thread and adding more to the action taking place on the cover.
Most importantly, we get our first look at the Fantastic Four, and we get a sense of their amazing powers immediately. This not only intrigues the viewer and establishes the basic attributes of each character. The Invisible Girl disappears in the clutches of the monster. The Human Torch creates a blazing arc of fire like a halo above the monster (and leading the readers eye to the centerpiece of the action). The Thing crushes a car with one hand, while hiding what is surely a grotesque visage as he faces away from the reader (enticing you to actually pick up the book and read it to find out if his mug is really as ugly as you think). Mister Fantastic bends unnaturally to escape some ropes. And what the hell do ropes have to do with a subterranean monster anyway? Who knows? Buy the book and find out!
This cover also marks a key turning point in Jack Kirby’s career: his partnership with Stan Lee. Lee and Kirby’s professional relationship is contentious to say the least, but I do think that Lee had a significant influence on how Kirby created comics. Kirby approached comic creating with a feverish explosion of ideas. Lee tempered this energy and focused it to tell fantastical stories that had a human heart. Lee also knew how to sell comics. Take this cover for example. Instead of just explaining the story within, he sells it. There are exactly twelve exclamation points on the cover. The only complete sentence that does not end in an exclamation point is a question. See the Fantastic Four! Together for the first time! Because where else would they have appeared, if not for the first issue in their title? There’s a little story happening on the cover: the Fantastic Four are in peril, but they are going to work together to triumph over this grotesque monster.
We see Kirby’s style continue to evolve throughout his tenure at Marvel. Consider Avengers #4 – the return of Captain America to comics:
This is a fantastic example of Kirby’s mastery of action in the comics medium. Captain America explodes off the page. Thor swings his mighty hammer at…something. Iron Man leaps into the air. Even the side box with Namor shows him holding up his fists in an action pose. We also see some hints of Kirby’s eventual exaggerated style in Captain America’s expression. There are still some realistic “house style” faces on Thor and Giant Man here, but Cap’s wild expression hints at the action packed issue behind this cover.
After Kirby’s Marvel career flamed out acrimoniously, DC was happy to give him free reign over his own titles. This is when his style got really wild. Kirby was no longer held back by collaborators or house styles, and he clearly learned a few lessons from the Stan Lee playbook. This is apparent in his cover for Mister Miracle #3:
Mister Miracle hovers in Zen-like bondage front and center, surrounded by maniacs with grotesquely distorted features. Weapons are brandished from all angles. Faces twist in defiance of human anatomy and bright, unnatural colors are used for skin tones and clothes to create a sense of action and insanity. The text enhances the excitement, with seven exclamation points, varying font styles and sizes, and different colors. Text is not beholden to any grids or lines. It splashes on the page at crazy angles, arcs, and highlighted by geometric shapes. Kirby also utilizes exciting, but nonsensical slogans to built up the intensity. BUY IT! BUT DON’T SWALLOW IT! THE PARANOID PILL! I’m pretty sure that prescription drugs didn’t have much to do with this story, but it certainly sounds badass. It has the bold sensibilities of a B-movie poster.
I’ll end with one more example from the Mister Miracle run, #5:
I really just wanted to point out that Jack has helpfully labeled the “Flame Thrower” and “A-Bomb” components of this murder machine. Plus, what better way to sell a comic book than to tell a story about a diabolical car wash?
Jack Kirby’s impact on graphic storytelling certainly gets a lot of credit, but I think he deserves some respect for his bold covers as well. Kirby was able to integrate his exaggerated artistic style, exclamatory teasers of the story plot, and a little good old fashioned hyperbole to pitch his comics to the public. This mastery of all aspects of the medium shows why Jack Kirby truly is the King of Comics.
Updated on February 13, 2018
Ultimate Captain America As Commentary On Post-9/11 America
In the year 2000, Marvel Comics was in crisis. The 1990s comic book bubble had burst, and readership was dwindling. Editorial needed a way to recapture audiences, and a hard reboot of the Marvel Universe seemed to be a good plan. Enter the Ultimate Comics imprint: a way to make Marvel’s flagship heroes younger, hipper, and more palatable to an audience more used to the storytelling conventions of cinematic spectacles than four-color newsprint. Ultimate Comics started out with blockbuster runs of Ultimate Spider-Man and Ultimate X-Men, but I’m not here to talk about that. I want to discuss The Ultimates – a reboot of The Avengers penned by controversial comics scribe Mark Millar and illustrated by Bryan Hitch.
The 2002 debut of The Ultimates proved fortuitous. America was still reeling from the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001. This provided both a tense moment in the national psyche, and a fertile ground for satire and commentary on the increasingly nationalistic and militaristic attitude developing within the United States.
Ultimate Captain America proved to be the perfect avatar for the right-wing march to war. This is actually not all that far off from his original roots as a golden-age propaganda hero for the United States’ involvement in World War II. In the intervening years, Cap became more of a wholesome symbol of the “good old days” of America – all apple pies, baseball games, and lantern-jawed superheroics in defense of the little guy. Ultimate Cap comes full circle to his roots. He lives in a world of black and white, good guys and bad guys, and an unquestioning faith in the American Way. Ultimate Captain America solves all of his problems with his fists. He prefers a more straightforward approach to putting down the bad guys, like kicking the Hulk in the junk:
After finding out that Hank Pym is on the run after beating his wife, he confronts him in a bar and starts a back-alley brawl to make things even:
Earth-616 Captain America is Mr. Rogers with superpowers, believing in the fundamental decency of the common man. Ultimate Cap is Michael Bay driving a Hummer painted like an American flag into an hut full of Iraqi war orphans, berating them for being born in such a shithole country.
This might-makes-right, America-first approach to justice was a potent criticism of the unilateral war efforts in the Middle East that followed the 2001 terror attacks. We can see all the angles of the situation in retrospect, but at the time it was necessary for artists and left-wing commentators to call the administration to task for gung-ho warmongering. Much of America, like Ultimate Cap, just saluted President Bush and went along with his “cool” 21st century war:
There’s a toxic masculinity that pervaded both Millar’s Ultimates run and America in the mid-2000s. Cap beats the hell out of anyone who disagrees with him and is unquestionably nationalistic. When asked to surrender, Ultimate Cap retorts with this infamous line:
This tough-as-nails approach toward international justice may have worked in WWII, but lessons from Vietnam, Central America, and the Middle East should have taught us that modern wars don’t really operate with clear good guys and bad guys. To be fair, Cap is saying this to a clear-cut bad guy – shapeshifting, genocidal aliens from another dimension do tend to be more clearly in the wrong than countries with valid political criticisms of United States foreign policy. But, Ultimate Cap’s militaristic approach to problem solving definitely mirrored what was happening in the international community at the time. Ultimate Cap, like Toby Keith, believes that a boot up the ass (or to the face) is the American Way:
The irony of the Ultimates is twofold: first, Millar is Scottish, but managed to precisely depict the quintessentially American macho swagger that saturated the early-00’s USA. Secondly, this criticism of why unflagging patriotism might be kind of a bad thing completely went over the heads of many readers. Millar said this on the subject in a 2013 interview:
“People would say, ‘I joined the army after reading The Ultimates because I wanted to make a difference in the Middle East,’ and I was like, ‘Well, I kinda meant the opposite of that,’” Millar recalled with a laugh.
We see the same kind of parallels today with law enforcement officers sticking a Punisher decal on their vehicles, or teen girls looking to Harley Quinn and the Joker as “relationship goals.” Comics are an excellent medium for commentary and criticism – if your audience gets it.
Updated on January 9, 2018
Fletcher Hanks: Superheroes Without Pity
Fletcher Hanks is a little-known comic book creator from the Golden Age of comics. He was a rare auteur for his era. We wrote and illustrated his works without assistance, often under a variety of pen names such as Hank Christy, Charles Netcher, C.C. Starr, and Barclay Flagg. He was a product of his time, and yet too unique to be completely a part of it. Although he wrote fairly standard superhero and adventure comic fare, his work is so magnificently weird that it merits further examination than the work of his contemporaries. Perhaps the most defining attribute of his work is that his characters exhibit a fundamental meanness that is highly unusual for the Golden Age of comics – his “superheroes” are even more sadistic than the grim ‘n gritty antiheroes of the 1990s.
Hanks was only active in comics from 1939 to 1941, but it didn’t take him very many publishing credits to make his mark on comics history. There was tremendous demand for comics at that time – the most popular title of the time (Captain Marvel) sold about 1.4 million copies per issue. This fever for superhero stories led to an ecosystem of publishing houses and work-for-hire comic book production shops. Hanks worked in one of these work-for-hire shops. He was employed by the Eisner & Iger comic book packaging company. His boss was the legendary Will Eisner. Eisner’s shop produced comic book stories en masse, then resold the tales to whichever publisher needed superhero content to sell their magazines.
By all accounts, Hanks was a punctual artist dedicated to his craft, but had a difficult personal life. Although there is very little biographical information about the man, it is known that he abandoned his family after years of mistreating them, was an alcoholic, and died penniless on a park bench in New York City in 1976. In his work, we can perform all sorts of armchair psychology. What kind of a man turns his heroes into sadists? What is going on with his fascination with punishment? What trauma persisted in his life that made him feel like children’s entertainment needed to be imbued with such violence? Although we lack explanations from the auteur himself, we can make our own inferences from examining his work.
His most popular character was Stardust the Super Wizard. Clearly a Superman analogue, Stardust was a giant of a man who came to earth from the stars to dispense rough justice upon evildoers. Stardust is portrayed as super-strong, super-intelligent, and possessing a variety of superpowers that allow him to administer whatever sadistic punishment Hanks could dream up for each issue.
Each Stardust story follows the same general outline:
- Bad guys hatch a nefarious plot.
- Stardust is aware of their plan using one of his scientifically-advanced surveillance devices.
- Bad guys execute the plot.
- Stardust intercepts them.
- Stardust spends the next dozen panels punishing the bad guys in a gruesome and mean-spirited manner.
Most Golden Age superheroes are some variation on a macho power fantasy, but this just takes it to another level. There is no sense of justice here – only asymmetrical punishment. Stardust throws his enemies off cliffs, imprisons them on planets with century-long nights (but not before ensuring them that “special vitamins in the air” will guarantee them a long lifespan), and even rips off their heads and launches their still-conscious skull into space.
This is not the Superman of Saturday morning cartoons. This is a terrible Ubermensch that should inspire fear, not admiration.
Before you dismiss Hanks as an over-masculine thug, I should point out that he’s also credited with creating the first female superhero. Fantomah, his “mystery woman of the jungle,” predates Wonder Woman by about a year and a half. Fantomah shares the same sensibilities as Stardust, though – only the setting and gender are different. Fantomah has more terrestrial origins, but she is no less omnipotent and vengeful. Her normal appearance is that of a beautiful blonde woman (who has for some reason taken on the burden of protecting the jungles of Africa), but when she manifests her powers her appearance changes to that of a glowing skull…with long blonde tresses.
Fantomah’s modus operandi is unsurprisingly like Stardust’s. She is a force of justice that is both omniscient and omnipotent. She exacts “jungle justice” upon those who would exploit the riches of the jungle, or the denizens therein.
In Fantomah’s adventures, we witness her condemn a jungle raider to a lifetime of eating mud and fire:
Transform a pair of jewel thieves into grotesque creatures, then return them to civilization:
Drop a mad scientist into a throng of bloodthirsty gorillas (special care is taken to depict his dismembered limbs flying in the air):
And concoct an elaborate revenge wherein a gang of thieves is whisked away into a remote pit, combined into a single man, then enslaved by an underground race of monsters:
This list is not comprehensive, but you get the point.
Hanks’ prolific work also included some protagonists that lacked superpowers, but equaled Stardust and Fantomah in their zest for creative and/or brutal punishments.
“Red McClane, King of the Northwoods” was a hulking lumberjack who solved all of his problems with his fists:
I consider myself a connoisseur of weird comics, but this is the only example I know of that falls into the “lumberjack adventure” genre. I wonder why this style never caught on. I really want to read more tales of this fist-fighting, flapjack-eating, rough-and-tumble son of a bitch.
“Space” Smith is a galactic adventurer who fights alien invaders with fisticuffs and casual racism:
Tabu, the Wizard of the Jungle dispenses rough “jungle justice” upon evildoers (not to be confused with the more feminine brand of “jungle justice” practiced by Fantomah):
So what are we to make of this troubled man and his strange characters? Even golden age superheroes were no strangers to violence. But, there’s quite a difference between two-fisted justice and imprisoning foes in an eternal living hell. Since we lack a complete biography of Fletcher Hanks, it’s hard to tell. Comics were considered a fad medium at the time, so no one was performing any kind of serious historical assessment of the creators of the Golden Age. Hanks’ work does give us a small, hazy window into his psyche though. In this fictional world, Hanks must have felt free reign to exercise whatever power fantasies he could concoct, without limitation. It doesn’t take a lot of armchair psychology to conclude that a man obsessed with writing infallible, omnipotent, and cruel characters clearly had some issues in his life. Is this the work of a twisted sadist, or a man so obsessed with the injustice of the world that he imbued his heroes with a maximum drive for punishment? Or are we just reading way too much into some silly comic book stories cranked out a frenetic pace to make a buck?
For further reading, I highly recommend the omnibus of Hanks’ work, Turn Loose Our Death Rays And Kill Them All!: The Complete Works Of Fletcher Hanks
Updated on January 2, 2018
The Uncanny X-Men At The State Fair Of Texas
I grew up an eager, comic-collecting lad in the hinterlands of North Texas. There was an issue spoken of in hushed tones among my coterie of comic book geeks. A bizarre and exclusive adventure of the X-Men, set in our own back yard! Behold – The Uncanny X-Men At The State Fair Of Texas:
This issue was released in October 1983 as a free insert to the now-defunct Dallas Times Herald newspaper. Created to promote the annual Texas State Fair, the issue follows our merry band of mutants through the fair as they encounter a misguided equine-mutant youth, a nefarious plot by Magneto, and the giant “Big Tex” statue that might possibly be alive. It gets real weird, people. Let’s begin.
The stage is set, in classic bronze-age X-Men fashion, with a scene in the Danger Room. We learn for the 1000th time who the X-Men are, and what they can do:
The team lineup is the standard one from mid-80s X-Men: Cyclops, Storm, Colossus, Wolverine, and Nightcrawler. We also get an unusually self-loathing appearance from Kitty Pryde. Everyone refers to her as “Ariel” despite the fact that she told Professor X that name sucked back in Uncanny X-Men #139:
The training session is interrupted because Cerebro has detected a new mutant…*clap* *clap* *clap* *clap* deep in the heart of Texas! The X-Men depart for the Lone Star State. They are beaten to the fair by Magneto, who has plans of his own for the young mutant. Plans which include harnessing his inner brony to connect with the horse-obsessed youth:
Young Daniel Wiley grew up on a horse farm outside of Dallas, and longed to connect with his equine friends. One night, his mutant power manifested, allowing him to transform into a “centaur”:
Well…okay? I guess as far as mutant powers go, it’s not the worst. And I guess centaurs have wings now? So we’ve got a young mutant with a slightly creepy obsession with horses, an evil mutant with a definitely creepy obsession with Daniel, and a hazy understanding of Greek mythology. So far, so good.
Magneto plots to recruit Daniel into his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Because nothing strikes fear into the heart of Homo Sapiens like the sight of a bare-chested, half-equine youth. I guess he’s technically naked in his centaur form? That actually is pretty terrifying now that I think about it. It’s bad enough being attacked by an evil mutant, it must be a lot more frightening when they’re doing it in the buff.
The X-Men finally arrive at the fair and try to locate their mutant quarry. Cut to a clearly staged set of panels to highlight the various attractions at the fair! Lena Horne! The Age of Steam Exhibit! Big Tex! Big-ass American automobiles that strike Peter Rasputin with awe!
Alas, the Texas State Fair contains far too many attractions to witness in a single day. Charles Xavier admits defeat and vows to return the next day:
Magneto continues his seduction of innocent Daniel with a trip to the Cotton Bowl:
Uh…too much information, Magneto.
Xavier’s mutant mind detects Magneto’s sketchy intentions, and the pursuit is on! Shadowcat/Sprite/Kitty Pryde/Ariel catches up to the fleeing Daniel and Magneto, but Magneto tricks Daniel into thinking the X-Men are attacking him instead of saving him. Daniel turns heel, defends Magneto, and is rewarded with a lame moniker befitting his lame powers – Eques!
Eques decides that Professor X isn’t crippled enough and decides to serve up a Christopher Reeve special:
Nightcrawler saves the Professor in time. The metal-powered duo of Wolverine and Colossus fight back against the Master of Magnetism, with predictable results:
The fight rages on, with Magneto basically handing Cyclops and crew their collective X-asses. At least until Magneto’s attack nearly injures some horses, and then says exactly the wrong thing:
“YOU SON OF A BITCH, YOU TOLD ME FRIENDSHIP WAS MAGIC!”
Magneto lands near the feet of Big Tex, and this happens:
One Texas-sized ass-kicking later, Magneto is defeated. Xavier invites Eques to join the X-Men. Daniel politely declines, preferring Dallas and horses to a lifetime of thrilling adventures with everyone’s favorite mutant team. Having spent years of my life in Dallas, I can say that Daniel is objectively incorrect in his choice. Everyone has a 1980s-cartoon-ending-ha-ha-moment where everyone is confused about whose mutant power caused Big Tex’s boot to kick Magneto:
So in Marvel canon, the state of Texas is guarded by a giant, semi-benevolent golem clad in western wear. Sure, why not.
Some key takeaways from this story:
- Centaurs have wings, I guess.
- If you’re being tailed by the X-Men and you need to lose them, dazzle them with a wide variety of attractions that cannot all be observed in a single day.
- Magneto seems way more evil when he’s doing the “creepy uncle” act than the “mutant terrorist” act.
- If you’re an evil mutant and you start trouble at the State Fair of Texas, Big Tex will WRECK YOUR SHIT.
As if the action wasn’t thrilling enough, Professor X also appears throughout the issue in activity content apart from the story. He demands that the reader complete feats of mental agility, such as finding words hidden upon his glimmering forehead:
Ordering us to stop the search for Magneto, and instead hunt for words:
He implores us to identify mysterious animals:
As if Professor X’s demands aren’t enough, we also get Cyclops threatening to injure the reader if they don’t immediately stop what they’re doing and draw his visor:
I certainly don’t remember children’s activities being this pushy in all the other 1980s ephemera I’ve read…
The story of this issue is a below-average X-Men yarn, but the real entertainment value from this book is in the ads. I have no idea whether to credit Marvel or the local businesses for the unintentional hilarity of the ads, but kudos to whoever it was. In this issue, we learn:
The Hulk 1) had a Mama Hulk, 2) wore boots as a Hulk-child, and 3) obtained his simultaneously Hulk-sized and child-sized boots at Boot Town:
This simple line of ad copy brings up a lot of continuity questions. Did child Hulk grow up as a separate entity as Bruce Banner? Is this just a manifestation of Banner’s latent multiple-personality disorder? Is he remembering his mother as a hulking monster, yet gentle and caring when it came to western footwear? Boot Town holds no answers for us.
Storkland Maternity implores us to “show your comic book for 15% off all Leotards and Tights.” This conjures up a mental picture of a wild-eyed teen brandishing a comic book in a store full of pregnant women, yelling “GIVE ME TIGHTS!”
An ad recruiting local youths to deliver papers for the Dallas Times-Herald has an eerily prescient warning for Millenials:
Spider-Man shills for RCA television sets:
Ol’ Webhead also reminds us that home theater in the 1980s was CRAZY EXPENSIVE:
And on the back cover, Spider Man has evidently decided that he’s had enough of this crazy issue and is eloping with Don Morgan on a lasso. They were last seen shopping for a cozy bungalow in Boot Town.
Bonus page! I love this one-page summary of the X-Men:
I especially love Cheerful Wolverine who is “pure dynamite”!
Updated on January 2, 2018
My Top 10 Comic Books For 2017
For the inaugural post of this blog, I’d like to break down my top 10 comic book series of 2017. Listed in reverse order, to build suspense:
Honorable mention: Doomsday Clock – Watchmen is unquestionably one of the finest literary works in sequential art. But DC can only make so much money on reprinting Watchmen every year. What’s the solution? Bring the Watchmen characters into the main DC continuity and let Dr. Manhattan fistfight with Superman! Or…something. While I think it’s right to be cautiously optimistic about extending the Watchmen story (really, it’s a perfect 12 issues and doesn’t need any prologues or epilogues), DC does appear to be making an honest effort to put out a story that will at least attempt to rival the original. I was thoroughly impressed by the first issue (the kick-ass lenticular Rorschach cover certainly helped), but I feel like I can’t fairly include it in my top ten because there’s only been one issue so far. I’m interested to see where this series is going. Watchmen was a landmark work in comics, but it also ushered in about 30 years of grim ‘n gritty storytelling that has probably played itself out as a trend. Can Dr. Manhattan’s omnipotent cynicism conquer the very paragon of optimism that is Superman? I hope to find out in 2018.
10. Ultimates2 – If Marvel is not going to give me an ongoing Fantastic Four series, I at least need an outlet to get some crazy-as-hell conceptual cosmic stories in my subscription list. In 2017, Ultimates2 by Al Ewing was the cosmic methadone to my Fantastic Four heroin addiction. Ewing really built up some interesting concepts and storylines, but the series was unfortunately sidelined by two “tie-in” issues for Marvel’s tepid Secret Empire event. Just as Ewing’s first Ultimates series lost momentum due to an unnecessary Civil War II tie-in last year, Ultimates2 got slightly derailed this year and Ewing seemed a bit rushed to wrap up his narrative. Still, we got to see Galactus adjust to a new cosmic role in service of life instead of death, Ego the Living Planet growing a giant body, and the heaviest hitters in the Marvel cosmic pantheon slugging it out for dominion over the very ideas that structure reality.
9. Seven To Eternity – Rick Remender has proven to be an adept scribe when it comes to interweaving narratives that play with the theme of family, duty, and revenge. I’ve noticed that he sticks to these themes pretty consistently, but loves to vary the setting. In this one, a group of disgraced, superpowered knights apprehend one of their own who has enslaved a world. They transport him away from his stronghold and then things get…interesting. Spoilers abound, so I’ll keep it vague. The real highlight of this one is Jerome Opena’s and Matt Hollingsworths’ absolutely stunning artwork. Together with Remender’s script, they create an intricately detailed high fantasy/sci fi world that surrounds the characters like a lush landscape.
8. God Country – Donny Cates has hit the comics world this year like a Texan thunderbolt. This is the series that put him on the map. In this story, an ailing, aging patriarch of a West Texas family acquires a magic sword from a fallen thunder god. The sword grants him power, and more importantly, clears his mind of the fog of dementia as long as he holds it. Just as he starts to enjoy the clarity and reconnect with his family, an alien pantheon comes to Earth to reclaim their weapon. His response is “come and take it.” This series is so quintessentially Texan that I’ve often wondered how much I would like it if I wasn’t from Texas myself. You could ponder that, or you could just read a fun story about a badass old guy with a magic sword.
7. Moon Knight – Moon Knight is one of my favorite Marvel characters – think Batman with multiple personality disorder. This intensely flawed character is a really interesting springboard for creative stories, but I feel like too many writers have hammered on the “lol, he’s crazy” angle to the point where those stories just aren’t interesting anymore (looking at you, Jeff Lemire). Enter Max Bemis, who somehow managed to go from the lead singer of Say Anything and the writer of a few lesser-known miniseries to writing the best series in Marvel’s new Legacy initiative. Moon Knight #188 is probably one of the best one-shot issues I’ve ever read. Seriously. The beauty of it is that Moon Knight is barely even in the issue. Instead, it focuses on the origin of the Sun King, a new nemesis that Bemis is creating for our protagonist. We get a deep dive into the psyche of the man who will become the Sun King, as well as Dr. Emmet, the psychiatrist who is trying to understand his madness while being unhealthily obsessed with the titular Moon Knight. In issue #189, we meet The Truth, another new baddie who is terrorizing New York with a unique brand of psychic warfare. So we’re still playing with themes of mental illness, but external of Marc Spector’s personal affliction. The series is only two issues in, but it’s already my favorite Marvel ongoing at the moment.
6. Batman – Tom King is on fire right now. His series The Vision is probably the only 12 issues from the last few years that I would consider worthy of entering that pantheon of graphic novel essentials, sitting on the shelf alongside Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, The Invisibles, and the like. Somehow, Marvel let King slip through their grasp and DC just handed him the keys to the kingdom. He’s been writing one of DC’s main bat-titles for a while now, but this year was the first time I paid attention. One long Thanksgiving weekend and a binge-read of four collected volumes later, I was hooked. His work does suffer a bit when thrust into the open-ended narrative of an ongoing series of indefinite length, playing steward to a high-profile character that can’t deviate too far from the norm. I much prefer his stories with a c-list character and 12 issues, where he has both the creative freedom to explore the character in uncharted directions, as well as a tight story arc to take care of business. Even so, he finds a way to make it work with Batman. King’s Bruce Wayne has heart in a way that the brooding, grimacing creature of the night doesn’t always get to show. Some of the story arcs are a little weaker than others (especially I Am Gotham and Night of The Monster Men), but he really hits his stride with The War of Jokes and Riddles arc. Will you end up caring about Kite Man in the end? Hell yeah!
5. Black Hammer – Okay, now that I’ve talked shit about Jeff Lemire in the Moon Knight section, let me put his series at #5 on my list. I usually find his work good but not great (although most comic readers would probably be pissed at my declaration that he’s overrated). This is one of the great ones though. There have been dozens of conceptual superhero deconstruction stories in the wake of Watchmen, and most of them have been pretty forgettable. Where Lemire’s tale excels is the very small, human stories of the superhuman team trapped in a bizarre, too-perfect small town. It’s a mystery story, a superhero story, and a human story, all rolled into one.
4. Extremity – The comic book auteur is a dying breed. Most books these days have an entire creative team, with writers, inkers, colorists, and letterers working in concert to create sequential art. Daniel Warren Johnson is bucking this trend, writing and illustrating (although he gets an assist on colors by the talented Mike Spicer) this epic post-apocalyptic adventure. Think Mad Max with jetbikes, floating continents, robots, and griffins. If you’re not already hooked by that description, then allow me to entice you with a deep story about finding your place in the world even when your very identity is taken from you. The main protagonist, Thea, has a will-she-or-won’t-she journey between revenge and forgiveness will keep you captivated as much as the fantastical landscapes that she navigates through.
3. Black Monday Murders – Full disclosure: I am tremendously biased toward Jonathan Hickman because he’s one of my favorite comic writers. I admit that his work is getting pretty formulaic. This is yet another story about a global conspiracy, a pale, white-haired person of dubious moral quality, and the tough-as-nails men that try to stop them. Am I talking about Avengers: Time Runs Out, East of West, The Dying and the Dead, or Black Monday Murders? You decide. Anyway, I think Hickman has a few more great stories in him before he descends into madness and self-parody. In this one, the global conspiracy is a financial cabal who have controlled the world’s markets through black magic and human sacrifice for centuries. The pale antagonist is a silent enforcer sent by the dark god Mammon, and the tough as nails dudes are played by a gritty streetwise detective and an economics professor. Do you like crazy concepts, florid language, bold graphic design, and just a little bit of sex and violence? This is the series for you.
2. Doom Patrol – Whenever I pick up a new comic book series, I expect it to be good, weird, or preferably both. Gerard Way (yes, that Gerard Way from My Chemical Romance) has led the flagship title of DC’s Young Animal imprint to some really bizarre and excellent heights this year. In this story, we follow a young paramedic (Casey Brinke) who gets sucked into the gravity well of Grant Morrison-era gonzo Doom Patrol, and joins their number after a truly convoluted existential crisis involving a race of corporate aliens plotting to grind up a sentient city into fast food burger meat. And it only gets weirder from there. This series has been unfortunately delayed several times due to scheduling conflicts (Way is producing one of his earlier comic series for NetFlix, editing the Young Animal imprint, and creating at least 20% of the merchandise at Hot Topic), but it’s definitely been worth waiting for.
1. Mister Miracle – Oh look, it’s Tom King again. See, I told you he was on fire. Remember what I said about taking a C-list character on a 12-issue journey, navigating through some heavy concepts along the way? Here is Exhibit A. In this series, we follow Scott Free, the greatest escape artist of two worlds, as he tries to escape the most diabolical trap of all – life itself. After he fails a suicide attempt (or does he?), Scott is conscripted into returning home to New Genesis to wage war against the evil forces of Apokalips (fite fite). Despite this seemingly epic synopsis, this conflict is just a backdrop for the real story of Scott navigating through his personal feelings of self-doubt and dread as he questions the reality of his existence. Small moments between Scott and his wife Barda, or Scott and his rigid, bullying stepbrother Orion really make this story. Tom King is a master at pacing each issue just right to build up suspense and dread. I have never read another story so capable of creating an atmosphere of peril. You don’t just read this book – it envelops you like a fog of uncertainty and despair. You hang on each page, and when you get to the end of an issue you fiend for another hit one month later. I also have to give props to King collaborator Mitch Gerads, whose art and covers are bringing this story to heights that King could not achieve alone. I love seeing great creative teams come together, and I think this duo is one for the ages.
You must be logged in to post a comment.