Son of Satan wasn’t available? – The Champions #6
The Champions were one hell of a patchwork quilt of a team. Any roster that featured Angel, Iceman, Black Widow, Hercules and Ghost Rider is one whose weirdness simply cannot be denied. I’m sad to report that Johnny Blaze is nowhere to be found in this issue — off on assignment, as it were — but an assemblage that boasts 100% more of the boastful Hercules than your average runt of a comic is guaranteed to get my undivided attention.
This particular selection (Script: Tony Isabella, Art: George Tuska & Vince Colletta) is one that’s apt for our trying economic times. The villain, Rampage, as the intro page clearly states, is a Law & Order “ripped from the headlines” special:
This isn’t some greedy bastard. Introduced in the previous issue, Stuart Clarke is an inventor overwhelmed by bad luck, a financial downturn and crushing debt. Out to rob banks with his power-suit, he draws the attention of the authorities and the Champions, mayhem ensues, and said mayhem is where we pick things up.
As you can see, Rampage is holding an unconscious Angel hostage. He tells the rest of the Champions to hit the road (or else!) and they reluctantly comply. Or do they?:
Yes, Iceman used the oldest trick in the book, one that’s so old it might not even qualify as a trick — the “pretend you’re walking away then turn around really quick” maneuver.
Rampage manages to make his escape, but not before wounding the Black Widow’s buddy Ivan and hurling a car at Hercules to cover his flight:
I so love it when Thor and Hercules talk about “modern conveyances.”
After all this chaos and with Angel rescued, the Champs finally get around to that “leader” stuff:
How will Herc take the Black Widow’s ascension? Quite well, as it turns out:
Only this big lusty lug could get away with a celebratory hip grab like that.
Poor Mr. Rampage hides out and tries to destroy his power-suit, but his former attorney catches a news report about him on the TV:
Yes, a scumbag attorney is the real villain of the story — more on him in a sec. As a man who’s passed a bar exam in his day, I’m not sure how to feel about this. Par for the course, I guess.
The cops close in on Clarke and the Champions aren’t too far behind:
Clarke, scared to death about going to prison, wages a desperate fight (including deploying the jet pack seen on that Jack Kirby cover) but is no match for the combination of the law and the heroes. He decides to not go quietly into that good night:
Iceman tries to shield his teammates and Clarke from the blast and manages to keep everyone alive (I’m not really sure how he managed to shield Clarke — that seems like a post-plot/art decision to not have the character flat-out kill himself). After all the dust clears that dirtbag lawyer shows up at the end for the coda:
Someone had an axe to grind against the barrister class, perhaps?
Like I said above, the Champions were an odd mixture, though I should perhaps thank Mr. Isabella for trying (maybe against his will) to spice things up with a dash of crazy. The lack of Ghost Rider in this issue makes them almost work as a team, as his inclusion on the roster definitely mucks things up. There are certain characters that can exist in a team setting, and some even thrive amongst a crowd (someone like Vision, for instance). But Ghost Rider? A vengeful hell-spirit doesn’t seem like the best fit for such a thing and might be too much of a stretch. But perhaps that’s the whole point and what the brains behind this were striving for — it doesn’t work so it does work, know what I mean? Like how the team in this issue works, but there’s no real fire (no pun intended). It’s just another watered down group book.
One thing is clear — I have no idea what I’m talking about. At least I know that Hercules is, as always, gold. Have a good day, and maybe grab a random woman around the waist if you get the chance.
One can only hope that Buscema and Thomas also did the kung fu exhibitions at Marvel-Con ’76 . Chops and kicks in the Mighty Marvel Manner!
Hominahominahomina… – The Honeymooners #7
In the same vein as the Happy Days post from several days ago, I’m tickled pink that this thing even existed. Originally a series of sketches on Jackie Gleason’s eponymous program, The Honeymooners may be some of the funniest television ever forged, and watching Ralph Kramden boil over is something that will never, ever get old. I screened a few episodes before writing this. I laughed out loud. Many, many times.
This comic series started in 1987, well (well) after the series ended, and roughly three decades after a short-lived comic that was contemporaneous with the show was published by DC. This more recent one came out at right around the time that I first became aware of the show (take that for what it’s worth) and only lasted for 12 of its intended 24 issue run. While I bought several of these Honeymooners latter-day issues recently, this particular book was the one that really grabbed my attention (though one featured a nifty Jack Davis-drawn wraparound cover of the Kramdens and Nortons at Coney Island). The addition of Captain Lou Albano to the mix was the sort of thing I couldn’t resist. And Ralph Kramden apparently cramming (Kramming?) himself into the lower half of Wonder Woman’s costume (star-spangled briefs and red boots) for a wrestling match was just too tempting.
Before taking a look at the story itself, let’s linger on that cover for a second more. Like the aforementioned Davis effort, it’s a wraparound — here’s the whole thing:
Takes a bit of inspiration from the classic Neal Adams Superman vs. Muhammad Ali cover, right? And like that one, there are even some “famous faces” in this crowd. See if you can pick some out — I’ll get you started: Archie, Groucho Marx, W.C. Fields, the white half of Spy vs. Spy, and Frankenstein. I’ve left a few on the table for your eagle eyes — enjoy.
“On the Ropes” (Script: Thomas Edward West & Norman Abramoff, Art: Win Mortimer & Vince Musacchia) begins when some neighborhood kids almost get run over playing stickball in the streets. Big-hearted Ralph and Ed decide to raise the money to spruce up a nearby piece vacant property into a suitable playing field. The only problem is where the money is going to come from — here’s where we cue the typical Ralph Kramden hare-brained scheme. And it is? Winning a thousand bucks for wrestling and beating the Turk, an hulking mountain of a man who had threatened Ralph at the matches the night before.
They turn for help to none other than Captain Lou Albano, a relative of one of the kids Ralph and Ed are trying to help out:
I realize some of you might not be all that familiar with the real-life Mr. Albano. If you want a well-written, in-depth look at who he is (or, sadly, was), I recommend reading this article over at Deadspin. To give you the short of it, he was a wrestler/manager who wore rubber bands in his beard and came to broad prominence in the 1980s because of his association with Cindi Lauper in the “Rock-n-Wrestling Connection.” You’ll find him playing the overbearing father in the “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” video, four minutes that encapsulate a decade rather well, I must say:
All that led to wrestling hijinks like this:
And this:
Hey, he’s the perfect guy to train Ralphie-boy!
And school him he does, giving Ralph the chance to sweat like a big fat pig and utter one of his many catchphrases:
The night for the big fight finally comes, but the masked Kramden is still no match for his foe:
Luckily, Albano has hidden himself underneath the ring to give Ralph some pointers during the match, and, seeing that his pupil is getting the piss knocked out of him, pulls the ol’ switcheroo:
And:
Mission accomplished.
The money is won, and Ralph, Ed, Alice, Trixie, Albano and Albano’s kin all gather together for a celebratory meal that’s only lacking a “Baby, you’re the greatest!” to make it complete:
Seeing Ralph and Ed rendered in funny pages form makes for an odd dynamic, giving them a feel more like Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble than ever. The original rip-off was the other way around, I know — that’s what gives this that weird feeling. But you can’t go wrong with Mortimer art, and the pairing of Kramden, Norton and Albano makes me think that there just might be a God, and, even better, that He might have a sense of humor.
Chalk this one up to the waves of nostalgia that wash over the American pop landscape on a regular basis. In the same way the climate was right in the late 80s to stage a Honeymooners comic, the time is apparently right here in the present day for seeing Hawaii Five-O getting a reboot.
I can’t wait for ten years from now when we get that Roseanne re-imagining we’re all craving.
The Batman, harried and hounded. And pizza. – Batman #123 (Pizza Hut Collectors’ Edition)
I see these 1977-78 “vintage” Pizza Hut comics in bins now and again (there were two each for Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman), and every time I have the same reaction. It goes something like this:
“Oh wow. This is in great shape. And the price is so low. And –
“Oh. Fuck.”
Despite that initial douche chill, they’re kind of neat once you get to know them. They reprint everything from the classic issues except the outside advertisements, substituting Pizza Hut propoganda in their stead. For instance:
I’m not certain that anything containing monosodium glutamate can be called “nutritious” with a straight face, but I’ll let this bit of culinary puffery slide. This next one, mercifully, leaves out the questionable dietary counsel:
As for this issue’s content, the Curt Swan cover clearly shows that it features an appearance of Ace the Bat-Hound. Before we get to that, though, we have a couple of other stories to touch on. The first has this rather hilarious out-of-context panel (script: Bill Finger, Art: Sheldon Moldoff & Charles Paris):
Kind of makes that unfortunate leaked pic for the new Spider-Man movie seem tame, right? Okay, maybe not.
The second tale is a Joker entry — while I’m not all that fond of the incessant “Ha! Ha!” utterances that dotted his dialogue back then, I will admit that his rictus grin face was the highest-octane nightmare fuel that ever was (Art: Dick Sprang & Paris):
And finally there’s our encounter with (Bat)man’s best friend, in “The Fugitive Batman!” (Script: Bill Finger, Art: Sheldon Moldoff & Stan Kaye):
Batman is a wanted criminal in this story, and Ace and Robin track him but are unable to catch him. The fugi-bat takes refuge with some crooks and offers his services in payment for his safety:
I like the “pleading Batman” face.
He cements the deal by revealing his “secret identity”:
???
All is revealed a few panels later, as Batman double-crosses the crooks and turns them in:
Good doggy.
This is a fun issue, and kudos to DC and Pizza Hut teaming up and putting forward these old-timey reprints at a time when trades and collected editions were few and far between. And a double kudos for including the house advertising — it’s always nice to see contemporaneous ads for the Challengers of the Unknown and such.
It was a tossup as to whether to do this Bat-reprint or the one that featured his marriage to Batwoman. I went with the pooch. I don’t know what that says about me, or my feelings about women (or canines), but there you go. Does anyone out there know how these comics were originally procured? I did some cursory internet searching but gave up pretty quickly. Were they on the box? Did you get them at the Pizza Hut locale? Did you order them over the phone (“I’ll have one with pepperoni, sausages, mushrooms, extra cheese and Wonder Woman”)? The lack of grease stains would seem to indicate that they weren’t slapped onto the pizza itself, if that’s any sort of clue. Just curious — these were a bit before my time, so I have no firsthand knowledge.
Moichandising, moichandising
There’s something quaint about this early 1980 two-page Star Wars spread. While there are admittedly a lot of wares on display, the Lucasfilm marketing machine hadn’t reached the mammoth level it’s at today, where every conceivable sort of tchotchke has been put out or will be in the near future. I’m convinced that, if Lucas now decided to pull the plug (unlikely, I know) on his licensed junk cash cow, it would gain sentience, take physical form and lash out like Skynet or HAL 9000. “What are you doing, George?” You know?
WWRMD? (What Would Ralph Malph Do?) – Happy Days #3
There are times when I’m pleasantly surprised by a comic discovery. Learning that there was a Happy Days comic book was just such a moment. I can’t remember the show during it’s original run all that clearly — it started before I was born and ended around the time I was in the first grade — but I do remember it’s spinoff Joanie Loves Chachi, mainly because there was a commercial for it on the old dubbed VHS tape I had of the Christopher Reeve Superman. It went something like this:
I liked the Happy Days. It was/is sort of like Neil Gaiman in this regard — nobody dislikes Gaiman, and nobody dislikes Happy Days. Its name was “Happy Days” for Chrissakes. Its fuzzy, affectionate look at a bygone time, whose remembered felicity — if we take away the nostalgia — likely never truly existed, is sweet without being overly saccharine. And it gave us the Fonz, a man whose every word seemed to add to the American lingo. Who among us hasn’t tried to kickstart a stubborn appliance with a Fonzarelli-like smack?
Can the comic live up to all that without devolving into an Archie rip-off?
Not really, but I thank the folks behind it for trying. Let’s have a look at this one.
The first story, “Male Fraud,” features art from Bill Williams (ditto with the other two stories presented) and has Fonz-lite Chachi concocting a scheme to feast off his smooth cousin’s romantic scraps:
It doesn’t take long for Fonzie to pick up that something weird is going on:
He’s a gamer, and he valiantly goes out on a number of the dates (while Chachi secretly takes out those gals that get left behind), but eventually even the inexhaustible machismo of the Fonz is spent. One of the disappointed scam-ees gives him a vital clue as to the source of his troubles:
With a little help from red-headed pal Richie Cunningham, Fonz gets to the bottom of this chicanery and puts an end to it as only a Fonz can:
Arthur Fonzarelli is also (surprise!) the star of the next story, “Framed!” Things start going missing (including Mrs. Cunningham’s “Mother of the Year” trophy) from various people’s houses in Riverd-, I mean Milwaukee, and a leather jacket-clad thief is seen fleeing the scene in each instance. When some tools go missing at Fonzie’s mechanic job, he gets the blame and an obvious clue as to the real culprit:
Yeah. “Dick Fixx” sounds like a perfectly nice boy.
Richie once again comes to his pal’s assistance, and, when Fixx tries to to pick up a waitress with one of the stolen items, he springs into action and wraps up the case all nice and neat:
The final bit is a Ralph Malph special. While on a date Ralph gets a random compliment that really sticks in his head:
He takes the Bogie “likeness” thing bit too far and starts dressing like him and putting on airs, including ditching Potsie’s band:
After thoroughly alienating all his friends, he finally comes to his senses when he gets a dismissive reply to a letter he sent his idol — though the vicious cycle seems to begin anew at the conclusion:
The Archie comparisons are hard to avoid with the style of this thing, though that isn’t really too harsh a criticism. As the cliche goes, this “is what it is.” It’s teenage hijinx comedy. Nothing more, nothing less. I can’t really say that that’s ever been my cup of tea, but at least there’s no offensive stupidity to any of the shorts featured here. And the only comment I can offer on the art is that the Fonz looks less like Henry Winkler in a leather jacket than he does Tim Allen during his Home Improvement days. Not a complaint, just an observation.
Like I said before, the mere fact that this comic exists is good enough for me. Anything else is just gravy. Ayyyy.
You must Flipit
These seem to be the airborne equivalent of the old Bop Bags. Thank God for video games.
Super Chick?
I’ll bring the beer — Marvel Premiere #24
Summer is just around the corner, and that means softball leagues are getting revved up across the entire breadth of these United States. And it’s softball that gives this particular comic its raison d’etre, not Iron Fists or Monstroids or what have you. And not just any softball — Marvel softball, baby!
Chris Claremont, Pat Broderick and Vince Colletta put this one together, and the meat of the story begins with Iron Fist in his “Danny Rand” civvies moping around NYC one fine day. His torpid internal monologue gets interrupted by the crack of a bat, a stray fly ball and a kind invitation from a seemingly two-foot tall Mr. Claremont:
It’s not just any team that Danny/IF invited to play with — it’s the Marvel squad, replete with not-all-that-recognizable faces and the niftiest team shirts ever to grace a municipal diamond:
Thanks to the Grand Comics Database, I can relate that the following folks make up this motley assemblage: Claremont, Len Wein, Glynis Wein, Marv Wolfman, Tony Isabella, Irene Vartanoff, Herb Trimpe, Mark Hanerfeld, Bill Mantlo, Mike Kaluta and Al Milgrom. Obviously there are more names than faces in this particular panel, but I’ll let you sort out who’s who. Have fun. Or not. And it should be noted that (also according to the GCD) Marie Severin drew the faces of the Marvelites — she pulled the “boardwalk caricature” short straw that day, I guess.
IF’s a natural, and his spirits are raised enough so that he doesn’t karate chop this clumsy boob’s head off:
Then the Monstroid shows up and ruins everyone’s good time. Boooooo.
I can remember reading about the Marvel/DC softball imbroglio’s in the respective “Bulletins” and “Meanwhile…” sections of their comics back in the day. The very idea of that inter-company game caught my youthful fancy. All those writers and artists getting together on a nice day to play some ball, well, it sounded like a little slice of heaven to me. Still does. And that makes this little comic a lot of fun.
The prosecutor’s office I used to work at here in Northern Virginia fielded a co-ed team every summer (replete with law clerk ringers, of which I was one), and the big cheese in the office was kind enough to shell out for our team shirts. Instead of numbers on the back, we had sections of the Virginia Code. Mine was 18.2-60.3, which was Stalking (3rd Offense). Har dee har har, I know. Our big game every summer was against the Public Defenders — natural rivals and all that. I’m not sure if it was more intense than the Marvel/DC games, but really, how could it be? I know one thing — with badass t-shirts like those red ones with the Spidey logos, my money would be on the Bullpen folks.
I gotta get me one of them shirts!
This cover will be Exhibit A in the Joe Kubert wing when the Blog into Mystery Museum of Awesome opens – Sgt. Rock #396
I realize I did a Sgt. Rock book several weeks ago, but I’m compelled to highlight the cover on this one as soon as possible. This feels a bit like a radio DJ playing a song twice in the same hour, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
This cover has a visceral power that words can’t fully quantify. The clenched fist of the older brother, his intense look of protective defiance, the vacant stare of the sister, her loose stocking…
You know what? I’ll shut up. This cover doesn’t need to be broken down. It speaks for itself.
There are times when I wonder what the goddamn point of this blog is. Sometimes I flip through some random Image title from the early 90s, or one of the weaker X-books from the same time period, and I question whether or not I’m wasting a small chunk of my life in reading and trying to think critically about all these thin, stapled little pieces of pop art. There’s so much junk out there. And then I see something like this staring back at me and I’m reassured. Re-energized. This cover is the kind of thing that lets a comic fan hold his head up high.
Kubert’s mastery of structure and his gritty inking style make him one of the truly great artists of all time, and that’s acutely true with his war comic work. They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but you can sure as hell judge a comic that way. Especially a Kubert-covered one.
It may be old news to some of you, but when the longtime New York Yankees public address announcer Bob Sheppard retired not too long ago, Derek Jeter had Sheppard record his usual introduction so it could introduce him until Jeter himself decided it was time to hang up the cleats. Now every time he comes to bat, even though Sheppard has since passed away, the soft, measured cadence of “Next up…the shortstop…Number 2…Derek Jeter” greets the Yankee Captain as he steps into the box.
What does this have to do with Kubert? This — I know Joe is still with us and going strong, and I hope he is for years to come, but it would be nice if they stored up a cache of Kubert images. That way, whenever there’s a new war-themed comic (or hell, anything) coming out into the far-distant future, a Kubert original could grace the cover.
Either that or make him a cyborg so he lives forever. I don’t care which.
As a postscript, I picked up the following “I…Vampire!” House of Mystery this past weekend — the little girl on the cover looks to be a not-too-distant cousin of the one above, no?:
He always struck me as a carrot juice sort of guy
Forget for the moment that the brown chocolate milk stain makes it look like the Caped Crusader has been spending his evening eating ass. Yeah, the more I think about it, definitely forget that. Doesn’t he seem like a bit of a health nut? Wouldn’t he maybe have a Jack Lalanne juicer in the Batcave? Bruce Wayne could afford the easy monthly installments, right?
Ah, the days when a brutalized woman could be the source of mirth and merriment – Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #61
The Jimmy Olsen series is a rich trove of Silver Age weirdness. Remember that old Peanuts quote, “Of all the Charlie Browns in the world, you’re the Charlie Browniest”? Well, Jimmy’s adventures are the Silver Age-iest of that temporal lot. They also sometimes present a fascinating little glimpse in the the subconscious mores of the time, and this one, published in 1962, certainly delivers in that regard.
This issue has three stories in it, only one of which (the second) is really worth digging into. Still, a few words can be spared for the others. The first (“Jimmy Olsen, Coward!” by Leo Dorfman, Curt Swan and George Klein) has Jimmy undergoing a “personality transplant” and becoming a simpering wuss, despite being given what amounts to a placebo:
I have to say, I find the “cowering pussy Olsen” more convincing than the “swarthy bare-chested pirate Olsen” seen on the front cover.
Perhaps the only thing of note in this story is how much this professor dude looks like a human Guardian of the Universe:
Now for the doozy, “Olsen the Roughneck!”:
Scripted by Robert Bernstein with art by John Forte, it opens with Jimmy and his gal, that frosty shrew that goes by the name Lucy Lane, taking in dinner and a show. The entertainment is something called an apache dance — I had no clue of what the hell an apache dance was, so don’t be ashamed to click that link back there to fill yourself in. It’s basically a charged dance that features some theatrical intersexual violence. Jimmy’s amazed by the fact that the woman in the dance is attracted to her slap-happy partner, and appears to take a cue from the performance when Lucy gives him the cold shoulder:
Add “I was swatting a spider and the table slipped” to the litany of abusive excuses, like “she fell while we were moving furniture” and “she slipped on the sidewalk.”
Things don’t get much better the next day when Jimmy, who’s just covered a visiting circus/carnival, has one of the attractions tail him to Lois’ place, where Lucy is enjoying a party with games like “Pin the Tail on the Krypto” — those Lane girls really know how to throw a shindig:
I’m betting you’ve already guessed where this is heading:
Okay. I’ll grant that a pissed-off, boxing-gloved kangaroo is funny. And while I realize “Smack!” is the running gag of this story, I think a timely “Ker-POW!” would really have sold these two panels.
Jimmy — of course — takes the blame for this punch, as no one saw the kangaroo and it escaped out a window before being noticed. Is that improbable? Yes. Yes it is. No one noticed THE HUGE SMELLY MARSUPIAL. But we’ll have to roll with it. And Lucy’s drawn out pummeling isn’t quite over yet, either.
Later, Jimmy’s showing some of his accumulated treasures at a meeting of the virgin-infested Jimmy Olsen Fan Club, and one of the gizmos has ominous implications:
Once again, I think we can see where this is going. Our collective foresight is proven correct in short order, when Jimmy’s a passenger on a plane that Lucy is stewardessing (Can I make that a verb? And am I still allowed to write stewardess?):
Later, back on the tarmac, there’s a Snakes on a Plane scenario when a poisonous serpent escapes from its cargo crate and scares the wits out of the battered Lucy. Jimmy this time has to deliberately give her a beating to shock her back into coherence and stop her shrieks, which are attracting Mr. Snake:
Superman shows up, and luckily for Lucy he doesn’t have the urge liquify her face with a super-punch. He deals with the snake, and all seems forgiven between our two young lovers:
“Oh, lover, thank you so much for your relentless beatings…”
Back to this in a second.
“Jimmy Olsen’s Wildest Adventure!” brings up the rear and is nothing spectacular, despite being the cover story. Here’s the gist of this Bill Finger/John Forte effort — some costumed, masked crooks are scheming to dupe poor gullible Jimmy:
And that’s about all you need to know about that.
Let’s return to that middle story. What the hell? You know? I mean, it’s kind of silly and funny, but then you take a step back and realize that it’s kind of not. Lucy’s band-aids and shiner by the end are sobering. I realize that at no point in the story is Lucy being maliciously pounded, but the comedic treatment of her repeated smacks is odd. No one even pulls Jimmy aside to give him the old “if you’re going to treat her this way you have to put a ring on her finger” rationale. Reading this in 2011 certainly arches an eyebrow. Then again, the success of Mad Men, with its glorious 1960s sexism and barely submerged undercurrent of misogyny, would seem to indicate that this sort of fictional ethos isn’t all that far from the mainstream even today. Still, for a comic book, especially one aimed at young people, this particluar plot strikes me as a rather astonishing treatment of woman-beating, even in those relatively Neanderthal times.
I know it seems that I’m getting all in a twist over this. I’m not. Honestly. This one’s cavalier, “light-hearted” take on such a harrowing topic just grabbed my attention, that’s all.
It’s all right there in black and white
I’m writing a Jimmy Olsen post, and I thought these two 1962 ads, found on the inside back and inside front covers, were kind of funky. While it’s rather amusing to have Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis promoted alongside Batman and Superman, it’s depressing that poor Aquaman is flogged twice. And I’d like to know when that “tomorrow” in which Aquaman is a star is going to arrive. If they were real, the up and coming Metal Men probably wouldn’t have been too happy to be lumped in with that rather sad “never-really-was.”
You can’t ram him down our throats, DC. Pardon the mean analogy, but it’s like desperate parents in the old days trying to marry off their fat, ugly daughter.
A fate worse than death – Empire #3
Mark Waid and Barry Kitson’s Empire is one of those “blink and it’s gone” series that sticks in your head for a while. A cancelled independent book that DC picked up and saw through to the end, it was something I had wanted to read since I had first heard about it about eight years ago. A hiatus from comics awareness and never seeing it on a shelf or in a bin anywhere combined to put it on the backburner — it was still bopping around the subconscious, but that was it.
Well, I finally found it, and I finally read it. Verdict? I enjoyed it immensely. Now, I’m going to go into “spoiler” mode in a moment. I don’t usually warn folks about this, but things are a little different when you’re dealing with a 40 year old issue of Daredevil instead of a relatively recent mini-series. Here’s a non-spoiler meta-take. The examination of the villainous rule of Golgoth, a Doctor Doom/Iron Man/Monarch/Darth Vader fusion who has eliminated the last hero (Endymion, a Superman proxy) and consolidated control over the Earth, is unique. Perhaps its greatest success is adding depth to and understanding for a character that at no point is truly sympathetic. While other tales would take an evil man and add a cuddly layer with a Road to Perdition humanization, Empire shows an evil man living an evil life while the evil world he has created crushes him with evil bushfires sans end. Even the one thing that might make him relatable, his outwardly tender feelings for his daughter, is twisted by his cloistering of her, his desire to keep her pure.
And that mask (wisely) never comes off. There’s something of the New Hope and Empire Strikes Back Darth Vader, i.e. the guy who was the relentless uber-villain and not the wavering papa with qualms, in Golgoth. That’s a good thing.
There’s one final angle. I was less than enthused with the film adaptation of Watchmen for a variety of reasons, but a big one was that it took something perfect and in distilling it lessened its potency. With Empire I think there could be a great — and I mean great — film carved out of certain elements, because things could be built upon without stomping on the original. This is not a perfect mini-series, but parts (anything Golgoth) soar.
Now for the one element that really grabbed me by the balls. Spoiler time.
The fiendishly ingenious way that Golgoth keeps his scheming minions (now essentially Cabinet secretaries in his New World Order) loyal is the use of something that amounts to a steroid/heroin hybrid, an addictive drug called called Eucharist. Doled out in a quasi-religious ceremony in which recipients pledge their fealty to Golgoth and receive their fix like a good Catholic would consume the transmuted body of Christ, this little pill gives those favored with it Charlie Sheen-like tiger blood. But the true nature of Eucharist is a mystery, and only Golgoth holds the answers as the series opens. One character (his chief assassin) gets a little too nosy and discovers where it comes from, and this issue more closely examines just how awful that Eucharist secret is.
And what is the secret?
Eucharist is the blood of Endymion, Golgoth’s last, most-powerful and thought-dead foe:
The Empire-verse champion of truth, justice and the American way was not killed. He’s alive, locked and bound in what amounts to Golgoth’s basement, a doorless room that only Golgoth’s teleportation powers can easily access. There, on a regular basis, Golgoth drains his blood and picks his brain for information he can use to further his conquests. The only thing the prone, restrained Endymion has left is his mind, and all he does is replay his final free moments over and over again, dreaming of the things he could have done differently to prevent this tortuous end.
Let me pause to note that, along with drowning, immolation by spontaneous human combustion, being buried alive, and going to a Dixie Chicks concert, getting chained up in some nut’s basement is something I never want to happen to me or mine. Remember that Fritzl case out of Austria? Yeah, I’ll pass on that, thanks very much.
This issue is that writ in a superhero context.
The day of this comic’s events is like any other. After goading a reluctant Endymion into helping him more easily invade one of the last unconquered lands (under the extortionate guise of saving lives by making the victory quicker), the hellish process begins:
But there is one thing that makes this day different. Endymion has finally reached his breaking point. And there’s one weapon he has, one last hope, his “hole card”:
When I was first reading this, my oversexed 21st century synapses immediately leapt to the thought that Endymion had boinked Golgoth’s missus, and that he hoped the revelation of said schtooping would provoke his foe into blessing him with the release of death. The cover certainly helped that leap along. But no. Endymion lays out a detailed case (and some needed backstory), relating how the apparent suicide of Golgoth’s wife changed the game, making this big bad’s tactics more fierce and his eventual triumph inevitable — but for this tragedy, there would have been a stalemate. And Endymion has come to one conclusion:
Someone knew Golgoth needed a kick in the ass and murdered his wife, and that person is likely still hanging around, perhaps in his inner circle. Then comes Endymion’s (pathetic) plea:
The answer?:
Dagger.
The whole interaction has a cinematic feel to it, with the wide panels mimicking a film screen and the pauses and beats providing the sort of pacing that characters need to really sell their lines. Reading it here in 2011, it’s hard not to think about The Dark Knight and the Joker/Batman interrogation scene. The dynamics are obviously very different, but the face-off has some of that same electricity. And the whole point of the series (if a villain actually won and wasn’t the usual moron that squandered victory within moments) is made all the more haunting by Endymion’s degraded state. I see him and I can’t, for obvious reasons, help but think of Superman, and watching him beg for his life makes me cringe. Cringing isn’t something I like to do, but I can doff my cap to a comic that forces me into it.
There are also some subconscious things going on here, things that aren’t overtly laid out but one can very easily read into the panels. One gets the impression that Golgoth doesn’t simply use these “visits” as forays to drain off his Eucharist, gather information, or even to gloat, but instead is perhaps visiting Endymion as a person might visit a long vegetative loved one. Heavy is the brow that wears the crown, and he might very well yearn for those days of yore, when he was on the march and the man whose shadow is draped in front of him gave him battle. A simpler time. Also, the etymology of the characters’ names provides an added backdrop to their fictional history, and gives Endymion’s almost crucified pose a bit more resonance. They’re worth a Google search if you’re unfamiliar.
Solid drama all around.
The Endymion situation isn’t resolved by the conclusion of the series. Though he seemed a broken man in every sense, a part of me hopes that he might one day make it out of that hole. Waid appeared to leave things open for sequels, and perhaps that would have been a thread picked up in a subsequent arc. Alas, it’s been eight years now, and there’s been nary a rumbling from anyone about Golgoth and company. Though I might even settle for a slipcased Absolute Empire, I’m not going to hold my breath for either a rehash or a follow-up.
But I can dream. Just like poor Endymion.
Sea-Monkeys and meeeeeee
There’s something incredibly off-putting about these things. The life from lifelessness bit gives me the heebie-jeebies, and the picture of a happy, nude Sea-Monkey nuclear family sure doesn’t help matters much. I swear, if I ever was in someone’s house and they had these little monsters floating around in a bowl, I’d probably shout “Abomination!” at the top of my lungs and start making the Sign of the Cross in the air.
I had no knowledge of this book until three weeks ago. It was in a pile of comics in a store and I bought it. It seemed odd. Uncommon. Perfect blog fodder.
And then, about a week ago, I read the thing. And remember, I knew absolutely nothing about it going in.
This may be the worst comic I have ever seen. Underline the “ever.” It makes Alf comics look like Maus. It’s an assault on the eyes and brain. It is this:
No, it wasn’t the crushed remains of the Ten Commandments in the Ark. It was an advance copy of Skateman #1.
Where do I begin?
I always like to include at least a few scans of comics I talk about, and that’s especially true with a book that I might take issue with. It’s fair, and it’s as close as I can get to letting the writers and artists have a say. Granted, things might be shown out of context, but outside of posting the entire book (which other people do, but I’m not really comfortable with) it’s the best I can do.
This one…
This one defeated me. I read through it. But I don’t know where to friggin’ start. Really. This thing is a jumbled mess on so many levels. So. Many. Levels. For me to scan something, some signpost on the journey of a cohesive story, there has to be a cohesive story, you know? And there’s none of that here.
Before I really gave up on pulling a lot of scans, the following was one that I selected. I thought some Adams-philes would like its mosaic of action:
Believe me, it’s all downhill after that. A hero on roller skates is the least of the problems here.
The structure of this book is an absolute nightmare, one in which you spend most of your time wondering “Who are these people and why do I care?” The story starts in the middle of “action” and ends just as Skateman rescues someone we don’t give a rat’s posterior about as a building blows up behind them. Along the way the tale flips timeframes from flashback to present-day, always a dangerous prospect when the reader is already drifting in and out of consciousness.
Then there’s the coloring. Coloring in a comic is like refereeing in sports — you only notice it when it’s bad.
Skateman‘s coloring is coloring that you notice.
You know those “paint with water” books? The ones for real little kids, where all they have to do is take a wet paintbrush to the page because the colors are already in the paper? Do you know/remember how blah and crappy the pictures look when they’re all done? Well, this whole goddamn thing looks like it was colored that way.
Then there’s the origin, which is so overblown it somehow adds up to 110% of the content here. It makes a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie’s backstory look cerebral. It’s done in horribly turgid exposition, with service in Vietnam, murdered army buddies, slain girlfriends, biker gangs, inspiration from a kid reading a comic book, and Lord knows what else. Every cliche is thrown at the wall, whether it’s going to stick or not. Here’s the first page of said backstory to give you a feel — I double dog dare you to read it and not pinch the bridge of your nose and wince:
I could go on and on about so much more. But really — why bother?
I am tired. I am worn out. If this is a good comic, then Cocktail and Road House are cinematic high points. And guess what — there are backup stories within. As if this crap wasn’t enough. But I retire from the field a defeated man, leaving those to hardier souls than I.
Allow me to say a few things before closing up shop. I respect Neal Adams. I’m not a devotee, but I admire his contributions to the comics world. I also respect independent publishers, those hardy souls who try to make hay outside the cozy confines of the Marvel/DC citadel. I understand and have great sympathy with folks attempting to create an independent hero book without having the usual catcalls of “seen it” and “been there, done that” rain down upon them, snarky comments from drips like me, the Statlers and Waldorfs of the world.
But those things do not change the fact that this thing sucks. Bad. And it wasn’t Rob Liefeld on a bad day coming up with this. It was Neal “I created the goddamn modern Batman and ushered in a new era of comics” Adams. The best hitters in baseball strike out now and again, but this is like striking out and accidentally letting go of your bat and having it sail into the stands and impale someone. This may be the craziest thing Adams has ever done, and I’m talking about a guy who made his own DVDs promoting a pseudo-science crackpot theory about “the expanding Earth.”
For a similarly befuddled look at the Skateman monstrosity, check here. There are some more scans there and some talk about the backup stuff — if you’re a glutton for punishment like me, knock yourself out. Raiders of the Lost Ark found it’s way into that post as well, though for a different reason. Perhaps there’s some Jungian blog imperative to cite the awesome whilst wallowing in the fetid.
All right. Enough. I’m tapping out.
Jared
blog into mystery 
