THE UNCANNY VADERY

As discussed in my last post, I've been a Star Wars fan for as long as I can remember. I was but a sprout when Episode IV was first screened on ITV and captured my imagination and heart. Star Wars was my world. Well, Star Wars and comics. More specifically, Star Wars and Marvel...

  

But until last week I had never read a Star Wars comic in my life (let alone read an EU novel). Which seems ridiculous – surely this would be a perfect synthesis of my interests? For some reason, I've always been repulsed by the very idea of it. I've never quite been able to put my finger on why...

'A laser-gun' might have had something to do with it.

  

A few days ago, I met up with an old, old friend who I see not nearly enough. He and I were tiny sprouts together, we grew up playing with each other's Kenner figures and playsets, we pretended to be Luke and Han in our back gardens, drew Star Wars pictures, went to see Return of the Jedi in the cinema. Our childhoods were inextricably intertwined with Star Wars. Obviously, I was really keen to hear what he thought of The Force Awakens. But he hadn't seen it and had little interest in doing so. I was stunned. For the love of Jabba, why, man, why? He told me that the prequels had completely crushed his interest in Star Wars, because 'It's amazing how much of the appeal of Star Wars is in things that aren't explained.'

My god. He's right. That's it.

So much of the original trilogy is left to your imagination. Who the Bothans are and why they died. What the Senate is and how it was disbanded. The badassness of Boba Fett. Who the hell Mon Mothma is. Anakin and Obi-Wan's relationship. Tosche's station. What happened in the Clone Wars. Those spider-robot-brain things in Jabba's palace. How Han won the Falcon from Lando. What a womp rat is. What happened to Dengar's face. Half of the familiar names are never even said in the films themselves but came to us via the toys – AT-ATs, Ugnaughts, Y-wings, Bosssk, Gamorrean Guards, Lobot, Wampas, Salacious Crumb...

Who hell he?

This willingness to drop the viewer into a world without feeling the need to explain every detail is a huge part of what makes OT Star Wars so compelling. It's also one of the many reasons why I find the prequels so unsatisfying. And it's the main factor, albeit a subconscious one, in my avoiding the comics and the EU for the last 30 years. I don't want to someone else to fill in the gaps for me, because the gaps are where quite a bit of the fun lies.

If the OT taught us anything, it's that not everything needs to be spelled out, while the prequels explained too much. Yet one of the recurring complaints I've read about The Force Awakens is that not enough is explained or resolved, and too much is left open for the sequels. Needless to say, I don’t think this is a problem – we're now in an age of serialised movie storytelling, and I embrace the wider scope of that. I'm all for movies working in isolation, but I'm equally excited about them working towards something bigger. TFA gets the balance right, and in leaving a number of questions unanswered, it opens up a lot of directions in which modern Star Wars can go.

All of this is a very long-winded, circumlocutory way of saying that I recently read the first two trades of Marvel’s new Star Wars and Darth Vader series. Set just after A New Hope, these intertwining stories follow Luke, Han, Leia et al as they mount a raid on an Imperial weapons factory, and Vader as he tries to uncover the identity of the Rebel pilot who blew up the Death Star. From a pure comics storytelling point of view, I enjoyed these quite a bit – especially the Vader one. Both are rollicking, multi-layered tales that interconnect in interesting ways and explore new facets of the Star Wars universe. And both have fantastic art, from John Cassaday and Salvador Larocca, respectively.

  

However, I do still have a psychological block with these titles, partly because of the aforementioned wish not to have the gaps filled in, but also because there is a slight element of uncanny valley to them. When comics are converted to films or TV, they are of necessity more or less faithful adaptations, taking sometimes considerable liberties with the source material in order to work in a live-action medium. The conversion of films to comics, however, entails a tendency to replicate the movie visuals as accurately as possible – which is, of course, great for purists, but for me often makes for an unsettling, stilted experience, heavy on photo reference, full of designs optimised for the screen, not for the page. Star Wars is, of course, full of classic, iconic design, and I’m in no way suggesting they should be reworked for the comics – but it makes it harder to see the comic in its own terms, rather than an as ersatz version of the real thing.

Ultimately, this is my brain’s problem. And I’m seeking help with it. But the comics are pretty good. If you can handle them.

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) 

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) 

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)