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)

NO NON-BOGUS DOCTOR WOULD WEAR THAT FUNKY HAT

Greetings, frugal fangeeks, and welcome once again to the Bargain Basement of Dooooom. I’m a massive admirer of Grant Morrison’s work, but the big man’s contentious status as a comics superstar/ersatz cult leader tends to mean most of his books are far too desirable to be found in the manky discount bins (mostly with good reason) and therefore fall outside of the pocket-money remit of this particular column. However there is one notable exception – AZTEK: THE ULTIMATE MAN. 

Written by Morrison and a young, fresh-faced Mark Millar, and drawn in a distinctive, cartoony yet subdued style by N. Steven Harris (who doesn’t seem to have drawn much outside of this series, aside from an occasional issue of Batman and Generation X), Aztek ran for just ten issues from 1996–97. It’s easy to see why the series didn’t catch on: an extremely cheesy name, a costume that would have looked gaudy in the Silver Age and a horrifically vainglorious macho tagline straight from a bad aftershave advert. Frankly, it looks like an ultra-generic accumulation of worn-out superhero clichés. However, all is not as it seems…

When we first meet Aztek, he’s a nameless character, new in town. The town in question is Vanity City, a curious metropolis that combines the social grimness of Gotham or Hub City with the design flair of Starman’s Opal City. Equipped by the mysterious Q Foundation with a costume that gives him a range of powers, from the standard-issue to the exotic, Aztek’s first act as a new hero is to stop the stereotypically ’90s Image-style vigilante Bloodtype from murdering a supervillain (Piper) in cold blood. Clearly, this is Morrison symbolically attempting to rescue the medium from its ’90s descent into unfeasibly large guns and impractically numerous pouches. We then discover that Piper was no evil mastermind, but a desperate father robbing a bank in order to save his kidnapped daughter. After Piper dies, the identity-less Aztek, in a somewhat bizarre move, takes on the dead man’s name and job as a doctor. 

Essentially a blank slate, Aztek is a curious cipher of a protagonist, whose only character traits are a general sense of decency, a willingness to learn, a fondness for non-violent solutions (in one scene, he pays off muggers instead of fighting them) and an otherworldly naiveté. For example, it’s pretty bloody naïve to think that you can steal a dead doctor’s identity and just turn up at the hospital the next day claiming to be him, thinking that none of his colleagues will notice (spoiler alert: they do). Aztek’s true identity is not so much mysterious as non-existent, and we see him being created – as a man, as a hero, as a fictional entity – right in front of our eyes with each issue. Those with a bent for waxing philosophical with regard to Grant Morrison’s trademark metatextual gubbins would surely have a field day with this.

In fact, behind the common-or-garden superheroics implied by the mostly crap covers are a whole heap of interesting Morrisonian concepts: junkyard robots piloted by eyeless operators or guided by operator-less eyeballs; a shapeshifting supervillain whose powers make him a genius for 12 hours out of every 24, then render him a moron until the clock turns again; quasi-hallucinogenic technobabble, e.g. ‘thinking the suit into a higher vibrational key’; two temperature-controlling villains (one with ice powers, one with fire), and lovers to boot, who are fused into one body; and themes of ancient deities, four-dimensional space and being flooded with hyper-knowledge that will be familiar to anyone who made it alive through the cosmic enlightenment/I’m so bloody high chapter of Supergods.

As the series goes on, the links between Aztek and Vanity City become ever more intriguing. We learn that the city was designed for occult purposes, its architecture designed to maximise psychological discomfort and facilitate the return of world-shattering elder gods (which I choose to read as an homage to the ‘Spook Central’ building in Ghostbusters). The city itself leads to a heightened level of despair and suicide, and even disrupts Green Lantern’s ring when he pops by in #2. Speaking of which, you know that only good scene in New 52 Justice League #1, where the otherwise outclassed hero steals GL’s ring without him noticing, thereby demonstrating his superiority and avoiding the obligatory fight that accompanies the first meeting of two heroes? Totally lifted from Aztek #2.

Later, Aztek would meet the Joker, Batman, Superman, the Parasite and Amazo, and would eventually, in the series’ final issue, be inducted into the Justice League (with a great initiation scene). His nascent girlfriend suffers one of the most disturbing fates this side of a 1970s Spectre story. We also discover the identity of the mysterious benefactor behind the Q Foundation, which has serious ramifications for Aztek’s career.

Though hardly the greatest comic of all time, Aztek was a lot more interesting, intelligent and multi-layered than its covers and marketing made it seem. It occupied a strange strata at an awkward time in comics history – too weird and low-key for mainstream success, too mired in spandex nonsense and old-school Silver Age goofiness for the Vertigo crowd. Ultimately, the series was a commercial bomb and was cancelled at #10.

Aztek subsequently appeared briefly in JLA, but Morrison clearly realised that the guy’s time was up. At least he let him go out with a big, heroic gesture.

RIP Aztek. We barely knew ye.

(originally published on the Big Glasgow Comic Page)

CHONG GOT THE HEAD-EXPLODIN' POWERS

Time once again to lift that dusty hatch and lower yourself gingerly into the increasingly malodorous Bargain Basement of Dooooom. For this instalment of our semi-regular celebration of cheapie-box culture, I’m going to look at a mid-1990s DC imprint – Milestone. Most of the Milestone series are worth investigating (and are always, always available for peanuts). But let’s start with SHADOW CABINET.

A wee bit of historical context is necessary here. In 1993, a group of African-American DC creators, in an attempt to counterbalance the overwhelming whitebreadness of mainstream comics, formed their own publishing house. Among said creators were Denys Cowan (penciller of Power Man & Iron Fist, The Question and Green Arrow, among others) and the late Dwayne McDuffie (writer of Damage Control and Dethlok, and later one of the main architects of the DC animated universe). Milestone’s remit was to publish ethnically and culturally diverse comics for an ethnically and culturally diverse audience. As an imprint of DC, it came under fire for its lack of independence, but its emphasis was nevertheless on ensuring that its creators retained the intellectual property rights to their characters – a point of contention that the Big Two had struggled to resolve over the preceding half-century or so.

Of the major Milestone titles, Icon and Hardware were the Superman and Iron Man analogues, respectively, while Static fulfilled the youthfully exuberant Spidey role, and even proved popular enough to star in his own animated series. Blood Syndicate, a book based around a super-powered street gang, brought an uncomfortably visceral, antagonistic edge quite unlike any other comics of the time. But it was the second wave of Milestone, a year after its emergence, that brought my favourite title.

Running for just 17 issues, Shadow Cabinet is, it’s fair to say, a pretty odd little book. We’re not talking Morrison-era Doom Patrol levels of incomprehensibly weird, but there’s a heightened sense of mystery, lack of resolution and a general air of uncomfortable messiness about the whole project. Created by writers Dwayne McDuffie and Robert L. Washington III, and penciller John Paul Leon, the Shadow Cabinet was effectively a superhuman Black Ops agency tasked with morally obtuse missions for unclear reasons by their enigmatic leader Dharma. Cursed/blessed with precognitive abilities, Dharma knew what must be done to avoid unspecified future horrors, and was prepared to do anything, including dupe and sacrifice his operatives, to achieve this. It’s here that the appeal of Shadow Cabinet lies. Even more untrustworthy and dubious than 1960s Professor X, Dharma is a tricky bastard and generally unlikeable arrogant git. His motivations were never clear, and his self-professed wisdom was constantly challenged as he sent his loose collective of operatives into increasingly desperate situations.

A refreshing change from the macho homogeneity of standard superheroics, the Shadow Cabinet boasted an international membership largely consisting of women, led by the ferrokinetic Palestinian soldier known as Iron Butterfly. Other core members included Cheech Marin-resembling stoner shapeshifter Sideshow, the embodiment of Cronenberg-esque body-horror, constantly and often revoltingly morphing his body parts into crab claws, hooves and antlers; shrinking pink-clad jewel thief Iota; living interdimensional portal and walking Magritte painting Twilight; and Plus, twin sisters sharing one energy-manipulating body. Also on the team were Japanese speedster Blitzen and Russian strongwoman Donner, who quietly and unsensationally made their mark on comics history as a same-sex spandex couple long before Apollo and the Midnighter.  

Shadow Cabinet’s sometimes homicidal intra-team conflict, combined with some bizarre and sinister threats, driven by a leader with a decidedly cavalier, nay reckless, attitude toward his team’s survival, make this a compelling, if not exactly Earth-shattering title. JP Leon’s art is sketchy and scratchy and sometimes awkward, and relies on a moody, subdued, even murky palette – but all of this just adds to the general sense of ambiguity and unease. Maybe it’s just me, but there’s something irresistible about a new concept that’s born and dies in only 17 issues, especially one so wilfully mysterious, which sets up and then abandons so many dangling threads. As any Bigfoot-hunting cryptozoologist knows instinctively but will deny till the last breath, the real fun lies in not knowing the full story.

Largely due to marketing and image problems, Milestone’s existence was short-lived, fizzling out of the comic-book world in 1997. The Milestone universe, including the Shadow Cabinet, reappeared to little fanfare in mainstream DC continuity during Duffie’s brief time on JLA. Yet some of this singular universe’s characters have had a new lease of life on TV over the past few years, with the Static Shock show and a number of Milestone alumni appearing in Young Justice.

Finally, it must be noted that the name ‘Shadow Cabinet’ probably sounds a lot cooler and more mysterious to American ears. For Britishers, it just brings to mind Ed Balls.

(originally published on the Big Glasgow Comic Page) 

THERE ARE NO TEACHER-TRAINING COLLEGES ON MARS

Welcome once again, grubby box-diggers, to the Bargain Basement of Dooooom. In this celebration of the oh-so-tasty dregs accumulating fungus in the discount bins, we visit a rarely celebrated spin-off title: JUSTICE LEAGUE TASK FORCE.

By 1993, it’s fair to say that DC’s former flagship, the groundbreaking main Justice League title launched by Giffen/DeMatteis in 1987 (to say nothing of its lesser cousin, Justice League Europe), was pretty deep in the doldrums. Conceived by writer David Micheline, Task Force was an attempt to bring some fresh energy to the franchise. It’s very much two completely distinct books sharing one title. The original concept was a superpowered riff on Mission: Impossible, in which a slightly shady UN representative tasked J’onn J’onzz – known to puny pink terrans as the Martian Manhunter – to put together teams of specialists for covert missions.

Aside from J’onn and JLA Detroit-era veteran Gypsy, the lineup changed between missions, involving everyone from big guns (Nightwing, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Green Arrow) to sweet second stringers (Bronze Tiger, Dolphin, Hourman, Vixen) to embarrassing, gimmicky non-entities that were shat out of a terrible crossover event that most people quite rightly pretend never happened (Joe Public, Loose Cannon – avoid #9 at all costs).

In its early run, the book’s creative team changed almost often as the team’s roster. This, combined with obligatory derailing tie-ins with the Knightfall and Judgement Day crossovers, meant the series struggled to gain momentum (and readers). But the individual stories are mostly strong – particularly issues 10–12, ‘The Purification Plague’, which found an unlikely ad-hoc team infiltrating a neo-Nazi movement bent on racial apocalypse. This arc adopts an appropriately sombre tone, and is a great spotlight for an ageing Rex Tyler, the Golden Age Hourman (coming soon to a TV screen near you, rumour has it) – who, as a former WWII-era hero, is none too fond of Swastika enthusiasts.

As the original concept began to drift perilously, the entire direction of the book changed with the Zero Hour tie-in issues #16 and #0. During its final 20 issues, the Task Force became a relatively stable team of heroes in training, with J’onn the surly, inscrutable headmaster. The new cast came pre-loaded with dramatic potential, with strong emotional ties between long-standing teammates J’onzz and Gypsy; youthful enthusiasm and ineptitude from the new Ray; and a disaster waiting to happen in L-Ron, a helpful artificial intelligence occupying the body of Despero (a purple intergalactic tyrant/monster, vintage League foe and murderer of Gypsy’s parents to boot). Most interesting was Triumph – retconned by Zero Hour as a founder member (leader, even) of the League but wiped out of history and completely forgotten, only to return as a man out of time. And if this retconned forgotten blonde-haired Superman-type sounds eerily similar to a later retconned forgotten blonde-haired Superman-type over at Marvel, well that's a matter for legal professionals. Resentful at being cheated out of his legacy and reduced to novice status, Triumph repeatedly comes into conflict verbally – and eventually physically – with the Manhunter.

With a focus on the troubled relationships within the team and how they relate to their increasingly distant and alien mentor, many of the stories featuring this lineup have a disorienting, insular quality. There’s little world-saving or traditional heroism going on, just a number of increasingly unsettling training exercises and misadventures. Written by some pretty well-respected names (Mark Waid and Christopher Priest), the story arcs take in Vandal Savage’s organ-harvesting scheme, a wildly bizarre and anachronistic interpretation of Dracula, and a trip to Skartaris, home of 1970s sci-fantasy icon The Warlord. Though not the most beautiful thing ever to grace a page, the art is at least interesting, switching between Sal Velluoto’s earthy, pungent Neal Adams-isms and the cartoonish yet expressively sketchy Ramon Bernado.

For me personally, the best thing about JLTF is its treatment of the Martian Manhunter. I’m massively fond of the big green guy, but before this point he was rarely given his due. Previously treated as a blank Cold War-era Superman doppelganger, a brooding loner or a straight man to comedic foils, here he’s brought centre-stage and portrayed as a domineering leader, a vast powerhouse of considerable longevity and an unfathomable teacher whose manipulative methods border on the cruel. (He plays this part consciously too – when Wonder Woman confronts him about his uncharacteristic behaviour and questionable tactics, he tells her: 'Relax Diana. I'm just spooking the kids.') In subsequent incarnations, J’onn was a spiritual creature, an emerald Zen philosopher – and certainly his compassionate side is reflected here in his quasi-parental affection for Gypsy – but there’s also something appealing about him as a possibly untrustworthy otherworldly badass. Interesting that the New 52 interpretation seems to be revisiting this persona… 

(originally published on The Big Glasgow Comic Page)