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.

GOT YER A BIG PLATE OF ALAN

[NB: The following was originally a series of postings on the Ultron is My Elvis Facebook page, made to mark the birthday of Mr Alan Moore.]

With his clashes with other creators, disdain for cinema and disparaging of his fanbase, Alan Moore seems increasingly difficult curmudgeonly. And it's arguable that his work can sometimes be problematic in terms of gender politics. Nonetheless, this big ol' beardy wizard remains near the top of my all-time favourite comics writers list by virtue of his revolutionary approach to and undeniable impact upon the form. 

Below are five reasons to love Alan...

(Portrait by Frank Quitely)

#1: Promethea

Promethea's a really interesting book in Moore's canon – not only his most fantastical and experimental, but his most personal too. It's an exploration of his ideas about reality and magic and spirituality and storytelling, and the myriad points at which these things intersect, told via the medium of a Shazam/Wonder Woman analogue. Moore really gets to play with the possibilities of the medium here, and you can almost taste his glee in using comics to repeatedly do incredible, eye- and mind-boggling things that no other medium is capable of... like this double-page spread of infinite time-looped conversation.

J.H. Williams III, Promethea #15 (2001)

Of course, none of this would be possible without the unbelievable skills of J.H. Williams III – surely one of the most distinctive, gifted and innovative artists to grace comics since Kirby, Eisner or Sienkiewicz.

#2: Top 10

This and the Tom Strong line are perhaps Moore at his most light-hearted, and it's a real gem. Top 10 is essentially an old-school cop show set in a world populated almost entirely by super-heroes, aliens, gods, monsters, robots and intelligent dogs wearing exo-skeletons. Think Hill Street Blues or Brooklyn Nine-Nine only without the tiresome baseline humans. It's a magnificent, sprawling offering, with great, relatable, three-dimensional characters, sharp and funny dialogue, beautifully lush and detailed art by Gene Ha, thousands of references and sight gags aplenty. And while it's not afraid to be very, very silly, there are moments of incredibly effective drama, too.

My absolute favourite moment though, is a pretty ridiculous cliffhanger splash. A 7-foot lizard-like gang member, Ernesto Gograh, is being held in police custody when his dad turns up to get him out. Gograh Sr, it turns out, is a 100-foot-tall drunk hillbilly monster in an offensive T-shirt. Enjoyable enough in its own right, but even moreso if you realise that this is not, as it first appears, a Godzilla reference, but an homage to the 1961 British movie Gorgo. This film sees a monster captured, imprisoned and taken to a major Metropolitan area, only to be later rescued by his much, much larger mother, who spends the latter half of the film stomping on a model London and pleasing me greatly.

Gene Ha, Top 10 #3 (1999)

#3. Watchmen

It seems to have become a bit fashionable to knock Watchmen in some geeky circles. There are several reasons for this. It's one of the two or three comics read by people who generally don't read comics, therefore seen as the dilettante's choice. Its mystique was ruptured somewhat by a loud and garish (though still pretty good) movie and some needless (though sometimes pretty good) prequels. It's generally considered at least partly responsible for crushing the innocence of superhero comics and ushering in a new dark age of grim and gritty stories. And, alongside Maus and The Dark Knight Returns, it is tediously omnipresent at the top of any list of the greatest comics ever made – but on this point at least, I'll defend it to the death. It more than deserves its acclaim.

While it can be read on one level as a great murder mystery/conspiracy story, Watchmen is breathtakingly rich, literary and allegorical, full of symbolism, recurring motifs, hidden detail and powerful imagery. The amount of work and attention to detail that went into these twelve issues beggars belief – Moore's script for the first issue alone was 101 pages of tiny type. However, all of this does not result in some chaotic splurge of information and flights of insane imagination, but a incredibly tightly interwoven and brilliantly coherent tale, beautifully and vividly rendered. This is Moore and Dave Gibbons using word and image as one, using the medium of comics to its fullest potential, and few who followed in its wake have come close to its ambition or realisation.

Dave Gibbons, Watchmen #5 (1987)

If you think Watchmen is overrated, then fair enough – but I'd implore you to revisit it. Every time you read it, the more you see, the more you realise you've missed. I've read it half a dozen times, but I'm nowhere near close to unpacking it. To read it is to see yourself as a comics reader, to realise what the medium can do for you – appropriately enough, it's its own Rorschach test.

#4. This interview with Stewart Lee

This was the first time I'd ever heard Moore speak. I remember listening to this on Radio 4, absent-mindedly wandering the streets of Clerkenwell. Far from an eccentric, irascible wizard-cum-hermit, he came across as an affable and surprisingly down-to-earth human being, AND introduced me to the wonder of the Super Moby Dick of Space.

#5. Captain Britain

I'm generally averse to flag-wearing characters, but Moore's work on Captain Britain makes for a very odd and underrated read. Unlike most superheroes, the Captain is almost a supporting character in his own book – and not particularly effective, smart, admirable, interesting or charismatic, though not comedically inept, either. For all his (relatively low-key) powers, he's a slightly dull and irritable everyman figure rather than a walking demigod, a guy who tries to do the right thing, even though he's not always sure what that is or how to go about it, and takes far more dives and bruises than his similarly ranked compatriots America, Marvel and Atom.

Like us, he exists in a chaotic world that he barely understands, only his is amplified to an absurd degree, full of peculiarly eccentric weirdness, pan-dimemsional beings, myths and fairytales brought to life, homicidal assassins, insane politicians-turned-gods, unstoppable artificial beings and squabbling aliens. It's his futile attempt to get to grips with the ridiculous theatre of his life that makes Captain Britain compelling.

As an added bonus, these tales are illustrated by probably my favourite artist of all time – Alan Davis (*insert celestial choir sound effect here*). His work is not quite fully formed here, but it clearly has incredible potential, and the slight roughness of it is pleasing in its own right.

Alan Davis, The Daredevils #11 (1979)

KILL RAVENS, SMUGGLE BUDGIES

Greetings, largely agreeable human-shaped entities, and welcome once again to a weekly showcase of the eminently affordable floppy treasures lurking in the BARGAIN BASEMENT OF DOOOOOM. I’ve recently been dangerously revelling in the new Savage Hulk series from one of my all-time favourite comics artists, Mr Alan Davis. Which is as sufficiently flimsy an excuse as any to explore one of his lesser-known titles: KILLRAVEN.

Now, the character of Killraven and the world he inhabits do not stem from Davis, nor from this 2002 six-issue mini-series. He originally appeared back in Amazing Adventures #18, in 1973, brought into being by the extremely adept hands and minds of Roy Thomas and Neal Adams. However, his origins and inspirations are actually much, much older. Killraven – real name: Jonathan Raven – lives in a world that has been taken over by Martians. Not the benevolent and thoughtful seven-foot beetle-browed children of Mars presented by DC, but the old-school, Earth-invading, tripod-piloting, human-slaying aliens conceived by H.G. Wells in his pioneering 19th-century novel The War of the Worlds.

In Wells’ story, the seemingly unstoppable Martian onslaught ends [SPOILER ALERT] in ignoble failure, as the invading forces are wiped out by common or garden Earth germs. In Marvel’s take on the story, the Martians return in 2001, presumably armed with Lemsip and hand sanitiser, and succeed in slaughtering or enslaving the entire planet. Only a scant few stand against the ravaging hordes – most notably, the freedom fighter Killraven. A former gladiator in the Martian arenas, Killraven is an exceptional fighter, who, due to unforeseen side-effects of alien experimentation, is immune to his tormentors’ psychic abilities and invisible to their scanners.

While the original Killraven series was set in a possible future for the Marvel Universe (he encounters the Guardians of the Galaxy and is a member of a future version of the Avengers), Alan Davis’s 2003 version is set in a parallel world-slash-alternate timeline. Yes, it’s variant version of a possible future that may or may not come to pass in a fictional multiverse. Take into account that Wells’ Martians also turned up in Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and you could end up in all kinds of cross-company, pan-universal, inter-dimensional knots. We’re several large steps removed from reality here, so let’s just roll with it. And let’s not even mention the version of Killraven that placed him in the Planet of the Apes continuity and named him Apeslayer. No, really.

The basic plot is this: A young boy called John and his mother are scavenging for food among the rubble of a New York City largely populated by crumbling skeletons. They narrowly evade a Martian patrol only to encounter human bounty hunters, who murder John’s mother in cold blood. It’s then that Killraven and his band of Freemen (M’Shulla, Camilla, Hawk and Skull) arrive and dish out cold, hard justice, in the form of slashy-slashy ultraviolence. The group take young John under their wing, and then essentially charge headlong from one grim-but-weird post-apocalyptic scenario to another, along the way meeting the pyrokinetic Volcana Ash; part-plant bounty hunter Mint Julep; the monster Grok; would-be despot Lucifer; genetically engineered Moreau-style creatures; and a whole host of other bizarre characters – including, of course, those pesky Martians.

To be honest, the story itself is somewhat thin, but it’s nonetheless oddly satisfying, taking in themes of freedom and escape, rising above your destiny, living a life with meaning and dignity in an oppressive world. In an age of decompressed, drawn-out storytelling, it really stands out as a homage to the old school – Davis draws heavily on the 1970s source material in tone as well as content. It’s dense, melodramatic, high-concept stuff, yet for all its speechifyin’ and endless flashbacks and somewhat stodgy wordiness, it really rattles along at an incredible, rollicking pace. And as for the art… oh my.

If you’re not familiar with the work of Alan Davis, a) where have you been? and b) stop reading this and go to a comic shop. A legendary British comics creator, he’s been in the business for over 30 years, and is rightly celebrated for his work on some titles you might have heard of: Miracleman, Captain Britain, X-Men, Excalibur, Wolverine, New Mutants, Captain America, Avengers, Fantastic Four, JLA, Legion of Super-Heroes, some guy called Batman… He’s been in demand for a long time, and to my mind, seemingly gets better and better with age. He’s one of a handful of artists whose name on a book pretty much guarantees that I will buy it – especially when Davis is inked by artistic soulmate Mark Farmer, as he is here. 

One of Davis’s lifelong dream projects was John Carter, Warlord of Mars. When he pitched it to Marvel, they said no, but instead offered him Killraven (which is more or less the same thing). Davis’s passion for the concept is palpable, and the resulting artwork is absolutely, utterly phenomenal. As epic and widescreen as it gets, with incredible, dynamic compositions, explosive action and sumptuously imaginative visual design. Davis even manages to sell the skimpy PVC mankinis worn by Killraven and his fellow Freemen, making them seem like basic, functional battle garb instead of middle-management weekend-gimp fetishwear from Argos. 

There are countless jaw-dropping moments over these six issues, including numerous extended, beautifully choreographed hand-to-hand combat sequences; horrific images of Martian atrocities; the incredible splash when we first see Mint Julep’s eccentric mode of transportation. This is a world in which Davis can – and does – really let rip. It’s an Earth in the future, but one devastated in the present day by forces from beyond, who have perverted this world beyond imagining. He is therefore able to meld together post-Apocalyptic scenes of ruined landmarks and recontextualised 20th-century artefacts; alien beings and technology; weird, misshapen monsters; psychic warfare, bordering on magic; and a load of sinewy gladiators running around with blades. Like Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’ Saga, it’s a book that’s halfway between sci-fi and sword and sorcery, and revels in its hinterland status. 

Highly recommended for aficionados of gorgeously vivid renderings of near-naked barbarian-type people struggling for emancipation in an endless war against concepts stemming from Victorian literature. You know the type.

(originally published on The Big Glasgow Comic Page)