DO NOT GO JENNNNNNNNTLY INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

Sweet Headless Aunt Petunia! My battered nerves are close to fraying and the very milk of my soul is furring at the fringes, which must mean it’s time for yet another visit to the BARGAIN BASEMENT OF DOOOOOM. It’s always a pleasure to dive bonce-first into some 100% genuine comic-mart 50p bins, and this week I’d like to chat about one of my favourite recent finds in said bargainous troves – FF (Vol. 2).

Launched at the end of 2012, FF is a counterpart title to Fantastic Four, written by Matt Fraction with art by Mike and Laura Allred. The basic premise is this: the Fantastic Four are heading off on an inter-dimensional adventure (ostensibly for a holiday, but in reality in search of a cure – Reed Richards has discovered that the team’s powers are killing them). In theory, their time-bending jaunt will mean they’ll be gone for a year from their perspective, but only four minutes in the ‘real’ world. Knowing all too well how often these kinds of things don’t go quite according to plan, given the unreliability of his ad-hoc doohickeys, Reed decides to appoint a team of pinch-hitters to fill in during the purported 240-second absence – both as a superhero team, and as mentors to the gifted kids of the Future Foundation (it’s complicated… see Hickman’s vast and glorious run on the previous volumes of Fantastic Four/FF). Each member gets to pick their own replacement: Reed selects Scott Lang, the second Ant-Man; Sue chooses Medusa, queen of the Inhumans; Ben turns to old friend Jennifer Walters, the Sensational and/or Savage She-Hulk; and Johnny forgets what he’s supposed to be doing and at the last minute appoints his pop-star girlfriend Darla Deering, who is kitted out with Ben’s old Thing exoskeleton (sans head).

So let’s get this straight: Matt Fraction, the Allreds, Ant-Man, She-Hulk, an Inhuman and a pink-haired female Thing. That there list comprises seven of my favourite things in the comics world. So why, in the name of Spragg the Living Hill, did I not pick this up at the time? Is it possible that DC spiked my espresso? More likely, my inner Fantastic Four fanboy was all ‘That’s not MY FF. What is this untrammelled ersatz bilge?’ and stormed off in a cosmic-ray-infused huff.

My FF was all about foreshortening.

As it turns out, FF is one of the most immensely satisfying books I’ve read in a while. Part of the appeal lies in the perfect balance of seriousness and silliness. On the one hand, you’ve got the disappearance of the original FF after their absence, as predicted, turns out to be much, much longer than the promised four minutes; the arrival of a mutilated figure who claims to be the Johnny Storm of the future, the last survivor of the time-lost team; Darla’s crisis of confidence; She-Hulk and Wyatt Wingfoot tentatively exploring their long-dormant feelings for each other, trying to understand why their relationship dwindled. Most affecting of all, Scott Lang is traumatised by the death of his daughter at the hands of Doctor Doom, suffering debilitating flashbacks, his judgement clouded by grief, reluctant to even be around the Future Foundation kids.

Yet, on the other hand, there’s a lot of brilliant, giddy and genuinely joyous humour: Ant-Man and Darla chasing Yancy Street ‘Internet jerks’ through a hotel; Alex Power’s flicking of a tiny holographic Dr Doom; the Moloids’ unrequited love for She-Hulk (who they call ‘The Jen’, or, in moments of extreme collective sexless lust, ‘The Jennnnnnnnnn’); their futile attempts to thwart her pitching of woo to Wyatt Wingfoot; the cartoonishly wannabe-evil and ultimately counterproductive machinations of Bentley-23 (son of the Wingless Wizard) as he attempts to aid said Moloids in their thwarting; the titanic failure of the least threatening Kirby-esque monster you’ve ever seen. There’s a plethora of genuine I’m-laughing-out-loud-and-the-people-on-the-bus-are-scared-of-the-crazy-guffawing-beardy-man moments in here.

Weaving together big concepts and high seriousness with decent comedy is no small task, but if any creative team can manage it, it’s this one. As far as I’m concerned, with Hawkeye and Sex Criminals, Matt Fraction has proved himself the single most adept and fearless writer working in comics today. And as for the Allreds… there’s just something infinitely flexible about their distinctive style. Yes, it’s ultra-cartoony, bright and vivid, a heightened, self-consciously two-dimensional reality steeped in pop art, seemingly perfect for light-hearted, romantic and comedic work. Yet, as their time on Madman and X-Force/X-Statix showed, this aesthetic is curiously well-suited to high drama, serious issues, even mind-shredding horror. At its fringes, the Allreds’ work edges into the indie-cult style of someone like Daniel Clowes or Charles Burns – there’s an eerie, disturbing potential in these bright, wholesome renditions that lends an extra, truly upsetting power to scenes such as those depicting Scott Lang’s grief. Rather than undercutting the emotional heft of these pieces, it provides a juxtaposition that amplifies them. And there are moments of pure visual-design genius too, which revel in the unique possibilities of the comics medium – see Scott and Darla’s chase scene in #3, the Wyatt/Jen dance sequence in #4, or the multi-layered newspaper front page in the same issue.

As the first few issues close, with the prospect of a doomed mission, a possible impostor, a traitor in their ranks, and multiple interpersonal dramas, I’m gasping to catch up and kicking myself that I haven’t done so already. Yet it’s a bittersweet future ahead of me, as the book was cancelled with #16. A shame, but a smattering of Fraction-Allred is infinitely better than no Fraction-Allred.

(originally published on The Big Glasgow Comic Page) 

OSTENTATIOUSLY MASSIVE AZURE COIFFURE

Happy Friday, autonomous human units! It’s the end of another week of prodigious blister-acquisition due to ceaselessly operating a minor spitvalve on the underside of the capitalist world-engine, so what better time to revel in the joys of some really bloody cheap comics, as showcased here, in my BARGAIN BASEMENT OF DOOOOOOM? This week, we’re getting more up to date than we’ve ever been before, with O.M.A.C.

  

Many of the titles showcased in this column were bought long, long ago – but I recently obtained the first two issues of this series from the fantastically fertile 50p boxes at City Centre Comics, Glasgow.

Now, I’ve not been much of a fan of what I’ve read of DC’s New 52. While the relaunch has produced some interesting titles (Animal Man, Aquaman, probably some other men beginning with A), there’ve been some stunningly unjustifiable stinkers too (my eyes are still seared and bloody from the unconscionable horrors of Firestorm, Stormwatch, Deathstroke, Hawk & Dove and Red Hood & the Outlaws). O.M.A.C., written by Dan Didio and drawn by Keith Giffen, was one that passed me by the first time round.

Originally created by Jack Kirby in 1974, OMAC (One-Man Army Corps) was a fairly offbeat sci-fi book starring Buddy Blank, a corporate drone in an antiseptic future dystopia, who is turned into a mohawked super-soldier by a sentient satellite called Brother Eye. The series lasted just eight issues before being cancelled, after which OMAC had an extremely brief (one-issue!) stint as a back up feature in Kamandi (he was revealed to be Kamandi’s grandfather) and later in a few issues of Warlord. The character then all-but disappeared until the early 1990s, with a prestige-format series by John Byrne. In the 2000s, the OMAC concept was revived, brought into DC’s present and rejigged in connection with Infinite Crisis – as a kind of techno-organic virus that turned people into metahuman-killing cyborgs, again controlled by the Brother Eye satellite (which was now created by Batman), which in turn was controlled by Maxwell Lord, head of the shadowy Checkmate organisation.

Bringing together elements from both realisations of the concept, the New 52 O.M.A.C. focuses on one Kevin Kho, an unremarkable worker for the science corporation Cadmus. Unbeknownst to him, Kevin has been infected with the O.M.A.C. virus, which at inopportune moments turns him into a giant, electric-blue mohawked monster-man with a very limited vocabulary, unquestioningly carrying out the programming of its mysterious master. The first issue’s plot is pretty thin. Kevin has gone missing from his desk. A giant electric-blue monster-guy rips through the building, guided by an unseen voice, in search of Cadmus’s mainframe. Along the way, he encounters and fights some brilliantly ridiculous creations from Jack Kirby’s Fourth World. He gets what he came for, disappears, leaving a bewildered Kevin Kho in a pile of rubble. In the second issue, we see Kevin learning a little more about what’s happened to him, before once more being turned against his will into O.M.A.C. in order to take down an updated version of the Amazing Man (DC’s take on the Absorbing Man).

If all of this sounds pretty flimsy and silly – well, it might just be. Much moreso than the original OMAC, the central concept and story structure – man-turns-into-a-super-strong-engine-of-destruction, shouting and devastation ensues – is essentially a high-tech version of the Hulk mythos, all wrapped up in freakily conspiratorial sci-fi gubbins. But this series has a secret weapon – and it’s called Keith Giffen. Having never been tempted by OMAC before, it was Giffen’s involvement that piqued my interest. I’ve been a fan of his artwork since first encountering it on Legion of Super-Heroes way back in the dawn of time. He’s a penciller with a constantly evolving style, but here he’s going back to his – and O.M.A.C.’s – roots. Essentially, the book is one big, joyous and stunningly blatant homage to Jack Kirby. Everything from the main character and his supporting cast to the artwork and the sound effects are steeped in Kirby lore. 

Giffen is clearly having a blast here, taking the completely wild energy, psychedelic touches and distinctive ultra-dynamic style of Kirby in his prime and amping them up to absurd levels. O.M.A.C wreaks incalculable, surprisingly brutal havoc while doing the dubious bidding of Brother Eye, his five-foot-tall metallic mohawk literally crackling with energy while he does so. The first issue has some fantastic Kirby-style adversaries, too, including a sexy albeit gun-faced lady android and voracious synthetic lifeforms known as Gobblers. His human side completely subsumed by the obedient cyber-monster, O.M.A.C.’s dialogue is comically functional to the point of being disturbing – it consists largely of him yelling his own name, along with minimal phrases that almost act as descriptive captions: ‘SUBDUE’, ‘HURT’, ‘WEAPON’,‘DESTRUCTION’. And the sound effects… oh, the sound effects. In an age in which such things are seen as cheesy throwbacks, it’s immensely gratifying to read a book unafraid to let rip with such pleasingly onomatopaeic gibberish as ‘PA-THOOM’, ‘BARR-SOOM’ (a nice little reference to Edgar Rice Burroughs, presumably), ‘KLLA-BLOOM’ and even a mighty, double-page ‘FRRZTTTZKKKK-RRAAACK’. 

Ahhhhh. That’s the stuff.

While very much not the most intellectually stimulating read that modern graphic literature has to offer, and faaaaaaar from the most original, O.M.A.C. is massively enjoyable simply by virtue of its utterly gonzo, hugely unfashionable approach to making a 21st-century comic. Though the story’s nothing remarkable, it’s intriguing enough to grab the attention, but the hyper-energetic retro-fetishistic art is just pure, sweet visual nectar. The series revels in its ridiculousness too, with little touches like the titles of these two issues repurposing the titular acronym in bizarre but thematically appropriate ways: ‘Office Management Amidst Chaos’ and ‘Odd Meals Assure Confrontation’.

In a sad bit of synchronicity with the original OMAC run, the New 52 O.M.A.C. was also cancelled at #8. This is perhaps unsurprising, given its niche, anachronistic appeal. But I for one will be scouring the bins to complete the run – and I’ll definitely check out Kirby’s original run, too, see how the master’s crackle and creatures and ‘KRAKA-THOOM’s compare with those of his progeny. 

(originally published on The Big Glasgow Comic Page)