Superb Ace

Icon Volume 1: A Hero's Welcome: written by Dwayne McDuffie; illustrated by Mark Bright and Mike Gustovich ( 1993; collected 2008): Milestone Comics tried to break up the unholy whiteness of mainstream superhero comic books in the early 1990's with several comics with multi-racial, multi-ethnic casts. Icon was really the flagship title, a self-conscious riff on Superman's origin.

Dwayne McDuffie and Mark Bright give us the sole survivor of an alien space-liner, his life-pod crashing to Earth in the 1830's. The biotech of the alien lifepod is so advanced that it can reconfigure its occupant to look like the dominant species of a planet in the event that the planet is uncivilized and rescue perhaps far off. But in this case, the reconfiguration makes the alien an African-American slave in the pre-Civil-War American South.

However,  the alien is also mostly immortal, so he endures slavery and a lot of other things. Time passes. He becomes rich. Periodically faking his own death and then returning as his own "son," by 1993 the alien now known as Augustus Freeman IV is an extremely conservative Republican, verging on libertarian. There's a reason Clarence Thomas was a fan, though he seemed to take the wrong lessons from the book.

But then a robbery of "Freeman's"  house gone awry introduces him to an independent firebrand, 15-year-old Raquel Ervin. In thwarting the robbery, Freeman reveals that he can fly and possesses great strength. Raquel asks him why he doesn't try to help people, with his powers, with his money. So he takes the name Icon and we're off!

The American racial politics that weave throughout Icon's stories are as fresh and vital today as they were in the Rodney King era. The title of the volume is itself ironic -- icon's first appearance as a seemingly African-American superhero draws a volley of gunfire from the mostly white police, not gratitude. But he and Raquel, now outfitted with alien tech that allows her to be Icon's super-powered sidekick, perservere. They also grow as characters, and grow on you. McDuffie was a fine writer even early in his career, and these superhero stories function as entertainment with a defineable viewpoint on the world. One of the great superhero sagas. Highly recommended.

Icons and Stereotypes

Icon: Mothership Connection: written by Dwayne McDuffie; illustrated by M.D. Bright, Mike Gustovich, and others (1994-95; collected 2010): This volume collects one lengthy storyline from the flagship book of the 1990's Milestone Comics line. Milestone Comics encompassed a far more multi-cultural, ethnically diverse superhero universe than the mainstream had ever seen before.

Icon was the African-American Superman figure of the line, an immortal alien trapped on Earth in the 1850's. His escape pod reconfigured his body to look like the first member of the dominant species it could scan. As the alien had crashed in the pre-Civil War South and was found by a slave, he'd soon learn first-hand about the problems of humanity.

Nearly 150 years later, the alien is a rich and successful lawyer who's been guilted into using his superheroes to help and inspire others by a 15-year-old girl who broke into his house. The girl is given alien technology by the alien so that she can fight crime beside them, and they become Icon and Rocket.

Here, Icon finds out he can go home again. And so he does, to be debriefed on what he's learned about life on Earth, and whether or not humanity should be allowed to continue, or be exterminated before it becomes more dangerous. So Rocket -- herself forced to take a superheroic leave of absence because of pregnancy -- recruits a new Icon, a 1970's blaxploitation African-American superhero previously encountered by Rocket and Icon named Buck Wild.

Late, much-lamented writer Dwayne McDuffie and main artist M.D. Bright turn Wild into a very specific (and hilarious) parody of the 1970's and early 1980's version of the Marvel superhero Luke Cage, Power Man.

But Buck Wild also becomes a vehicle of parody for a long list of often egregiously awful African-American superheroes from DC and Marvel: superheroes with comically ridiculous and incorrect 'street' speech patterns; superheroes who apparently absolutely positively had to have the adjective 'Black' at the start of their superhero names because otherwise one wouldn't know they were black; superheroes and supervillains with insultingly stereotypical African-American character traits and careers...well, the list goes on.

Through it all, though, Buck Wild is granted some form of relevance as an attempt at something, if not a particularly accomplished rendition of said thing. Though it's still a very good thing for Dakota City when Icon elects to return to Earth, though whether or not he'll stay is another question. Superior superhero stuff. Christmas! Highly recommended.

Here Comes the Sun King

All-Star Superman, based on the graphic novel by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely and the characters created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, written by Dwayne McDuffie, directed by Sam Liu, starring the voices of James Denton (Superman/Clark Kent), Christina Hendricks (Lois Lane) and Anthony LaPaglia (Lex Luthor) (2011): In a perfect world, a new Superman movie would be based on the same graphic novel this animated movie is. And it's amazing -- and a testament to late screenwriter Dwayne McDuffie, who died one day before All-Star Superman was released -- how much of that graphic novel makes it into this 75-minute-long adaptation.

Something disastrous happens to Superman in the first few minutes, leaving him with a year to live. The movie then follows the course of that year as Superman tries to accomplish all the tasks he'd failed to accomplish previously. Meanwhile, Lex Luthor plots and preens in jail as he awaits execution. New menaces arise. And Solaris the Sun-Tyrant, a computerized sun-destroyer with a hate on for organic lifeforms, lurks somewhere out there, waiting.

Freed from the constraints of any one particular Superman continuity, Morrison threw in tons of things that either hadn't been seen for decades (Silver-Age time-travelling, pain-in-the-ass heroes Atlas and Samson; the original cloud-like Sun Eater) or hadn't been seen at all (the chronovore, alas, doesn't make it into the movie while the League of Supermen makes only a cameo appearance). This adaptation wisely keeps a lot of the dialogue from the comic while also mimicking to a surprising extent the style of artist Frank Quitely.

The ultimate enemy is Luthor, presented here closer to his super-scientist version of the 1960's and 1970's rather than the super-businessman of the 1980's and 1990's. By the time a frustrated and regretful Superman says, "Luthor, you could have saved the world a long time ago," you'll pretty much agree. And a dying, increasingly depowered Superman will need both brains and brawn to save the world that Luthor has spent decades trying to conquer. Highly recommended.