Weird Heroes Redux

Nexus: Into the Past and Other Stories: written by Mike Baron and Steve Rude; illustrated by Steve Rude (2012-2014; collected 2015): The latest group of stories that continue Mike Baron and Steve Rude's Nexus universe sends Nexus back in time to the 21st century in pursuit of a serial killer he's already executed twice, Clayborn. Meanwhile, back at home on the planet Ylum, partner Sundra and son Harry deal with all the problems of Ylum's fractious immigrant population. But as baby Harry is one of Clayborn's targets, things at home won't stay home for long.

Slightly impenetrable at times when it comes to just who certain characters are (Clayborn and Zanzibar being the main problems, along with location The Library). Hey, it's been a long time since I read many of the stories being referenced. But the narrative establishes the characters' personalities and agendas pretty well over the course of a 100+ pages. The ending was originally meant to be the ending for the series, but events have already brought the adventures of Nexus into the world of Kickstarter. So... never the end? Recommended.

Attack on Titan Volume 4: written and illustrated by Hajami Isayama and others; translated by Sheldon Drzka (2011/ This translated edition 2013): The present-day events of the narrative book-end a lengthy tour several years into the past of our young, giant-fighting protagonists. Politics and culture are sketched in more fully. And the flashback contextualizes some of the deaths we've seen over the first three volumes. Pretty essential in sequence -- and some much-needed explanation of how those 3-D maneuvering harnesses work. Recommended.

The Twelve: written by J. Michael Straczynski and Chris Weston; illustrated by Chris Weston and Gary Erskine (2008, 2012/Collected 2012): Penciller/inker Chris Weston and inker Gary Erskine do terrific work in The Twelve. They give the world of these Golden Age super-heroes dropped unexpectedly into their future (and the Marvel Universe's present) a weight and an emotionality that serves the project well. 

There are certainly many nods to Watchmen here, but the story is more low-key than Watchmen and occasionally trapped in the stereotypes it seeks to explode. Contact with Marvel's current superheroes doesn't really occur in the main story, though the 1945-set "Spearhead," written and illustrated by Weston, puts The Twelve in the thick of things with Marvel's more famous 1940's heroes. 

There are some storytelling problems caused by having The Twelve set in the normal Marvel universe. A couple of the super-heroes have origins that other heroes feel are too odd to be true. But this being the Marvel Universe, and not a more realistic milieu, it's hard to see any one 'fake' origin as being goofier than the 'real' one offered up afterwards. Recommended.

Secret Originals

The Filth (Deluxe Edition): written by Grant Morrison; illustrated by Chris Weston and Gary Erskine (2002-2003; this edition 2015): Those hoping for a completely uncensored reprint of Grant Morrison, Chris Weston, and Gary Erskine's racy, cloachal mind-bender of  science-fiction/conspiracy series will be only partially satisfied by some of the material included in the Extras section. People are still afraid of penises, or at least the erect depiction thereof.

But this slightly over-sized Deluxe Edition is still a good buy, even if only for the slightly over-sized pages and the Extras section. A Morrison blurb reprinted from the time of the first issue's release back in 2002 notes that The Filth is a "Gerry Anderson series on LSD." And it sort of is, at least in terms of Anderson's UFO, which even had its anti-alien defenders wearing wigs and odd costumes, especially on the Moon-base.

'The Filth' refers to several things in the series. It's a British slang term for the police, it's a slang term for pornography, and it's a term for, well, actual filth -- you know, dirt, shit, that sort of thing. 

The science-fictional level of The Filth shows us an increasingly odd secret organization named The Hand devoted to maintaining Status Q[uo] by almost any means necessary, with the help of high-tech, bio-tech, and some good old-fashioned violence. The last is often committed by an extremely angry and foul-mouthed talking chimpanzee who was originally created by the Soviets. He's one hell of a sniper!

The cloachal world of The Hand's secret base, its bio-tech, and the crises it seeks to prevent or truncate bleeds into the normative world of Greg Feely, a porn-loving office drone who loves his aging cat. But he's not really Greg Feely. He's actually Ned Slade, Hand super-negotiator. He's just taking a vacation away from the weirdness and doesn't know it. Or does he? Or is this all the fantasy of Greg Feely's increasingly deranged mind?

And who is Max Thunderstone? Who is Spartacus Hughes? What is iLife? Just exactly where is the Hand's secret base located, given the odd monsters that roam around it and the giant hand holding a pen that loom over them all? Has God died? Are superhero comics actually a good source of tech development? Will Tony the cat, pushing 18, survive? What's buried in Greg Feely's backyard? Will that goddam chimp ever shut up? What is the greater significance of the comic-book superhero named Secret Original? What disaster looms on a cruise ship built to hold over 100,000 people? Will Beverly Hills survive an attack by thousands of giant, flying spermatozoa? 

Well, read The Filth. It's good and it's good for you. You need to be distracted while they operate in the shadows to maintain Status Q. Just hope you aren't judged to be an Anti-Person. Or recruited by The Hand. Highly recommended.

Challengers of the Unknown: Stolen Moments, Borrowed Time: written and illustrated by Howard Chaykin (2004/ collected 2006): The stylish and provocative writer-artist Howard Chaykin gives us a re-imagining of DC's venerable Challengers of the Unknown team that plays with many of the same concepts as Grant Morrison et al.'s earlier The Filth. A world-wide conspiracy secretly turns people into super-agents. The super-agents don't know they're super-agents until they're activated. But something goes wrong, and several agents gain full self-awareness and begin to fight against the conspiracy -- here imagined as a Whites-Only group formed after World War One. It's stylish and enjoyable in the mighty Chaykin matter. The satire of Fox News and similar right-wing outlets and mouthpieces (including Ann Coulter) is savage. No series resulted from this miniseries, so it stands on its own with only partial resolution to the story-line at the end. Lightly recommended.

DMZ Volume 1: On the Ground: written by Brian Wood; illustrated by Riccardo Burchielli and Brian Wood (2005-2006; collected 2006): Enjoyable start to the relatively long-running Vertigo/DC title (well, 72 issues) drops news intern Matty Roth into war-torn Manhattan. Yes, Manhattan. The second United States Civil War has been going on for years, and Manhattan is a point of friction between the United States and the rebel Free States, one of which is New Jersey. Riccardo Burchelli's art is realistic and occasionally startling, while Wood does a good job of beginning to flesh out the realities of life in fractured, fractious Manhattan. Recommended.

What If? Why Not?

Son of Superman: written by Howard Chaykin and David Tischman; illustrated by J.H. Williams III, Mick Gray, and Lee Loughridge (1999-2000): A fairly straightforward, early piece of work from artists J.H. Williams III and Mick Gray -- pleasing, beautifully composed and clean superhero work. Chaykin and Tischman offer a rejoinder to Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns in this alternate take on Superman.

The Man of Steel went missing 15 years ago. Now, in a world in which the Justice League has been morally compromised by the government and by beloved trillionaire Lex Luthor, Superman's son with Lois Lane suddenly finds himself with superpowers after a solar event. And so he goes searching for his lost father, uncovering a massive conspiracy along the way. Breezy and fun and gifted with crackling dialogue, Son of Superman makes most Superman stories look lead-footed by comparison. Recommended.


Ministry of Space: written by Warren Ellis; illustrated by Chris Weston (2001-2004): The always sardonic Ellis crafts a fascinating alternate-universe tale of a Great Britain that becomes the world's leading space power after World War Two. Ellis apparently started the project after coming across some Dan Dare comics from the 1950's in his attic, comics which seemed to him to come from an alternate Earth.

Chris Weston's art is detailed and enjoyable as it delineates the massive, retro-future spaceships of Great Britain's Ministry of Space and the occasionally wormy people who build and fly them. This isn't a shiny utopia. The price paid for Great Britain's dominance is brutal, and a concluding panel riffs on a classic final panel from an EC Comics story of the 1950's to further establish the moral bankruptcy of a Great Britain whose Empire now extends into space. The whole thing, at about 100 pages, leaves one wanting more, a lot more, which in the end is better than wanting a whole lot less. Recommended.

Don't Mess with His Cat

The Filth: written by Grant Morrison; illustrated by Chris Weston and Gary Erskine (2002-2003): It's helpful to know that 'the Filth' is British slang for 'the police.' Morrison and Weston present a world in which a secret police force called The Hand works to preserve Status: Q, the normative state of affairs in which most humans remains blissfully unaware of the extraordinarily strange world they really inhabit. Or so it seems, anyway.

Greg Feely is a normal, porn-loving fellow with a boring job and an ailing, beloved cat named Tony. Then he finds out that 'Greg Feely' is a parapersona, a hiding place for Hand operative Ned Slade. The Hand cleans up the messes that threaten the body politic, monsters and tyrants and murderers whose crimes resemble diseases and bodily frailties.

Giant, flying spermatozoa attack Los Angeles. A giant cruise-ship becomes a floating madhouse populated by hive-mind anti-persons. Normal citizens are found hideously and improbably aged to death.

The Hand's headquarters exist in a strange place over which looms what appears to be the hand of a dead God, clutching a pen. Time moves with hyperrapidity there, with unprotected life living and dying in minutes. In the Hand's HQ, agents come and go at the behest of over-constables Man Green/Man Yellow, given orders by strange, cybernetic beings. And one of the Hand's best agents, Spartacus Hughes, has gone rogue. The world shudders on the brink of destruction and revelation.

As with Morrison's earlier, longer The Invisibles, The Filth rewards multiple readings. The art by Chris Weston and Gary Erskine is clean and straightforward -- the grotesque and the sublime completely in focus (well, except for some pixelated male penises, as DC Vertigo apparently won't show them if they're erect). It's a darned peculiar book, yet it all makes sense in the end. Highly recommended.

Those Crazy Nazis

Comics:


Enemy Ace: War in Heaven, written by Garth Ennis and Robert Kanigher, illustrated by Chris Weston, Russ Heath and Joe Kubert: Hans Von Hammer, the WWI German "Enemy Ace" of 1960's DC war comics, gets a WWII send-off here, first on the Russian front and then in the Western European theatre as the Allies advance after D-Day. Ennis is fairly restrained here -- there is graphic violence, but for the most part this reads like an updated version of the Kanigher/Kubert stories from the 1960's (one of which is reprinted here). Like some members of the real Prussian military aristocracy, Von Hammer despises Hitler and the Nazi Party, but nonetheless feels obligated to fight for his country again after two decades of seclusion in his ancestral castle. There's plenty of airplane talk, not to mention a cameo from Sergeant Rock. Recommended.


Shade the Changing Man Volume 3: Scream Time, written by Peter Milligan, illustrated by Chris Bachalo, Bryan Talbot, Mark Pennington and Rick Bryant (1990-91; collected 2010): This third collected volume of early Vertigo hero Shade, revamped from his 1970's Steve Ditko creation with way more sex and violence, finally explains where the free-floating madness-generating American Scream actually came from, while also more fully explaining Shade's origins, Kathy's personal problems, and just what exactly Shade's solid-illusion-generating M-Vest is made of. Hint: it's not polyester. Heady, enjoyable stuff if you've read the first two volumes, and Jamie Hewlett's covers are as trippy as previous cover artist Brendan MacCarthy's. Recommended.


The Life Eaters, written by David Brin, illustrated by Scott Hampton (2003): Brin's aptly titled 1980's novella "Thor Versus Captain America" is the basis for this graphic novel; neither the novella nor this book are set in the Marvel Universe. Adapted for the first part of the graphic novel, the novella posits a world where the Nazis are on the brink of conquering the entire world in the early 1960's. The Holocaust was necromancy on an industrial scale, and it succeeded -- the Nazis summoned the Norse Gods on the eve of D-Day. The Normandy Invasion failed, the Allies were defeated again and again, and now the invasion of North America is imminent -- all because the Nazis now have Odin, Thor, the other Norse gods and various other Norse mythological creatures to call upon. Only Loki of all the gods stands with the Allies, and while his purposes are mysterious and probably self-serving, he did manage to evacuate the concentration camps and ghettos of Europe before the Final Solution had been entirely carried out.

Are the Norse Gods really Norse Gods? That's one of the first questions the novel tackles, before moving on to larger philosophical issues set against an escalating series of cataclysms. Humanity's hope ultimately lies in science and technology, something the mystical and increasingly addled servants of the gods just aren't good at, along with an alliance of the various world religions that refuse to practice the blood sacrifice which summons the gods and then sustains them: on this world, the Holocaust never ends because the gods live on human death in mass quantities. Other cultures summon their own pantheons in response to the Nazi threat, and things get worse and worse once we shift to the main action of the novel, in the 1980's.

This later segment could almost be called "Hulk and Iron Man Versus All the Gods in the World", as human ingenuity and self-sacrifice and, indeed, humility finally start to turn the tide of war even as Loki's true plan -- even more horrifying than those of his man-eating brethren -- is finally revealed. There's certainly action and adventure here, all in service to quite a serious-minded premise -- can humanity outgrow its tribal-minded, bloodthirsty nature before it's too late? Highly recommended.


Books:


A Treasury of Modern Fantasy, edited by Terry Carr (1980): It's actually taken me thirty years to finish off this survey anthology that spans fantasy from the advent of fantasy-specific pulp magazine Weird Tales in the 1920's to 1979. Most of the major writers are here, though Carr's selection criteria can be pretty wonky at times (I'm not sure I'd even put "The Rats in the Walls" on a top-20 list of all the stories H.P. Lovecraft wrote, but here it is in all its clunky glory). This volume never caught on as an academic tome, even though its selection, odd as it is sometimes, is nonetheless more wide-ranging and useful than such academy-oriented anthologies as Fantastic Worlds.

The sheer scope of the work that Carr wanted to survey must have driven him bonkers at times -- it's not all that easy to cover 60 years of high fantasy, dark fantasy, light fantasy, sword and sorcery, horror and the cryptozoological in one volume, and I'm not sure why that last (represented by the solid but unspectacular "Longtooth" by Edgar Pangporn) is even included, as it's more properly science fiction, a genre not folded into this anthology. Recommended.


The Exorcist, by William Peter Blatty (1971): William Friedkin's blockbuster film adaptation of Blatty's best-selling novel was remarkably faithful to the book, partially because Blatty -- a screenwriter before becoming a novelist -- wrote the screenplay. Some things were, of course, left out, though a few such scenes made their way into the 1990's Director's Cut, while others were recycled by Blatty in the sequel he both wrote and directed, 1990's underrated Exorcist III: Legion.

Blatty's novel is long on dialogue at points, befitting a novel by a screenwriter, though there are also lengthy internal monologues which were essentially unfilmable. Coming to the novel after having seen the movie, one finds out more about the significance of the Iraq-set prologue of the movie, and more about the ins and outs of exorcism itself (though the latter needs to be taken with a grain of salt, actual Roman Catholic exorcisms being few and far between in the West).

Tortured, doubting priest Damien Karras comes even more to the fore in the novel, while details of the past of both possessed Regan and her actress mother explain at least some of the murkier details of the possession and its possible origins -- though ultimately the possession is less about getting Regan and more about forcing a second exorcism battle with ageing, ailing Father Merrin, played by Max Von Sydow in the movie. Some of the philosophical and theological speculation is awfully wonky at times, and the scientific aspects of the novel when the characters speculate on how the brain works are even wonkier. Still, a gripping read after all these years, though it's worth noting that the "true case" the novel is "inspired by" bears almost no resemblance to the novel. Caveat lector! Recommended.