Al Williamson's Flash Gordon: A Lifelong Vision of the Heroic

Al Williamson’s Flash Gordon
Text by Mark Schultz; Stories by Larry Ivie, Al Williamson, Archie Goodwin, Bruce Jones, Mark Schultz, and others
Illustrated by Al Williamson
Flesk; $29.95

The third volume of Checker’s reprints of Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon is proving difficult to track down (unless I want to spend $70 for a used copy on Amazon, which I don’t), so I’m taking a break from that series until it becomes available again. In the meantime, Flesk helps fill the void with an excellent collection of Al Williamson’s Flash material.

I grew up reading Archie Goodwin and Al Williamson’s Star Wars strips and I was always impressed with how real Williamson’s characters looked without looking exactly like the actors. His use of models sometimes meant that figures looked posed and static, but it also leant credibility to the fantastic stories he and Goodwin were telling. As did his talent at creating lush, detailed worlds. It was almost like these were the real adventures of my favorite Rebels and Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford were just actors playing the parts.

I’d never read Williamson’s Flash Gordon stuff before this collection, but the same traits are all there. If you like his Star Wars stuff, there’s no reason you won’t enjoy this too, especially with Archie Goodwin joining in on some of the writing. But what surprised me about the book was its diversity. All the stories share some common Williamsonisms (giant mushrooms and alien animal life decorating the landscapes, for instance), but it’s interesting to see the different ways of doing things that Williamson employed depending on the particular project.

Witch Queen

I bought the book with the uninformed preconception that Williamson had some kind of long relationship with Flash Gordon and that’s true, but not at all in the way I expected. He did a few issues of the King Comics series in the ‘60s, the comics adaptation of the ‘80s movie, and a mini-series for Marvel in the ‘90s, but that’s about it. The only other stuff he did was some support and fill-in work for a handful of the comic strips and some Flash-themed Union Carbine ads. Williamson’s relationship with Flash Gordon is deepest on the personal level, not the professional.

Mark Schultz’s background material in the book is helpful and educational. The first couple of chapters are all biography, not only of Williamson, but of Flash Gordon himself. We learn something about why the strip was popular and a lot more about why its heroic ideals, escapism, and emphasis on self-reliance were important to young, lonely Alfonso Williamson Jr as he grew up in Colombia with his mom and an absent father. Schultz points out that though Williamson may not have made a long career out of drawing Flash Gordon in particular, he did make one out of imitating and celebrating those ideals.

His first Flash gig was illustrating three issues (six stories total) of King Features Syndicate’s Flash Gordon comic in 1966 and 1967. Two of the six stories were written by Williamson himself, two by Goodwin, and two by Williamson’s buddy Larry Ivie. These are the most like the old Alex Raymond strips with Flash, Dale, and Zarkov’s continuing to explore Mongo and encountering monsters, lost civilizations, and beautiful queens as they do. There’s not a ton of difference in the writing quality from one author to the next; they all do a nice job of following Raymond’s lead, with all the strengths and weaknesses inherent in that. Some of the comments in my posts about Raymond’s stuff pointed out that his stories – while always gorgeous – could get repetitive after a while. It hadn’t reached the point of annoyance for me after only two volumes of the Raymond material, but having read the King Comics stories, I can start to see how the formula might get old.

Flash! Ah-ahh!

The adaptation of the ‘80s Sam Jones movie has a very different feel. Because it’s a longer adventure – instead of a series of shorter ones – it’s deeper than the King Comics stuff. It’s a real story with a beginning and an end and genuine character development along the way. Unfortunately, it necessarily suffers the same problems that the movie did: re-writing or creating characters to fit what they figured ‘80s audiences wanted from a sci-fi movie. The most offensive example is the introduction of Ming’s Darth Vader-like enforcer Klytus, but I’m also not fond of how the diverse lands and nations of Mongo have become separate moons. None of which is Williamson’s fault and I’d still rather look at his version than watch the movie, but it’s a disappointment.

The best of both worlds is the Marvel mini-series from 1995. Williamson gets plenty of room to both write (with some help from Mark Schultz) and illustrate a longer adventure while keeping the general feel of Raymond’s version intact. He and Schultz still indulge in some of the standard elements, but they’re freshened up with some honest-to-God characterization. There’s also a retconned back story about young Flash’s first meeting with Zarkov, which may or may not be cool depending on how you feel about that sort of thing. I thought it was harmless at worst and entertaining at best.

The coolest part of the Marvel series though was Williamson’s abandonment of drawing from photographed models. The characters’ anatomy may not be as spot-on as it usually is, but the overall feel is much more dynamic and exciting.

My favorite stories from the collection though, oddly, were the ads Williamson drew for Union Carbide. We don’t know who wrote them, but though they featured Flash in a series of typical adventures, they diverged from the Raymond formula in the area of dialogue.

Flash Gordon: Corporate Shill

Part of that’s due to what the ads were trying to accomplish: selling Union Carbide plastics. Flash and Zarkov were always careful to credit the success of their adventures to the materials their gear was made from, but rather than being annoying this ends up adding a feeling of realism to the stories. Sort of like the technobabble from Star Trek makes that world feel more developed, I thought it was pretty cool to hear casual talk about the inflatable Bakelite polyethylene tunnel that Flash, Dale, and Zarkov use to infiltrate the hairy ice giants’ underwater slave quarters.

More than that though, the unnamed writer of these things was just really funny. The characters say awesome things that you’d never hear them say in a Raymond script (like Dale’s wanting Flash to take her to the Space Club cocktail party or Flash’s showing a bit of commitment phobia), but it’s all in fun and all for the best.

Though the individual stories each have their strengths and weaknesses, Al Williamson’s Flash Gordon is greater than their sum. That’s due to the picture it paints of Williamson and everything this classic character meant to him. It is – at its heart – a love story and a touching one at that.

Four out of five nervous Flashes.

Uh oh!

Hairy Things

Ape

Hairy Things #1-3: Interesting strategy releasing three, individual issues in the same month rather than a single graphic novel. I hope there's a collected version coming soon though, 'cause Bigfoot vs. cowboy cannibals sounds awesome.

Dark Horse

Blacksad: Funny animal comics for people who don't like funny animal comics. In fact, calling Blacksad a funny animal comic is like calling Homer a fantasy writer. The characters may all be animals, and they may talk, but private eye John Blacksad's world is absolutely real and his mysteries are utterly engrossing. Unfortunately, even though it's in January's catalog, the book isn't coming out until March.

Hellboy, Volume 9: The Wild Hunt: The latest Hellboy collection. I really need to get caught up.

Mesmo Delivery: Rafael Grampa is enough to peak my interest, but this gets on the list for the Elvis impersonator and the words, "wrong delivery man to mess with."

Funny animal Frankenstein, robots vs. dinosaurs, and steampunk fairy tales after the jump.

Almost Silent

Fantagraphics

Almost Silent: Speaking of funny animals who transcend their genre. In this reprint collection, Jason uses his anthropomorphic creatures to riff on Frankenstein and zombies.

Graphix

Kazu Kibuishi's Copper: Copper and his canine friend Fred are always one of my favorite parts of any Flight anthology. Partly because of their sweet personalities, but mostly due to Kibuishi's fantastic landscapes that make up the world the characters get to play around in.

Image

The Weird World of Jack Staff #1: I'm not sure how accessible this is going to be for people like me who are new to Jack Staff, but hopefully it will be. I've been wanting to check out Paul Grist's series for a long time. I mean, Jack runs around a place called Castletown with giant robots, vampire reporters, and Victorian escape artists. How have I not been reading this already?

Rocketbots

Rocketbots: Trouble in Time: Robots vs. dinosaurs and cavemen (and more robots). I want to marry the guys who made this.

Strange Girl: Complete Series: Looks like my procrastination in picking up the Strange Girl collections has paid off. This was one of the first series I began trade-waiting on too, so it's been a long time coming. Can't wait to finally find out what happens to my favorite post-Rapture heroine and her little demon buddy.

Moonstone

Airfighters #1: I'd buy a comic just for the adventures of Iron Ace, the medieval armor-wearing WWII pilot, or Skywolf, who naturally wears a wolf skin. But Chuck Dixon and Moonstone have gone way beyond that and included Black Angel, the Flying Dutchman, and Bald Eagle too. I wasn't thrilled by the Golden Age versions of these characters (or, more accurately, by the racist caricatures of their enemies), but I've been looking forward to this modern take on them for a long time.

Haunted

Orion

Haunted: What can I say? I'm a total sucker for the spend-the-night-in-a-haunted-house plot. Especially when it includes a kid in a cow costume complete with giant udder.

Radical

Legends: The Enchanted #0: I think I'm morally opposed to #0 issues, but I'm helplessly intrigued by the concept of steampunk fairy tales where Pinocchio is a burnt, half-mechanical warrior, Jack is best known as a slayer of giants, and Hansel and Gretel are psychic exterminators. Looks just similar enough to Fables to get my attention, but different enough to have a good shot at keeping it.

Vertigo

Joe the Barbarian #1: Sort of sounds like Life on Mars but with a teenage loser replacing the homicide detective and a fantasy world instead of the '70s. What I like about it though (besides Grant Morrison's being the exact guy to pull it off well) is the fantasy world's including ninjas, robots, star captains, and a samurai rodent.

Hunter's Fortune #1

Hunter's Fortune #1
Written by Andrew Cosby and Caleb Monroe; Illustrated by Matt Cossin
Boom!; $3.99

It's comics like that this that are the exact reason I started this column.

I love treasure hunter stories. That probably started with Raiders of the Lost Ark, or maybe Treasure Island long before that, but ever since I was a kid I've loved stories about people trying to find hidden treasure. Whether it's a chest of gold, a lost artifact, or a hidden city doesn't really matter. It's just the whole spirit of adventure; striking out on little information to try and discover something that may or may not exist.

My biggest fear when starting a new treasure hunter story is that it's not going to live up to its concept. Maybe I won't like the main character. Maybe the clues will be too easy to figure out. Maybe the villains will be unoriginal. Maybe the banter will be more annoying than witty. Maybe it just won't have the sense of wonder that it should. There are dozens of things that can go wrong and often do. I'm so happy that none of that's the case with the first issue Hunter's Fortune.

The story opens with Hunter Prescott being kicked out of his apartment on the same day that his car's repossessed. Hunter's a young kid - early 20s - and his only support is his best friend Trip, who's only slightly less worse off than Hunter. "You can totally crash at my place," he tells Hunter. "With both of us, I bet we can even afford to turn my power back on." Thanks to Matt Cossin's art, Hunter is a good-looking, likable kid and Trip is all starry-eyed and optimistic. Caleb Monroe's dialogue also helps enormously to make these guys real people and not annoying clichés. Hunter's down on his luck, but he's got Trip, whose cheerfulness in the face of adversity makes him a huge asset. Even if Hunter doesn't always totally appreciate it.

Secret keys, beautiful villains, a legendary artifact, and a bear-fighting Russian after the jump.

Trip

By page three, the boys have met a woman named Jessica Lockhart who shows up outside Hunter's former apartment with a limo and a suit. Hunter's been invited to attend a funeral for a man he doesn't know, a multi-millionaire named Max Prescott. He's even more surprised afterward to learn that Prescott has left him sole heir of assets worth over half a billion dollars. Providing, of course, that Hunter completes the one task that Prescott wasn't able to finish in his long life as a treasure hunter: finding Excalibur. Jessica will more or less execute the will as well as help Hunter in his quest.

There's not a ton of action in the first issue, but I didn't miss it. The characters - starting with the boys and including Jessica, Prescott's creepy lawyer who looks just like the Ventriloquist from Batman, and Prescott's ex-wife and her daughter from a previous relationship - are all fantastic. The wife and daughter are the villains of the story. They've been cut out of Prescott's will and aren't happy about it. All they've got to do to claim the estate is prevent Hunter from fulling the conditions of the will. That is, keep him from finding Excalibur.

And they've got the resources to do it too. We don't know how wealthy they are, but the daughter Miranda is completely hot and Trip has a huge crush on her. He's the weak point in Hunter's defenses. And the mom? Sibyl? Her boyfriend fights bears for a living. So, yeah. Regardless of how much money they've got, they're well prepared to take on Hunter and Trip.

Ivan

Not that Hunter's without resources of his own. The only clues he's got to Excalibur's location are an old-fashioned key and a coded journal. There's some speculation about why Prescott would encrypt the journal if he really wanted Hunter to succeed, but Hunter's apparently up to the challenge. He may not know how to read the diary yet, but he doesn't take long to figure out the secret of the key. Which, by the way, is pretty damn cool.

Last week I complained about a sequence in Bizenghast where a hidden lock was too easily found. Cosby and Monroe do it right in Hunter's Fortune. Hunter doesn't figure it out right away, so there's some suspense, but we learn that - though he's an underachiever - he's a smart kid and he's paying attention. He's going to be a good match for Sibyl and Miranda who are no dummies themselves.

What I like most about the issue though is that sense of wonder I mentioned earlier. Hunter is so likable and grounded that it's easy to put yourself in his place. So when he gets out of Jessica's limo to a double-page spread of Prescott's enormous, lavishly illustrated mansion, you can't help but feel giddy knowing that he's just stepped into a new life and a very cool world. The rest of it - the creepy lawyer, the beautiful villains, Jessica (who has doubts of her own about Prescott's instructions, but is cautiously hopeful that Hunter's the right choice for the task); the secret journal and mysterious key - all gets Hunter's Fortune off to a magical start that feels real enough to suck you in and promises much more awesomeness to come. As Jessica tells Hunter at one point with a mischievous smile, "Anything can happen."

And I believe it.

Five out of five mysterious keys.

Hunter

We all do it. One of the things that makes Horror such a powerful genre is that it forces us to face mortality and other things that usually make us uncomfortable. We squirm our way through the experience and emerge - we feel - stronger and better prepared for having endured it. It's a coping mechanism. But we also laugh. There's a reason that another word for "blood" is "humor."

I recently wrote a comic about a vampire cow (you'll be hearing more about that some other time), so I've been thinking about funny horror comics a bit. What are some of the ways that we try to merge the things that frighten us with the things that make us laugh? Here are six examples; my favorites of the Humorous Horror sub-genre.

Charles Addams

The Work of Charles Addams

Charles Addams' hilariously macabre strips may not have been the first time humor and horror were married, but they're arguably the most successful example of it. The Addams Family cartoons being the most famous, obviously. Addams avoided depicting truly evil characters and events, choosing instead to poke fun at death (or just plain misery) and our fear of it. His characters celebrate misfortune and mortality, but they do it without meanness of spirit. Rather than laughing at our pain, they invite us to join them in the joke. Once we do - and with Addams, we always do - we realize that there is something funny about these oh-so-powerful fears we have, even if we can't figure out exactly what that is.

Casper the Friendly Ghost

Casper, the Friendly Ghost

If we're going to argue about Charles Addams' being the most successful example of the humor-horror blend, Casper is the only real contender. It's a very different kind of humor from Addams, though. In fact, there's practically no horror to be found in it at all. The humor comes from Casper's rejection of horror and the disgust that instills in the "serious" spooks he encounters. According to Jerry Beck (in his intro to Dark Horse's collection of Casper stories), Harvey editor Sid Jacobson liked to remind people that Casper isn't the ghost of a dead boy. Rather, "a ghost is purely a fantasy being, like a giant, a witch, a pixie or a goblin." Harvey Comics created an Enchanted Forest full of these harmless Halloween characters like Casper, his tough cousin Spooky, Wendy the good little witch, and Nightmare the ghost-horse. And generations of kids read those comics and dreamed about going there.

The Cryptics

The Cryptics

Steve Niles and Ben Roman's mini-series about a group of monster kids is Casper with an edge. The wish-fulfillment is there, but there's a nostalgic angle to it that Casper doesn't have. The Cryptics don't live in an Enchanted Forest, they live in the suburbs and spend their time doing what most kids do: playing outside, teasing each other, and arguing with their parents about not wanting to eat their dog biscuits (or maybe that last one is just Wolfy). Roman's art is creepy and sarcastic, so there's a dark edge to the humor too that's different from Casper. But the scripts are all Niles having fun juxtaposing traditional horror characters with the life of a child. The result is a completely charming look at a group of kids who - while monstrous misfits - are lovably familiar.

Boneyard

Boneyard

Richard Moore takes a similar approach to The Cryptics by populating Boneyard with relateable, humorous monsters. But while The Cryptics is a Casper-like collection of short stories and gag strips, Moore's telling a longer, serialized story. The human hero is a young man named Michael who inherits a cemetery in a small town. When he goes to look it over, he learns that it's inhabited by a cute vampire and her ghoulish friends, and that the townsfolk want it torn down. They see the new owner as their opportunity to do that, but when Michael meets the boneyard's citizens, he's not so sure he wants to cooperate. The humor is mostly in the characters' personalities and the situation, but there's also a fair bit of drama as well. It's a lovely, too-often-overlooked book.

The Goon

The Goon

Most of the comics listed so far are more about the humor with some spooky elements thrown in for extra fun. The Goon is different because it allows actual horror to stand side-by-side with the jokes. It's sort of like Charles Addams that way, except that Eric Powell is more willing to allow real evil to creep into the stories. Most of the funny comes from the irreverent attitude that the Goon and his pal Frankie have about the monsters around them, or from the occasional ineptness of those monsters, but Powell never lets you get too comfortable. You may be laughing at this page, but chances are good that you'll be chilled by the next. It's a delicate balance, but Powell is its master.

Arsenic Lullabies

Arsenic Lullabies

Doug Paszkiewicz' anthology isn't concerned about balance. It marries humor and horror in much the same way that Addams did, but it's far more mean about it. It's no less funny, but you'll be horrified by your laughter as much as anything you read on the page. Arsenic Lullaby finds humor in Stillborn Sally baby dolls and Voodoo Joe's army of zombie fetuses (raised from the dumpsters behind the abortion clinic). It's vile and nasty and you are evil to laugh at it. But so am I.

Bizenghast, Volume 1

Bizenghast, Volume 1
Written and Illustrated by M. Alice LeGrow
Tokyopop; $9.99

It was the back cover copy that got me. It promised a young girl, a creepy town, and a “terrifying collection of lost souls that leads her to the brink of insanity.” “The residents of Bizenghast,” it claims, “are just dying to come home.”

Meanwhile, the front cover presents a beautiful, gothic heroine with long, dark hair and an ornate, white dress. She’s got large, expressive eyes, but she looks calm and confident. I wanted to see this lady triumph over ghosts while struggling to keep her mind together in the process. Unfortunately, that’s not exactly the story we get.

I mean, technically it is. And it begins well enough. The first page is a newspaper story in which we learn that Dinah Wherever is an orphan who lives with her aunt in a creepy, former boys’ school called St. Lyman’s. The paper tells us that the aunt stands to inherit a lot of money from her dead sister and brother-in-law, so immediately we’re suspicious. And that’s cool.

What are also cool are LeGrow’s depictions of Bizenghast and St. Lyman’s. Bizenghast looks like a quiet, little, European town. Though we’re told that people live there, it always looks strange and deserted. Sort of like a ghost-town version of Frankenstein Village. St. Lyman’s is crumbling and covered in ivy and a flock of black birds flies over the dense woods behind the school.

Where it goes wrong after the break.

St. Lymans

LeGrow is amazing at creating creepy, romantic settings for her stories to take place in. Later, Dinah and her friend Vincent explore the forest and discover a large cemetery with a Byzantine mausoleum at one end. It’s the kind of place you long to find in the middle of dense woods. You could spend hours exploring it. Or even hours just imagining exploring it. And the book is full of these cool, spooky places.

The book also opens with Dinah’s being driven insane by spirits. Her aunt has employed a doctor to come out and check on Dinah periodically, and though he appears to be in collusion with the aunt, he’s also baffled by the cuts and bruises that are constantly appearing on Dinah’s body. He’s unwilling to admit that they’re caused by ghosts – as Dinah claims – but he can’t explain them otherwise either.

The problem is that the story quickly gets away from whatever conspiracy the aunt – and possibly the doctor – is cooking up. It also never comes back to explain Dinah’s injuries. Whatever spirits are or aren’t making Dinah crazy at the beginning are forgotten and replaced by an episodic series of adventures in which Dinah and Vincent have to solve riddles and help ghosts move into the afterlife.

The plaque

At the mausoleum in the woods, Dinah touches a plaque with a mysterious riddle on it. Doing that somehow obligates her to helping the mausoleum’s haunting spirits into the afterlife. If she doesn’t cooperate, she’ll become one of the disgusting, arachnid-like creatures that guard the place. Vincent, being a good friend, agrees to help her, though he’s not obligated like she is. From here, the book is a series of formulaic escapades as Dinah and Vincent visit tombstones, solve the riddles imprinted on them, and use the solutions to find and help lost souls.

Though the places in which the spirits reside continue to be awesomely atmospheric, the riddles are cutesy and their solutions are too simple to be interesting. For example, one riddle says, “In places of fortune/Will you find the lock.” And sure enough, on the very next page, there’s a lock not-very-well hidden in a sculpture of some shamrocks. (Actually, it looks very well hidden to me, but Vincent finds it so quickly that it must not be. Either way, it’s not very dramatic.) The unlocked door leads to great, Gothic manor where the ghost of a nobleman lives.

A page after they arrive, Dinah and Vincent learn that the nobleman killed himself and his true love when his mother declared that he couldn’t marry her. Dinah frees the spirit by pretending to be the nobleman’s dead love and forgiving him for his murdering her.

"It doesn't always have to make sense."

We’re told that there are around sixty of these spirits that Dinah has to help before she’s released from her duty, so this could go on for quite a while. During these episodes, we’re reminded of the conflict between Dinah and her aunt, but that’s just a sub-plot that runs in the background. The real story is supposed to be the spirit-rescues, but those tales are over almost before they begin. We get to visit a lot of cool places, but the things that happen in them are unsatisfying.

Also, there’s not much struggling with sanity past the first few pages. If anything, Dinah’s experiences with the mausoleum help make her more sane because she knows for a fact now that the spirits are real. And she has Vincent helping her. And – eventually – a demonic, annoyingly wise-cracking cat, but the less said about him the better. All this help makes Dinah less interesting, not only because she seems to be coping with her duties just fine (all things considered), but also because it allows her to keep playing the victim. Yes, it was totally unfair that she became obligated by touching a plaque (that pisses me off, actually), but she never takes control of the situation. Vincent and the cat do that, so Dinah never becomes the cool, confident woman I thought I saw on the cover.

Three out of five swamp witches.

Robot 13 #2

Robot 13 #2
Written by Thomas Hall; Illustrated by Daniel Bradford
Blacklist; $3.99

After I read Robot 13 #1 I wrote that "I hope it's not a surprise or an insult to say that Daniel Bradford is no Mike Mignola. He's very good at imitating the style and the colors, but I think I'll enjoy him more once he finds his own groove. His work already has a sense of humor that breaks the boundaries of his inspiration, so I know it's coming. I'm looking forward to it."

Pleased to say that - if issue #2 is an indication of the direction Bradford's going with his art - that seems to be happening. The work's more detailed this time around and he does some really cool things with the colors, especially in the flames of the giant phoenix that attacks Robot 13. That sense of humor I mentioned last time is on display again too, but even larger. As a couple of guys are watching the robot-bird fight, their faces are almost manga-like in their expressiveness.

The first issue looked like Bradford was working hard to mimic Mignola. Even though he was mostly successful at that, it's great to see him relax with this issue and do his own thing. Robot 13's design will probably always be reminiscent of Mignola, but he's drawn more naturally this time. And because of that, he feels more like a real character.

"Excuse me..."

Hall writes him more like a real character too. Not that I had a problem with the writing in the first issue, but the few bits that weren't a giant-cephalopod fight were mostly set up. This issue leads into the fight with 13's having a talk with one of the men who pulled him out of the ocean. The sailor interrupts 13 as he's daydreaming and I love the image of the skull-headed robot just standing at the rail and staring out to sea. That and the conversation that follows humanizes the character.

There's still a big mystery behind who created 13 and what he was intended to do - and there are some more clues this issue; clues that apparently go all the way back to ancient Greece (or is that Rome?) - but I'm glad that the mystery isn't the only interesting thing about 13. He's suddenly become interesting just as himself, too.

The conversation with the sailor is interrupted by the phoenix attack and it's quite a fight. The bird nabs the robot and takes him into the air to duke it out and like in #1, the battle is well choreographed and makes great sense. Hall and Bradford never let you lose sight of what's going on or who's doing what. It's a lot of fun with plenty of punching, dropping, grabbing, riding, ripping, and burning.

Fight!

Since the fight comes out of nowhere, it adds a new dimension to the cephalopod fight from last issue. That one appeared to be more or less random, unless the creature was guarding 13. And maybe it was guarding him, but if so, whoever put the kraken-thing there is still active enough to try to get 13 back via phoenix. And if the kraken-thing wasn't specifically guarding 13, then there's a question about what is it in the robot that makes these monsters want to attack him. I suppose it could be random, but it's starting not to look that way.

Either way, Hall and Bradford have a very cool formula developing for the series. It's sort of monster-of-the-month, but there's a deeper plot that's unfolding and tying the fights together. I hope 13's able to figure out what it is, mostly because I like him and want to see him get the answers he's looking for.

Four out of five ancient, Imperial robot prototypes.

Behold!

]]> http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2009/10/gorillas-riding-dinosaurs-robot-13-2/feed/ 0 http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2009/10/gorillas-riding-dinosaurs-the-cowl-super-maxi-pad-girl-and-the-return-of-rooster-jack/ http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/2009/10/gorillas-riding-dinosaurs-the-cowl-super-maxi-pad-girl-and-the-return-of-rooster-jack/#comments Thu, 15 Oct 2009 03:22:21 +0000 Michael May http://robot6.comicbookresources.com/?p=23767 With the convention season wrapping up, I'm taking a break from longer graphic novels this week to finish up some shorter works that I've picked up at recent cons.

The Cowl

The Cowl
Written by Brian Azzarello; Illustrated by Benito Gallego
Based on characters created by Joseph Finder
JosephFinder.com; Free

One of the few highlights of this year's WizardWorld Chicago Comic-Con was Crimespree Magazine's booth and the focus on crime comics that it brought to the show. On one of my many trips to the booth I got handed a superhero mini-comic called The Cowl that was written by Brian Azzarello. The connection to crime fiction - other than Azarrello - is that it's a tie-in to Joseph Finder's most recent thriller, Vanished. Not an adaptation of Vanished, but a real version of a fictional comic created by one of the novel's characters.

It's only eight pages and mostly a teaser, so it's tough to review, but it serves it's function as a teaser very well. In some of the material that came with the comic, Finder talks about how he came up with the idea and asked a friend at DC for artist recommendations. After describing the style of art he wanted, Finder learned that he was looking for a modern-day John Buscema and was directed towards Benito Gallego. It was a good lead. I don't know if Gallego's intentionally trying to evoke Buscema for this project or if that's his usual style, but he does a fine job in the way he draws anatomy, poses his characters, and delivers action.

Even though the comic is essentially an ad for Vanished, Azzarello isn't wasted on it. The Cowl could have been - probably should have been, by all rights - a disposable superhero cliché. Certainly his costume is uninspired. But Azzarello gives him a couple of moments that are so cool - and a villain who's so immediately wicked and horrifying - that you can't help but hope to see him succeed. Only that's when you hit the cliffhanger and realize you're gonna have to read the novel. Nicely done.

Super Maxi-Pad Girl and Rooster Jack await you after the break.

Super Maxi-Pad Girl

Super Maxi-Pad Girl #1-2
Written by Daniel J Olson and AJ Niehaus; Illustrated by Daniel J Olson
Bewildered Kid Comics; $4.00 each

I didn't get these at a convention - they were mailed to me - but I did see them at FallCon last weekend and it reminded me that I needed to read them.

The title of the book makes you wonder how Olson's going to get more than one joke out of the concept, let alone fill two issues with material, but he actually pulls it off. Or, let's say he fills two issues with material. Whether or not he gets more than one joke out of it is debatable. The surprising bit is that he's able to retell that one joke with enough variation that it doesn't lose whatever humor you found in it the first time.

I'm being careful with my words here because Super Maxi-Pad Girl is either uncomfortably funny or just plain offensive depending on your perspective. More often than not, it was both at the same time for me. Olson's created a superpowered conflict out of the menstruation cycle, so your opinion of the book depends entirely on the amount of humor you're able to find in that specific physical process. The evil Period operates out of his secret Uterine Fortress with his minions Cramps and Bloating. About once a month the trio emerge from hiding - sometimes accompanied by Migrane and Acne - to menace women everywhere with the battle cry, "Make blood flow through the streets!" Defending the female population are Super Maxi-Pad Girl and the other members of the League of Feminine Products.

Olson's art is crude (in more ways than one), but effective. You can't always tell what's going on and he's unsubtle as hell, but there's obvious joy in what he's doing and if you're at all open to laughing about the subject matter, it's kind of contagious. There are parts that make you grin and parts that are even sort of touching, but Olson never lets you get too comfortable with any of it. As soon as you think, "Oh, that's kind of sweet. The mom used superhero metaphors to help her daughter understand menstruation," the daughter goes to school and hits a bully in the face with a used pad. Let's just say that I'm very glad the book's in black-and-white.

The Visible Rooster Jack

The Visible Rooster Jack
Written by Adam Hansen; Illustrated by Ben Zmith and Sara Witty
Space Race Comics; $4.00

I picked up Adam Hansen and Ben Zmith's first Rooster Jack comic at the Twin Cities' MicroCon last Spring and loved it. Checking out the sequel was one of the thing's I was looking forward to at FallCon. It wasn't exactly what I thought it was going to be - no flying whales or clockwork city yet - but in several ways it's better than I'd hoped for.

The immediately noticeable improvements are the quality of the art and the overall production of the book. Not that Zmith's art was bad on The Sad State of Affairs of Rooster Jack. On the contrary, it was very effective in making me chuckle. But even though there were 3D glasses and some fun activities, I commented at the time that there was a crudeness to it. It was a very funny book, but it was undeniably homemade. For Visible, Zmith has Sara Witty helping out and the result is a sleeker, polished look with some at times downright gorgeous gray-scaling that loses none of Zmith's humor. Add to that the nicer paper it's printed on and The Visible Rooster Jack is a damn attractive mini-comic.

By mini-comic though, I mean only it's dimensions. It's small in your hand, but there are 36 pages, all telling a single, self-contained story. That's another way in which it's nicer than I expected. If I understand correctly, Hansen's original plan was to make his comics more serialized with cliffhangers at the end of each, but Visible is a complete tale. It's open-ended in the sense that there are obviously more adventures to come, but it wraps up in a satisfying way.

The storytelling's way stronger on Visible than it was on Sad State of Affairs too. Sad State of Affairs was all about the gags as it introduced you to Rooster Jack and his cohorts. Visible is still quite funny (it can't help but be with these characters), but the jokes serve the story this time rather than the other way around. I don't mean that to sound negative about the first book, because I laughed and laughed at it. It totally did it's job. I'm just impressed that Hansen didn't decide to go for more of the same. He stretched out and told a real story and it's a good one. There may not be any flying whales, but there are goat-people and a crazy, old peasant woman who'd make Monty Python proud.

Chimichanga

Albatross Exploding Funny Book

Chimichanga #1 - First of all, the title makes me hungry. Second of all, it's by Eric Powell. Third of all, it has a little bearded girl on the cover and she's holding the enormous, clawed hand of some kind of monster. I don't know why Dark Horse isn't publishing this; I'm just glad it exists.

Alterna

Adam Wreck and the Kalosian Space Pirates - Yeah, they pretty much had me with "space pirates." But I'll also take "shipwrecked on a strange planet filled with stranger alien creatures."

The Swiss Family Robinson

Campfire

The Swiss Family Robinson - Speaking of shipwrecks, I'm not sure how well this story will translate into comic form, but the pages from this preview are promising. The island looks inviting and I'm already jealous of the treehouse from just the little I can see on the front cover. And as everyone knows, the primary goal of any Swiss Family Robinson adaptation should be to make you jealous of the treehouse.

A Christmas Carol - The art's a little less even on this one, but I quite like the way Naresh Kumar draws the three spirits. Looks better than the Robert Zemeckis adaptation anyway. Ultimately though, my curiosity about it is related to an unnatural fascination with Dickens' original story and the choices people make when adapting it.

Martians, dinosaurs, talking gorillas, and more space pirates after the break.

Dark Horse

Hellboy: The Bride of Hell - Dark Horse is making it really hard to wait for the trade with their one-shot program. I'm guessing that these will all eventually be collected with other material from the same characters, but Hellboy vs. King Solomon's going to be hard to be patient for.

Conan the Cimmerian: The Weight of the Crown - As will Darick Robertson's doing Conan.

Empowered - I have yet to experience Empowered, but everyone whose opinion I trust tells me it's fantastic. Given the traditional graphic novel-sized format of the series, this monthly-sized format seems like it's the least likely of these three one-shots to be collected, but I'm trusting Dark Horse to do the right thing.

Martians Go Home

Martians Go Home#1 - Unless I missed something, this is the first project to come out of Dark Horse's new, much-anticipated Sequential Pulp imprint. An adaptation of a classic '50s paranoia scifi novel seems like a great place to start.

Jet Scott, Volume 1 - And speaking of '50s scifi, here's a reprint of some obscure Jerry Robinson material starring Jet Scott, Officer of Scientifact as he travels the world uncovering the truth behind scientific oddities. John Adcock's got some scans of Jet Scott strips if you're curious.

DC

Batman: The Brave and the Bold - One of the things I've missed most about monthly comics is reading Batman: The Brave and the Bold to my son. Time to play some catch-up.

Cartoon Network Action Pack #44

Cartoon Network Action Pack #44 - This isn't normally a series that I pay a lot of attention to, but the cover has the Secret Saturdays facing off against a T-Rex and a styracosaurus, so it's got my attention. Once I see John Rozum's name in the credits and Samurai Jack in the list of stories, I've already got my money out.

Graphix

Good Neighbors, Book 2: Kith - I just got a review copy of this the other day and based on the strength of the first volume, it's going straight to the top of the pile. Then again, anything drawn by Ted Naifeh goes straight to the top of the pile.

Missile Mouse, Book 1: The Star Crusher - One of my favorite bits from Flight Explorer gets his own series. And he's fighting giant space slugs and shark-people.

God Complex

Image

God Complex #1 - Michael Avon Oeming's always good for some quality fantasy and this series about the god Apollo hiding amongst modern-day mortals from his family sounds like a lot of fun. The first preview page in the catalog is pretty heavy on the captions, but there's some big action on the next couple after that. This might be an unfair comparison (it's probably just the main character's beard and black shirt), but I'm picking up a Mage vibe from it that makes me especially eager to check it out.

Marvel

Spider-Man and the Secret Wars #1 - There are only a handful of people who could write this without my dismissing it as a sad attempt to cash in on '80s nostalgia. Paul Tobin is one of those people, so regardless of Marvel's motivation for revisiting the events, it'll at least be a lot of fun. Plus: it's only $2.99. The similar Clone Saga revisit is a buck more for the same number of pages.

Black Widow and the Marvel Girls #1 - Another $2.99 mini-series by Paul Tobin with a band name for a title. And it stars Black Widow in a series of apparently stand-alone stories as she teams up with other women. Thank you, Iron Man 2, for all the attention Natasha Romanova's about to be getting.

Agents of Atlas: Dark Reign

Agents of Atlas: Dark Reign - Jeff Parker's awesome series about the greatest super-team in the universe is one of the two comics I still buy every month, but if you've been waiting for the trade on it: here's where it starts.

Oni

Crogan's March - I haven't read Crogan's Vengeance yet, but I hear good things and can't imagine why I wouldn't thoroughly love it. Or its sequel about the French Foreign Legion and a flesh-eating cave-monster. Oni also mentions The Three Musketeers and Doc Savage as comparable adventures, so it has that going for it. Which is nice.

Red 5

Atomic Robo, Volume 3: Atomic Robo and the Shadow from Beyond Time - The other of the two monthly comics I still buy gets a new collection. Santa's being very nice this year.

Tony Raiola

Connie, Volume 1: Captives of the Space Pirates - Crap. They've figured out my weakness for space pirates. And obscure newspaper strips. And female adventurers. And Frank Godwin. Also, the sample pages in Connie's Wikipedia entry look awesome.

So, what did I miss? What are you looking forward to in December?

Science Fiction Classics

Science Fiction Classics (Graphic Classics, Volume 17)
Written by Hans Christian Andersen, Ben Avery, Antonella Caputo, Arthur Conan Doyle, Lord Dunsany, Hunt Emerson, EM Forster. Rod Lott, Tom Pomplun, Rich Rainey, Jules Verne, Stanley G Weinbaum, and HG Wells

Illustrated by Hunt Emerson, Micah Farritor, Roger Langridge, Ellen L Lindner, Johnny Ryan, George Sellas, and Brad Teare

Edited by Tom Pomplun
Eureka Productions; $17.95

You might think that a book full of classic science fiction would be a natural subject to talk about in a column concerning adventure fiction, but I actually reconsidered it a couple of times. While I love robots, aliens, spaceships, and laser guns, I’m not someone that real science fiction fans would want to let into their club. Gimme Star Wars and Flash Gordon; you can keep your Asimov and Clarke over there. An anthology of the "classics" of scifi is likely going to need some serious spicing up to keep me interested. Fortunately, Science Fiction Classics has a full rack.

There are a couple of reasons that the anthology is appropriate for this space. First, it’s Volume 17 in Eureka’s Graphic Classics series. That means that there’s no way it’s going to be anything less than excellent in terms of how stories are selected and presented. Editor Tom Pomplun’s got the selection formula figured out and he’s great at executing it. He always has at least one, hugely popular story that everyone knows (War of the Worlds, for instance), but then he fills the rest of the book with lesser known material by a mixture of authors. The result is always surprising. Hans Christian Andersen and EM Forster aren’t exactly renowned for their scifi work, for example. And even writers who are – like Jules Verne – are represented by interesting picks (Verne’s “In the Year 2889,” for instance, instead of, say, From the Earth to the Moon).

In the Year 2889

The second reason that Science Fiction Classics rules is the way in which the stories are adapted. Pomplun’s always had an eye for interesting artists and the ability to marry them to the right story.

Take Verne’s “In the Year 2889” again. I’m not a big fan of Jules Verne at all. He always has great ideas, but a serious problem crafting proper stories out of them. “2889” is no exception. As with all the Verne stories I’ve read, there’s no plot to it; Verne’s just stringing together various scenes to create a day in the life of Fritz Napolean Smith, the wealthiest, most powerful man in the twenty-ninth century. But what Pomplun does is he turns it into a script that emphasizes the action and then hires Johnny Ryan to make it funny and charming. Smith looks like a really smart version of George Jetson and his world is full of awesome robots and flying cars and little machines that go bleep bloop beep! I’d normally have to struggle through a Verne essay on – well, on anything really. Pomplun and Ryan make it not just bearable, but fun.

Stanley G Weinbaum’s “A Martian Odyssey” is another story that’s done an immeasurable service by the art. I’ve never read anything else by Weinbaum, but “Martian Odyssey” is an episodic tale about an astronaut who’s separated from the rest of his Martian expedition and crash lands. As he makes his way back across the planet to his team he encounters a variety of odd creatures with even stranger cultures. Weinbaum’s bio in the back of the book lets us know that it was a highly influential story (Asimov apparently listed it as one of the top three), but like Verne’s work, there’s no real plot stringing the events together. Enter Ben Avery with some modern slang and George Sellas with his animated, pulp-inspired visuals. The adaptation looks and sounds like a Flash Gordon cartoon and it’s just as exciting, pulling you through the astronaut's adventures in constant wonder about what kind of awesomely absurd creature you’re going to meet next.

A Martian Odyssey

Another example of Pomplun’s match-making skills is putting Micah Farritor on War of the Worlds. Farritor’s got an expressive style and a lively imagination that have served him well on the nostalgic scifi series White Picket Fences. They’re perfect for Wells’ story too: emphasizing the human drama while creating some fantastically unique visuals for the Martians and their machines. Rich Rainey’s script does a great job of picking out the best, most exciting bits of the tale. It’s unfortunate that Wells’ allegory about imperialism is somewhat lost in the translation (I guess I do like some meaningful scifi), but it’s a great, moving adventure story and has some fairly profound things to say about how people handle each other in a crisis.

My favorite story of the book though is Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Disintegration Machine.” Outside of other volumes of Graphic Classics I’ve only ever read Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stuff, but I’ve seen enough movie and TV adaptations of The Lost World to know who Professor Challenger is. I had no idea that Doyle used the half-insane adventurer outside of his dinosaur novel though, so I was pleasantly surprised to see him and newspaper reporter Edward Malone matching wits with a mad scientist. Rod Lott adapted the story and if you’re a reader of his book review site, Bookgasm, you know he’s got great taste in big adventure stories. Match that with The Muppet Show’s Roger Langridge and you’ve got a thrilling tale that’ll make you wish Doyle had spent as much time on Challenger and Malone as he did Holmes and Watson. As it is, I’ve now got to track down the two other Challenger novels and a second short story that I’ve only just now discovered the existence of.

I’m not sure what to say about Lord Dunsany’s “The Bureau d’Echange de Maux” except that I liked it very much. I’m not exactly sure how it’s a science fiction story since it involves more magic than technology, but it’s a great, spooky story that’s atmospherically illustrated by Brad Teare.

The Bureau d'Echange de Maux

The most surprising entry though is EM Forster’s “The Machine Stops.” I’m a huge fan of movies based on Forster’s novels, but I had no idea that he’d written a science fiction story, not to mention such a prophetic one. He talks about a world in which people’s lives are so served (and possibly controlled) by an omnipresent Machine that they no longer have to leave their rooms. They communicate with each other and experience the world solely through their monitor screens.

It’s gotten to the point that on the rare occasions that they need to leave their quarters, they find looking directly at things distasteful and touching each other is rude. In this world, we meet a mother who is reluctantly forced to travel and visit her son who’s begged her for a face-to-face meeting about something vitally important. Forster knew how to include a plot with his world-building.

Add in a humorously illustrated essay by Hans Christian Andersen and Hunt Emerson about life "In a Thousand Years," and as with all the Graphic Classics volumes, Science Fiction Classics is as entertaining as it is enlightening. My only frustration with it is that I now know what I’m missing in a world without an ongoing Professor Challenger series by Rod Lott and Roger Langridge.

Four out of five cranky, probably nuts professors.

Professor Challenger

Cursed Pirate Girl #1

Cursed Pirate Girl #1-2
Written and Illustrated by Jeremy Bastian
Olympian Publishing; $4.95 each

On the back cover of Cursed Pirate Girl #1, Mike Mignola calls Jeremy Bastian a genius and declares, “I almost never see work this original.” If pirates and Bastian’s whimsical and detailed style aren’t enough to make you curious, praise from Mike Mignola – who knows a thing or two about originality – concerning the book’s uniqueness ought to. I mean, that’s like hearing David Petersen call it “stuff that makes other artists jealous and comic readers drool.” Oh, wait. That’s on the back cover too.

I promise I’ll get to the book itself in a second, but there’s another remarkable quote on the back of the second issue. Painter Gail Potocki calls the series, “our generation’s Alice in Wonderland.” Which is interesting because one of the first things you notice when you open it is the influence of classic Alice illustrator John Tenniel with his opulent linework and exaggerated body types. Another way of describing Bastian’s style might be, “Jeff Smith as inked by Gary Gianni.”

But there’s much more to Potocki’s Alice comparison than just the art. Lewis Carroll’s stories were joyous celebrations of childhood and imagination. And while Bastian’s book isn’t as nonsensical as Carroll’s, there’s certainly that sense that anything can happen. And often will.

Apollonia and her Daddy

The first issue opens not with the Cursed Pirate Girl herself, but with the small daughter of the governor of Jamaica. Young Miss Apollonia follows her father around Port Elisabeth as he and his sinister henchman Mr. Six rough up daddy’s shady business associates. While waiting on the balcony of a tavern, Apollonia notices an older girl (maybe nine- or ten-years-old; Apollonia looks to be about five or six) fighting with some rough-looking boys on the beach below. Cursed Pirate Girl easily defeats them and – once the girls have had a chance to talk – inspires Apollonia with tales of her lost pirate father.

Unfortunately, Apollonia takes her new attitude to her birthday party, which just so happens to be attended by a visiting prince. Disaster and hilarity ensue, but Daddy isn’t much pleased. He not only punishes Apollonia; he also puts a hit out on CPG.

Cursed Pirate Girl in the Omerta Seas

How that plays out I’ll leave for you to discover, but hopefully it’s not too much of a spoiler to reveal that CPG makes it to the second issue where her search for her father kicks off. The first issue was more or less Apollonia’s story, while the second focuses on the title character. Bastian doesn’t ignore Apollonia thanks to an interlude and notes like, “Oh no! Now what will happen to Little Apollonia?” scattered around in the illustrations. But the second issue is devoted to CPG’s adventure, which does get very Carroll-like. Accompanied by a black parrot named Pepper Dice, CPG tries to find the mythical Omerta Seas where her father is supposed to captain his feared pirate ship. She believes that once she finds him, her curse will end.

She and Pepper Dice catch a magic fish, meet a pair of squabbling knights in swordfish-armor, fight a giant octopus, and get adopted by an adorable sea-puppy. Where Bastian and Carroll part ways though is that Bastian’s much more concerned about plot than Carroll was. Whereas Alice’s encounters in Wonderland were very episodic, CPG’s all serve a purpose by helping to move her closer to her goal. I guess in that way it’s more like an undersea Wizard of Oz, only CPG is way more badass than either Alice or Dorothy.

Five out of five impressionable little girls.

The Fruit Incident