Epic is the Name

Dreadstar Omnibus Volume 1: written by Jim Starlin; illustrated by Jim Starlin, Al Milgrom, and Josef Rubinstein (1983-84/This collection 2014): The Golden Age of long-form science fiction/fantasy came for American comic books in the 1980's with such great series as Grimjack, Nexus, Time Spirits, Aztec Ace, American Flagg, and Dreadstar. Writer-artist Jim Starlin's Dreadstar first appeared in serialized form in Marvel's Epic magazine before getting its own book from Epic Comics once that first storyline had been completed. So while this is the first omnibus reprint, there is a real first volume also available that one should start with unless one is familiar with the story.

There are certain boilerplate elements in Dreadstar's story -- evil galactic empires, heroes with energy swords, masked villains. Starlin manages to transcend them as he goes along. The fight scenes are often quite nicely choreographed. The supporting characters are sympathetic and interesting. Dreadstar himself remains a mournful piece of beefcake throughout the series, but the aforementioned supporting characters keep us from dwelling too much on his limitations. Starlin did much the same thing at Marvel in the 1970's with Warlock, whose supporting characters supplied the characterization while the protagonist supplied the cosmic angst. 

One of the better issues included here gives the background to the villain of the piece, the Lord High Papal, leader of the genocidal, church-based empire named the Instrumentality (a nod to the science fiction of Cordwainer Smith). Starlin also shows more of a sense of humour in this series than he generally did, and a lighter hand when it comes to speechifying. His choices in names are still halfway-hilarious sometimes: an evil race named the Zygoteans still cracks me up. 

The 12 issues collected here really are enjoyable, certainly moreso than the vast majority of superhero comics from the same era. Beware, though -- the story doesn't really end with the last issue, and the next omnibus isn't due until next year. Though you could always go looking for back issues. Recommended.


The Avengers: The Kang Dynasty: written by Kurt Busiek; illustrated by Alan Davis, Kieron Dwyer, Ivan Reis, Brent Anderson, and others (2001-2002/Collected 2002): Writer Kurt Busiek ended his late 1990's/early oughts run on Marvel's The Avengers with a gigantic bang -- nearly a year-and-a-half arc pitting the Avengers against their time-traveling foe Kang the Conqueror. It's mostly a blast, though a muted one towards the end as the events of 9/11 overtook the events depicted in the story, leading to a final-issue requiem for those fallen to Kang's invasion that reflects the sorrowful poster-boards of post 9/11 Manhattan, with photos of the lost and missing.

Otherwise, Busiek and his rotating band of artists keep an astounding number of characters and situations in the air. The Avengers comic book has always had a luxury the Avengers movies never will have -- the space to develop a long list of characters, rather than a core group of six or seven. You may not like the minor heroes of this Avengers line-up, but Busiek does a fine job of making them important within the epic scope of the story. Whether it's the big-time Thor or the little-known Triathlon, everyone has a part to play in saving the Earth. It's too bad that the saga couldn't have gotten one or at most two artists for its entire length. Nonetheless, Alan Davis, Kieron Dwyer, Ivan Reis, and Brent Anderson do stand-out work on their portions of the saga. Recommended.

Justice League United: The Infinitus Saga: written by Jeff Lemire; illustrated by Neil Edwards, Jay Leisten, and Keith Champagne (2014-2015): Mostly fun six-issue Justice League United arc that brings the 'real' Legion of Super-heroes (LSH) from the 31st century back into action in the DC Universe. Each issue, the head-shots of featured characters surrounding the title page become more and more numerous in what must have been a conscious bit of fun. And it works, among other things.

That Lemire and company make the new DCU's reboot of classically kitschy Silver Age hero Ultra the Multi-Alien into something compelling is amazing enough. That they manage to link him to a re-imagined Infinite Man (an LSH foe originally from the 1970's) is really quite clever. There's maybe about 20% too much fighting, but it's fun to see such oddball-yet-effective LSH members such as Bouncing Boy back again, bouncing for justice. Recommended.

Nails

JLA: Another Nail: written and pencilled by Alan Davis, inked by Mark Farmer (2004): Alan Davis's alternate-world Justice League storyline continues here a year after the events of The Nail. Superman is gradually becoming accustomed to life in the outside world, a horribly wounded Green Arrow continues to rail against superheroes in the media, and Something Bad appears to be invading the universe.

Davis' art is great, very much in the tradition of Neal Adams, but with a distinctiveness all his own. And the story is epic without losing sight of small character moments -- it would be the perfect superhero comic book from 1985. Indeed, the basis for the continuity of the book is the 1980's pre-Crisis DC Universe with a few added flourishes.

Davis also comes up with an explanation for the existence of the ridiculously powerful JLA foe Amazo that's so perfect, it should be canonical. DC really needs to package this up with The Nail in a Deluxe edition. It looks terrific, it reads beautifully, and Davis' JLA is a lot more charming and interesting than what we get from the normal title these days. Recommended.

The Early Adventures of Moore and Davis

Captain Britain: Jasper's Warp: written by Alan Moore; illustrated by Alan Davis (1982-83; 2005): Alan Moore wrote one Marvel Comics character, and that was a character who at the time of the writing was almost exclusively only seen in Marvel's occasionally bizarre UK line: Captain Britain.

It's not Moore's first comic-book work, or even his first work on someone else's character. Nonetheless, this collection of Moore's Captain Britain work is fascinating both as a better-than-average early 1980's superhero story and as a foreshadowing of some of the themes and plot twists that would soon define Moore's career.

Moore picks up the narrative half-way through a story started by another writer, with Captain Britain and a ragtag bunch of friends and acquaintances trying to jump-start the development of a parallel Earth (Earth-238 to be exact; normal Marvel Earth is 616). Things rapidly go FUBAR.

As some of the pleasure of this volume lies in the plot twists, including the very early ones, that's really all I can say about the events of this volume. We do get some pretty wacky stuff -- the Captain Britains of all the parallel Earths essentially form a Captain Britain Corps charged with protecting the Omniverse from destruction. Of course, they're not really the Captain Britain Corps because not all of them are named Captain Britain: we meet Captain U.K., Captain Albion, Captain England, Captain Airstrip-One...and I'm not joking about that last one.

Moore seems more fully formed here than his artistic collaborator, Alan Davis, whose first major comic-book work this is. But the volume is worth looking at for Davis as well, and maybe moreso if one enjoys his pleasing, Neal Adams-influenced art (though Davis was and is a much better panel-to-panel storyteller than Adams ever was). Davis grows with astonishing rapidity here, and by the end of the volume he's recognizably entering his mature phase as an illustrator.

My one complaint...what the Hell went on with lettering in the Marvel UK line in the 1980's? This might actually be the worst lettered comic-book from a mainstream company I've ever read. Perhaps later editions fixed this problem with re-lettering. Boy, is it awful. Nonetheless, recommended.

Nail Fail

JLA: The Nail: written and pencilled by Alan Davis; inked by Mark Farmer (1998; collected 1999): In this Elseworlds miniseries (or 'What If?' were it from Marvel), the DC Universe suffers from the apparent non-existence of Superman because of a nail in Ma and Pa Kent's truck tire on the day of baby Kal-El's arrival from Krypton.

Alan Davis has always been a very clean, exciting superhero artist, firmly in the tradition of Neal Adams and John Byrne in the world of the hyper-real. He's also turned out to be a solid writer. The Nail feels like a throwback to the early 1980's or even earlier. It may be aimed at some sort of adult, but it nonetheless zips along in a breezy and entertaining fashion, without too much psychobabble despite some of the heavy-duty shenanigans that go on.

Without Superman, the present-day Justice League of America finds itself in a world where many normal citizens hate and fear super-heroes. Without Superman, DC-Earth has become Marvel-Earth. Or maybe just a foreshadowing of the New 52. In any case, someone or something is causing super-heroes and super-villains alike to vanish while simultaneously fanning the flames of xenophobia. This looks like a job for...oh, right.

A new edition collecting both The Nail and its excellent sequel, Another Nail, would be nice -- they really form one narrative. The biggest laugh here comes from the identity of the supervillain behind the woes of the JLA. It's at once weirdly funny and, given the thematic relevance of the whole 'Nail' concept -- of greater and greater consequences resulting from one small changed moment -- completely apt. Recommended.

Don't Stop Believing

Comics:

Journey: The Adventures of Wolverine MacAlistaire Volume 2 by William Messner-Loebs and Nadine Messner-Loebs: Journey, published first by Aardvark-Vanaheim and then by Fantagraphics, is one of the ten or twenty great comic books of the 1980's. It followed the adventures of hunter/trapper/postman/gun-for-hire Joshua "Wolverine" MacAlistaire in the wilds, the settlements and the forts of Michigan and environs in the early 19th century. It's a funny and character-driven book, the humour and character observation making themselves felt through both the writing and the delightful cartooning. The comparison most often made in reviews at the time was that the writing and art reminded one of Will Eisner. It's an apt comparison, though I also see a lot of Harvey Kurtzman in Messner-Loebs' art.

William Messner-Loebs wrote and drew the approximately 40 issues that make up the entire saga, now collected by IDW in two fat B&W volumes. The story structure is guided by MacAlistaire's wanderings -- while moving from place to place, he also attempts to deliver a mysterious package -- with a number of side-stories spinning off from the main narrative, as the book turns its attentions to the various settlers, soldiers, natives, Sasquatches, squirrels and comic grotesques whom MacAlistaire comes across.

Probably the most memorable character -- other than stubborn, clever MacAlistaire himself -- is writer/poet Elmer Alwyn Craft, an East Coast naif pretty much way out of his element in the wilderness. Craft begins as a parody of/homage to the writings and personal lives of Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft, but he soon becomes a distinct (and often distinctly annoying) character of his own. Craft also allows for some fairly sophisticated, understated play with the nature of history and stories -- his tendency to look for a narrative in events is repeatedly undercut by MacAlistaire's observations that life doesn't operate that way.

Various seismic shifts in the independent comics business would cause Messner-Loebs to end Journey perhaps before its time (though it does have an ending and an epilogue), and he would move on to work on mainstream characters that included the Flash and Wonder Woman. The two volumes of Journey stand as a great and idiosyncratic achievement, however, and also work wonderfully as Comics For People Who Don't Like Comics. My only real quibble with the reprint volumes is that they don't reproduce the covers of the original single issues. Hopefully, if sales are good, this could be rectified in a subsequent edition. Highest recommendation.


Justice League of America: Another Nail by Alan Davis and Mark Farmer: Writer/artist Davis's second exploration of a world where Superman didn't 'become' Superman until nearly a decade after his first 'real' comic-book appearance continues in high-epic, anything-goes mode. Raised by Amish parents, Superman finds the modern world confusing and difficult; the modern world, meanwhile, suspicious of super-heroes for decades in a Superman-less world, rushes to embrace the new hero. Meanwhile, some giant thingamabob is about to destroy the universe. Uh oh! Fun, breezy superhero stuff. It's too bad Davis didn't come from around these parts so that we could have gotten a few Super-Mennonite jokes, but so it goes. Recommended.