IMPORTANT PREAMBLE: This blog was originally written for the Big Glasgow Comic Page, and was the last of my columns for that august institution. I originally rewrote it to omit all the references to goodbye, sayonara and such, but to be honest it slightly ripped the heart out of it. I'm a sentimental old geek, so I've left all the teary farewells in. They do not, however, mean that this is the final post on this blog. Unless I just can't be arsed to do any more. Which is possible.
Good
morning squishy carbon-based fleshbags and superior silicon sentients. It is
with a weary, heavy and gin-pickled heart that I bid you welcome to the final
BARGAIN BASEMENT OF DOOOOOM. Sadly, I have received my draft papers and must
spend six years as a minion-slash-henchman-slash-cannon fodder in the private
army of a sixth-rate supervillain (please send all correspondence c/o Dr
Demonicus). As such, I must reluctantly take my leave from the BGCP family, but
I for one eagerly anticipate my exciting new life of servitude, mortal danger
and daily personal diminishment.
 |
| I could have been one of Dr Doom's goons, but noooo. |
This being
the last BBoD post, I’m all demob-happy and drunk on love, so I’m going to
indulge myself all up in your face with a whole bunch of Alan Davis goodness,
in the form of THE CLANDESTINE. It’s no secret that Davis ranks pretty bloody
highly in my all-time pantheon of favourite comics artists – in fact, six days
out of seven, I’d probably give him the top spot. Yet, back when I was a
nipper, I never liked his early work on Excalibur and New Mutants, and would
even deride it as ‘cartoony’. What a silly, silly and devilishly handsome
young man I was back then. Having since acquired a taste for his work, I’ve
graduated to a full-on obsessive, amassing almost everything in his back
catalogue, and slavishly buying anything on which he daubs a curve.
While he’s
rightly celebrated for his sumptuous work on high-profile titles such as JLA:
The Nail, X-Men, Fantastic Four: The End and Avengers Prime, his lesser-known
scribblings are equally worthy of laudation. Both penned and pencilled by
Davis, with support from legendary inky soulmate Mark Farmer and colours by
Sophie Heath and Helen Nally, the occasionally definitely-articled ClanDestine
first ran for 12 issues from 1994–1995. The series begins in stereotypical
fashion, with a couple of naïve young costumed heroes – Crimson Crusader and
Imp – interrupting a warehouse robbery. It turns out they are twins, Rory and
Pandora Destine, keen to conceal their covert nocturnal superosity from their
strict uncle, Walter. However, their actions this night have unforeseen
ramifications – and when strange, semi-human creatures attack their family home
looking for a whoozit or a whatzit called the Gryphon, it’s more than just the
twins’ secret that comes to light. Before their eyes, Uncle Walter (a romance
novelist by day) transforms into a giant, oddly proportioned, blue Hulk-like
creature with flaming hair.
His own dark secret revealed, Walter decides the
time has come to tell the twins the truth about their extended family. Those
people the kids thought were their aunties, uncles and grandparents are nothing
of the sort, but are in truth their siblings – some of whom are hundreds of
years old, all of whom have superhuman powers. They are all the children of
Adam, an 800+-year-old indestructible Adonis, who we first encounter sitting in
a hippified VW camper van in deep space, having a little chat with a slightly
confused Silver Surfer.
Like many
families, the Destines have drifted apart over the years, something actively
encouraged via their Relative Stranger Protocol. Fearing exposure, the family
have nurtured their estrangement, taken on new periodic identities to hide
their longevity, and vowed to use their powers covertly, subtly, and only for
personal gain. Now, however, someone has started to track down and kill the
family members, sparking a chain of events that brings these oddballs
reluctantly back into each other’s company for the first time in decades, if
not centuries. Aside from Adam, Rory,
Pandora and Walt, we meet, among others, Sam – a stern,
aloof warrior woman capable of forming metallic armour and weapons; Kay – a
vastly powerful body-hopping psychic with a hedonistic streak and questionable
ethics; Newton – a super-genius inventor with more than a passing
resemblance to Woody Allen, who spends much of his time on an alien world
playing emperor-warlord in a genetically engineered Conan-esque second body; and Dom – a harlequinesque acrobat and stage magician whose Daredevil-dwarfing hyper-senses force him to live in seclusion.
It’s an
extremely enjoyable book, fun but not flippant, vividly colourful and full of
big concepts, family drama and askew ideas, with a very British sensibility.
Rory and Pandora are the point-of-view characters, and it’s their – or, more
accurately, Rory’s – youthful aspiration of becoming a superhero that places
them at odds with the family’s survival tactic of remaining hidden. This clash
between idealism and pragmatism is the catalyst for a series of events that
imperil the family, threaten their exposure (and, indeed, survival), and cause
them to question their status quo. Adam in particular, immortal and
invulnerable, barely even capable of feeling anything at all, a father who has
spent most of his youngest children’s lives sitting in a camper van on an
asteroid several light years away, begins to reassess their purpose.
Nonetheless, it is stressed, over and over again, that these are not
superheroes, despite their powers.
Indeed, they’re not particularly competent
or heroic when they try to operate in the manner of yer traditional Marvel
heroes. Dom finds himself knocked into ecstatic senselessness at an inopportune
moment by the taste of chocolate; Kay alters a man’s memories to illegally
inherit a fortune; Walter has anger-management issues and difficulty returning
to human form. Rory fantasises about saving the Avengers, but more often than
not the day is saved by others – by Spider-Man, by the Punisher, by Doctor
Strange, by the last-minute return of the family patriarch. In fact, Adam’s
climactic confrontation with the big villain in #4 is one of my favourite
‘fight’ scenes in comics – stoic, peaceful, understanding and utterly
invulnerable, he simply refuses to engage in combat and then offers his foe the
opportunity to leave. The way Davis draws Adam in this scene – serene,
compassionate, strong, but also alien in his distance from the frailty of
humanity – is masterful.
Naturally,
Davis and Farmer’s artwork is arse-smackingly good throughout their run on the
title. Clean, fluid and traditional in terms of form and style, but hugely
inventive in terms of layout and angles, brilliantly expressive depictions of
character, and wildly explosive and visceral when it comes to action, this is a
great example of why I rate Davis so highly. Alas, he and Farmer left the title
after #8, and the remaining four issues are completely forgettable, conveying
none of the distinctive character of the book, despite new penciller Pino
Rinaldi’s stilted attempts to ape Davis’s style.
Still,
ClanDestine is very much Davis’s baby, and he has returned to these characters
again a few occasions: in a ClanDestine/X-Men mini-series (which rightly but
snarkily retconned the non-Davis issues of the original series as a dream), a
further five-issue mini series in 2008 and a story that ran through three
Davis-penned and-outrageously-beautifully-pencilled 2010 annuals (Fantastic
Four, Daredevil, Wolverine). However, this mythos has never really caught on in
the way the Davis clearly hoped it would. My theory as to why is this – in a
world full of stretchy people, big green man-monsters, gods incarnate, shiny aliens,
living robots and fuzzy blue mutants who smell like bum gas, the notion of a
super-powered family is just not that outré. The whole point of the Destine
clan is their clandestine nature (I see what they did there!), but that only
really makes sense if they’re the only ones of their kind. My feeling is that
these stories would have much more impact in their own universe (perhaps à la
Jupiter’s Legacy), but are less well served by being woven into the wider
Marvel continuity. This may have lessened ClanDestine’s appeal to casual
readers, but makes these issues no less fun or gripping – or gorgeously
illustrated.
Right,
that’s your lot. Six months, 20 columns and more than 20,000 words later, I’m
outta here. It’s been a pleasure being a part of the BGCP family, who have
indulged my ramblings week on week. My apologies for never quite getting round
to the other titles on my list: Firestorm, Green Lantern: Mosaic, Captain Atom,
Peter David’s original X-Factor run, Hourman, The Ray, All Star-Squadron, HATE,
the first couple of dozen issues of Justice League Europe, John Byrne’s run on
West Coast Avengers, Dragon’s Claws, Secret Society of Super-Villains, Dork!,
L.E.G.I.O.N, etc., etc.… But if you never have, you should definitely check out
these titles. Because they’re cool. Because comics are cool. Never forget.
