DRESSING LIKE A SIX-FOOT PARROT IS HARDLY INCONSPICUOUS

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.

WITH APOLOGIES TO MR NEBULA

This ’ere cosmic sundial indicates that it’s once again time to unfurl my bristly spiralled proboscis and use it to pick the rusty lock that needlessly secures the BARGAIN BASEMENT OF DOOOOOM. After a couple of Marvel-tastic instalments, it’s time to head back across the Bleed in search of cheapo-bin booty. Whenever I think DC, the first title that pops into my head is Justice League – and it’s a pretty close-run thing between the Giffen/DeMatteis and Grant Morrison incarnations of the team. 

Closely followed by the Detroit era. I'm only human.

Today, I’m going to take a look at a very much lesser-known title in the Justice League family. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, the Giffen/DeMatteis League was big news, and led to a number of spin-off titles, including Justice League Europe, the Martian Manhunter mini series, a Huntress special, Mr Miracle, Justice League Task Force and JUSTICE LEAGUE QUARTERLY. This meaty, 84-page fifth-week title, published (appropriately enough) four times a year, ran for 17 issues between 1990 and 1994. Most were anthology editions, though a handful consisted of one long story. And it’s fair to say that the majority were a big ol’ pile of G’Nort droppings. Lame, lazy stories, shockingly weak artwork, tenth-tier characters. Was the world really crying out for Praxis, Jack O’Lantern, Rising Sun and Stinky the Cat solo adventures? Who? Exactly.

Mind you, it was at least an attempt to branch out and diversify, and some pretty big names contributed to this thing: Mark Waid, William Messner-Loebs, Dave Cockrum, Phil Jimenez – and Mike Mignola, who contributes an absolutely stunning cover to an otherwise forgettable #14. 

And in amongst the astounding amount of unsupportable cobblers, there’s a handful of glittering gems. I’d recommend adopting an extremely selective approach to JLQ, so here are three specific issues that are worth your pentagonal coinage. Firstly, issue #1. 

Set not long after Booster Gold quit the team in Justice League America #37, this book-length tale by Giffen/DeMatteis follows Booster as he is recruited into a new corporate super-team, the Conglomerate, alongside the heavy-hitting A-listers Gypsy (ex of Justice League Detroit), Reverb (brother of the late Vibe), Vapor, Echo, Maxi-Man (human feminine hygiene product) and the aforementioned Praxis (who?).  The team sport the leather-jackets-over-lycra look that would come to be popular in the ’90s, but theirs are festooned with myriad corporate logos, including LexCorp. LexCorp! From a man who used to operate out of Metropolis… not known for his attention span, that Booster.

Booster’s shamelessly grubby sell-out shilling unsurprisingly irks his former friend and teammate Beetle, and tensions escalate between the two teams. Things come to a head when the Conglomerate are despatched to a South American nation state to unseat a dictator – ostensibly for humanitarian reasons, but in truth merely to protect the commercial interests of their sponsors. Despite the middling art and frankly underwhelming knockabout super-powered action, this it is a pretty interesting story by virtue of its pretty astute and surprisingly subversive political commentary, as well as some superb moments of ‘Bwah-ha-ha’-era League silliness.

Issue 3 is another book-length epic, this one written by Keith Giffen and Gerard Jones, with art by a young Mike McKone (lately, most famous for the Avengers: Endless Wartime graphic novel). This is some of his earliest comics work, and while a little raw and embryonic, it’s still fantastic. His is a really unique style, clean and light, a curious mix of ultra cartoony and highly naturalistic. The story follows on from the story in Justice League Europe #15–19 that found the team travelling to a dead world to battle a bunch of extermination-level villains (a great five-issue run, worthy of its own column at some point). During that adventure, the JLE encountered a guy named Mitch Wacky, who was anything but. Formerly a version of Walt Disney, he was a broken man, crushed by the death of his world, and would do anything to bring it back. In JLQ #3, he gets the chance. He and then-former Green Lantern Kilowog pool their tech expertise to build a machine that can travel through both time and space, and they head back to avert that disaster that killed Mitch’s world. Unfortunately, the process is not without its complications, and they find themselves shrunk to a few inches tall.

A hand-picked team of Justice Leaguers follow in their tiny footsteps in an attempt to prevent the space-time continuum being ripped to shreds. Much Giffen-esque ridiculousness ensues, including hyper-melodramatic Avengers parodies, an extremely creepy robot, a flying boot, mind-bending temporal paradoxes and Guy Gardner becoming intimately acquainted with the inside of a dog (where, if Groucho Marx is to be believed, it’s too dark to read). Yet this is offset by some moments of genuine anguish and horror – an unlikely mix, but Giffen and Jones somehow make it work.

Incidentally, I first read this issue while I was at university. It coincided with a period in which the metaphysics class was discussing the implications of time travel and its attendant paradoxes. I brought it up in a seminar as an example of the reverse grandfather (not a sex position). They looked at me strangely.

Anyway… #5 comprises four separate stories, three of which are stinkers. However, the lead tale, Mark Waid’s ‘Be Careful What You Wish For!’, again gorgeously rendered by a barely pubic Mike McKone, is a real beauty – the best of this bunch. Around the world, metahumans are falling ill and losing their powers. Thus far, it’s a bunch of the more interesting early ’90s second-stringers: Geo-Force, Valor, Red Star, Rebis (of Morrison’s Doom Patrol, in a relatively rare mainstream DCU appearance) and the Will Payton incarnation of Starman. Back at JL headquarters, Ice is suffering a crisis of confidence, feeling out of her depth and underpowered – though you’d think that having Blue Beetle and the Elongated Man as teammates would be quite the self-esteem boost for someone who can freeze your intestines with a thought.

As the JL get embroiled in the ailing heroes mystery, they encounter mysterious super-powered men in black and trace them back to an extremely creepy artificial Stepford-style small town. It turns out the power-stealing men in black are being controlled by an old League foe for a specific purpose… which I won’t spoil here. The setup is nothing special, perhaps, but the payoff to this story is hugely rewarding, weaving together both the mystery and Ice’s personal struggles in a satisfying and unexpected way, taking in some pretty sobering meditations on life and death along the way. Frankly, this one story is far too good for this title. 

It also features J'onn twatting someone with a locomotive.

While largely a stinking puddle of boiling monkey sputum, JLQ is not to be disregarded in its entirety. It offers a valuable lesson or two in discernment, in digging a little deeper to find diamonds, one of which is the size of my head.

Shop wisely, folks.

(originally published on The Big Glasgow Comic Page) 

THE ALL-NEW GRIM AND GRITTY BOUNCING BOY

Welcome, wretched and bedraggled visitors, to the Bargain Basement of Dooooom. Time to take a look at another neglected 50p bin gem – the 1989 revamp of LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES.

For some reason, many humans and comic geeks alike seem to recoil at the mere mention of the 30th century’s galaxy-spanning superteam, and series under this banner have struggled to gain traction over the last couple of decades – indeed, both Legion titles in the New 52 were eventually cancelled, and the whole concept is currently residing in comic-book limbo, alongside Merryman and the Blimp. People’s resistance to the Legion’s charms is understandable… the team has about 250 members, half of whom have shockingly ridiculous names and/or powers, everything’s firmly rooted in Golden and Silver Age Superboy-based goofiness, and new readers soon find themselves ensnared in an impenetrably convoluted tangle of multi-planetary continuity stretching back to 1958. And that’s before we get into time travel and temporal paradoxes…

On the other hand, when handled well, all of this makes for an incomparably richly layered fictional playground, one that lends itself to gut-wrenching drama as much as it does high silliness, creating the potential for some wildly imaginative stories. The Paul Levitz period of the early to mid-1980s is probably the best era of the traditionally superheroic Legion, peaking with the absolutely classic Great Darkness Saga (which is definitely worth seeking out in trade form). Levitz’s run on Legion ended in 1989 with the Magic Wars storyline, which concluded in #63. Three months later, the series was relaunched, with Keith Giffen, the penciller for much of Levitz’s run, handling both art and plotting. As the none-more-dour cover to #1 made clear, the new Legion was a very different beast to what had come before. 

Giffen (assisted on plot and script by Al Gordon and long-time Legion fans-turned-writers Tom and Mary Bierbaum) set the new Legion five years after the previous series, in a new and much darker context. The missing years had seen the universe ravaged by economic and political collapse and constant war, the Legion had long since disbanded and the diabolical alien race known as the Dominators were in control of Earth. Issue one begins with Chameleon Boy setting out to reunite the Legion, starting with founder member and former leader Cosmic Boy. As the series slowly unfolds, we learn what has happened to the Legionnaires – some are content in retirement, others have changed radically, while still others have met with unpleasant fates.

We also meet some new faces, including Laurel Gand and Kent Shakespeare, analogues for Supergirl and Superman, respectively, after Crisis on Infinite Earths negated those characters’ presence in the 30th century. And here’s where it gets complicated… in the original lore, Superboy was the inspiration for the founding of the Legion – however, as the Crisis retroactively did away with the Superboy part of Superman’s history, a replacement impetus had to be found. In his Superman run, John Byrne had previously established the existence of a ‘pocket universe’ created by long-time Legion foe the Time Trapper, containing an alternate history including the Golden Age Superboy, but pretty soon everyone’s eyes started to bleed from an excess of temporal anomalies. Giffen dispensed with all this in #4 of his Legion run, in which the distinctly Superman-esque Legionnaire Mon-El takes Kal-El’s place in history by beating the Time Trapper out of existence, obliterating the pocket universe and creating an entirely new timeline. Or something like that.

If the above paragraph leaves you feeling bewildered, well, that’s to be expected. Reading Giffen’s ‘Five Years Later’ Legion is a generally bewildering experience. For a start, it depends on the reader having a fairly comprehensive understanding of the three preceding decades of Legion comics. In terms of storytelling and dialogue, there’s a constant sense that you’ve started eavesdropping halfway through a mumbled conversation. Rarely in costume, with nary a flight ring to be seen, the characters are not referred to by their catchy-but-dumb codenames, but by alienating monickers – Rokk, Reep, Rond, Tinya, Kono. But it’s Giffen’s art that you’ll either love or loathe. Wildly experimental and distinctive, often with characters depicted unrecognisably, in heavy shadow, at odd angles and contorted into bizarre forms, seemingly made of lumpy clay. There’s an almost surreal, dreamlike aspect to a lot of this stuff. Compounding matters, Giffen deliberately offsets the freeform, fluid, nigh-horrifying abstraction of his pencils with the formal rigidity of a post-Watchmen nine-panel grid, which he deploys almost exclusively. Quite honestly, between the convoluted continuity, the abstruse storytelling style and the wilfully disorienting art, it’s often hard to tell what in the name of Mordru is happening.

However, that’s not always a bad thing. While not my first introduction to the Legion (I’d been an on-off dabbler for a while, equally intrigued and repelled), it was without a doubt Giffen’s run that sold me on the concept. It’s true to say that on first reading, with little knowledge of Legion lore, I didn’t have a clue what was going on half the time –but for me that was much of the appeal. It piqued my interest, hinted at a much wider and more optimistic world, one that had been lost. Initially bleak in tone, Giffen’s Legion is both symptomatic of and a response to the darker comics that were beginning to dominate at the time – rather than revelling in its grim-and-grittiness, the series consciously sought to return to its brighter roots. The first issue finds the team at their lowest ebb, and the story that subsequently unfolds is one of escaping the darkness that has befouled the universe. But it takes its time to do so – it’s many issues before we see anything close to a traditional Legion. And even then, not all is as it appears to be.

As impenetrable as it could sometimes be, I still think this is one of the most interesting and most underrated series published by DC in the late ’80s/early ’90s. In terms of art, pacing, storytelling, atmosphere and its handling of well-established characters, it remains remarkably brave and bold, and unlike anything else on the racks at the time (or possibly since). It was, in theory, a fresh start for a fairly major mainstream title, one that for 30 years had been the epitome of bright, almost naïve superhero hokum – but somehow it ended up as a half-remembered sci-fi nightmare, like Bladerunner directed by David Lynch.

So does the above constitute a recommendation or a dire warning? Answers via omnicom (in Interlac, obviously).

(originally published on The Big Glasgow Comic Page)