When the Nazis Summoned Yog-Sothoth...

Zenith: Phase One (1987/Collected 2014): written by Grant Morrison; illustrated by Steve Yeowell and others; character design by Brendan McCarthy:  Grant Morrison and Steve Yeowell's revisionist, satiric, epic superhero narrative started in the pages of England's 2000 AD comics magazine in 1987. In a way, it brings to a close the first decade of the revisionist superhero epic that began with Alan Moore's Marvelman/Miracleman and V for Vendetta and crested commercially and influentially with Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen (1986-87) and Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns (1986). 

This first 'Phase' introduces us to the British superhero Zenith, a self-absorbed pop star and celebrity with a vast array of super-powers, few of them tapped. He looks like Morrissey in a super-hero suit and acts like Justin Bieber. He's also the world's only practicing super-hero in 1987, all the others having vanished or mysteriously lost their powers decades earlier.

Pretty soon, though, Zenith will actually have to act in some sort of superheroic fashion. The Many-Angled Ones, Lovecraftian alien-gods from outside Earth's space-time, are coming. They tried to manifest themselves on Earth's plane of existence during World War Two. Now, thanks to the on-going efforts of the Nazi Cult of the Black Sun, one of them is back -- and it's inhabiting the body of a Nazi superhuman known as Masterman.

These aren't simply Lovecraftian homages, either. These are Iot Sotok (ie. Yog-Sothoth) and Cthulhu and Nyarlathotep and many others. They seem to be the real deal. And who better to fight super-gods than supermen?

Well, Zenith really only fights when he's forced to. And he will be forced to. Along the way, secrets will be revealed, a nefarious plan by the superhumans of the 1960's alluded to, and alliances made between Zenith and super-telepath Peter St. John. St. John was once the groovy hippy super-hero Mandala. Now he's the buttoned-down Conservative superhero in Margaret Thatcher's cabinet. Ha! But St. John has his own plans, and none of them involve bowing to hyper-dimensional sadists.

Phase One is the Zenith volume that hews most closely to the relatively serious superheroic revisionism of earlier books, especially Moore and company's Miracleman and V for Vendetta. But Morrison's puckish, punkish sensibilities leak through, especially in the often annoying, non-altruistic character of Zenith. Steve Yeowell's art evolves over the course of the volume, beginning with strong resemblances to Brian Bolland and ending as something more like his mature, more expressionistic style. Highly recommended.

Zenith: Phase Two (1988/Collected 2014): written by Grant Morrison; illustrated by Steve Yeowell and others; character design by Brendan McCarthy: Phase Two of Zenith takes us on a tour of pre-fab superhero Zenith's past and assorted nefarious but still mysterious plans for the future as hatched by various bodies. A nuclear threat to London by a bored British billionaire is the most normal thing going on here. 

This is really a bridge volume, one that fills in blanks and fleshes out major characters. Conservative super-telepath Peter St. John certainly gets the most development -- he may be terrible, but his first-person thoughts suggest that he isn't super-terrible. Zenith, meanwhile, remains a knob who nonetheless must save everything again, almost despite himself. Steve Yeowell's art, always clean, continues to move towards a new sparseness. Recommended.

Nazi Leprechauns

I really need to read this novel...

Starship Troopers (1997)

Starship Troopers: adapted by Ed Neumeier from the novel by Robert Heinlein; directed by Paul Verhoeven; starring Casper Van Dien (Johnny Rico), Dina Meyer (Dizzy Flores), Denise Richards (Carmen Ibanez), Jake Busey (Ace Levy), Neil Patrick Harris (Carl Jenkins), Clancy Brown (Zim) and Michael Ironside (Rasczak) (1997): 

Like Neumeier and Verhoeven's Robocop, Starship Troopers bites the hand that feeds it: it's a corrosive satire of action movies disguised as an action movie. That it took a beloved novel by a beloved sf author (Robert Heinlein) and turned it into such a satire antagonized some of its intended audience. So it goes. 16 years after its release, it's more relevant than ever as both a critique of action blockbusters and as a critique of American society.

Because here's the toxic brilliance of Starship Troopers: it asks you to cheer for the Nazis. Or a reasonable facsimile thereof, an Earth Federation with military uniforms closely modelled on those of the Third Reich, a Federation established by a military coup where only people who've served in the military are full citizens with voting rights. An Earth Federation at war with an alien race dubbed 'The Bugs.' 'Vermin,' 'bugs,' and 'insects' were all standard racial epithets directed at Jewish people by anti-Semites of the early 20th century. Would you like to know more?

So Earth faces an enemy about which its citizens can righteously cry, "Kill them all!" without guilt. Because who likes bugs, especially giant ones? Did the bugs really manage to hit Earth with an asteroid to provoke all-out war, given that the galactic map we're shown puts the bug home-world on the other side of the galaxy? And given that every bug-occupied world we're shown is a desert wasteland, why is humanity in competition with them for living room?

Because, as Internet wags have noted, the plot of this version of Starship Troopers bears a marked resemblance to the dark fantasies of 9/11 Truthers. A devastating strike on civilians. A sudden ram-up to war. An inhuman enemy. Endless propaganda. War without end.

It's downright creepy. Verhoeven endured a childhood under the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, and a fascination with repulsive levels of violence and the fascist authorities that love such violence has informed much of his work. This is a satire of a fascist society addicted to violence and spectacle. And much of the spectacle of the movie's visual effects still delivers -- the bugs look terrific and unearthly, and remain one of the great CGI triumphs of the 25 years or so of CGI effects.

Does an audience's love of on-screen violence and spectacle, and of heroic, larger-than-life characters, spring in part from the fascist within? The on-going onslaught of lavish, apocalyptic superhero movies suggests an infatuation with violence as a solution to all problems, and a waning belief in the ability of puny humans to solve problems. Better to let the engorged, armored, superheroic penises solve everything. Normal isn't exciting enough. Highly recommended.

A Game of Hellboy

Hellboy: Masks and Monsters: written by Mike Mignola and James Robinson; illustrated by Mike Mignola, Scott Benefiel, and Jasen Rodriguez (Collected 2009): Short volume collects two Hellboy miniseries team-ups with three other characters -- DC's Batman and Starman in one adventure and Dark Horse's own Ghost in the other.

A good time is pretty much had by all. Though I'm not familiar with Ghost -- a two-gunned female ghost fighting crime -- Hellboy's adventure with her makes a certain amount of sense given their supernatural backgrounds. Mignola's script presents an interesting mix of mythology and the mundane as organized crime gets mixed up with ancient gods who want Hellboy's giant hand for something nefarious. The art by Scott Benefiel, from Mignola's layouts, is fairly smooth, though perhaps a bit too representational for Mignola's blocky, occasionally impressionistic Hellboy.

The Starman/Batman team-up, plotted by Mignola and scripted by Starman's James Robinson, is really serious fun, with Mignola handling the art. Batman and Hellboy team up to fight magical Aryan Nation types in Gotham. With Batman temporaily sidelined by a re-appearance of the Joker, it's then up to Hellboy and second-generation Starman Jack Knight to rescue the Golden-Age Starman (who's also Jack's father Ted Knight) from a Nazi base in South America. There, the Nazis have supernaturally coerced Ted into helping them bring a very large, evil God back to Earth.

Oh, Nazis! Mignola's Batman is shadowy and bulky, while his Starman is quite a change from the more representational art generally seen in Jack Knight's own title. The whole volume goes down nicely, and is also an enjoyable break from the increasingly labyrinthine continuity of Hellboy's own adventures. Recommended.

The Sandman Volume 5: A Game of You: written by Neil Gaiman; illustrated by Shawn McManus, Colleen Doran, George Pratt, Stan Woch, Dick Giordano, and Bryan Talbot (1991-92): The fifth volume of Gaiman's now twenty-year-old+ Sandman adventures presents a mostly self-contained tale concerned with gender, identity, race, and childhood dreams. Minor characters from previous story arcs do reappear here, along with the Lord of Dreams and his attendant (wise)-talking raven Matthew.

The six issues focus on one minor character from an earlier story arc, Barbie, whose previous encounter with the world of the Dreaming destabilized her marriage to Ken (!), along with her own carefully constructed self-image, and sent her to New York to figure out who she is. That previous interaction with the world of Dreams also had an unintended consequence. She's stopped dreaming.

However, somewhere in dreams, a ragtag group of talking and sometimes imaginary animals continue to search for the vanished Princess Barbara, who is the only person who can defeat the all-devouring Cuckoo and its conquering hordes. But she's going to need the help of her neighbours -- the lesbian couple Hazel and Foxglove, the transvestite Wanda, and the mysterious Thessaly -- to negotiate an increasingly unstable fantasy world.

The real world and the dream world are, of course, connected, in both obvious and less-than-obvious ways. Things do not necessarily go well for everyone involved in this adventure, with its echoes of Narnia and Tolkien and The Wizard of Oz's game-changing tornado. We also learn an awful lot about the life-cycle of the cuckoo bird. Why did someone put these awful things in clocks to begin with? Recommended.

War Crimes

The O.D.E.S.S.A. File: adapted by Kenneth Ross and George Markstein from the novel by Frederick Forsyth; directed by Ronald Neame; starring Jon Voight (Peter Miller), Maximilian Schell (Eduard Roschmann), Maria Schell (Frau Miller), Mary Tamm (Sigi), and Derek Jacobi (Klaus Wenzer) (1974): Enjoyable conspiracy thriller set in 1963-64 sees West German journalist Jon Voight on the trail of escaped Nazi war criminals. They're members of the SS who have been given new identities by the ODESSA organization, which is itself made up of SS members.

And unbeknownst to Voight, he's on the clock: a technology firm headed by one war criminal is about to deliver missile guidance systems to Egypt to use in missiles to destroy Israel. Voight and Mary Tamm (the first Romana on Doctor Who) are very good as the leads. Maximilian Schell really only has one big scene as (real) SS officer Eduard Roschmann, while Derek Jacobi is at his squirmy best as a conflicted associate of the ODESSA.

Simon Wiesenthal appears as himself to help Voight in his quest, which also gets aid from the Mossad, who've been trying to infiltrate ODESSA for decades. This is an old-school 1970's style conspiracy thriller -- the ODESSA have infiltrated ever facet of West German government and business -- complete with a journalist hero who rapidly becomes a very competent action hero once he hears the call of duty. Recommended.

Submarine Zombie Nazis Must Die!

The Night Boat by Robert R. McCammon (1980): This enjoyable, overstuffed, pulpy as all get-out early novel from McCammon gives us a World War Two U-Boat filled with undead Nazis terrifying a Caribbean Island in the late 1970's after the explosion of an old depth charge releases the U-Boat from its burial beneath tons of sand on the ocean floor.

One of McCammon's strengths throughout his career has been the density of his inventiveness in his novels -- stuff just keeps on happening even when it doesn't necessarily build from anything or to anything. Here, that density gives us three Ahabs in search of their great black-hulled Nazi whale, one of them suddenly appearing with about 60 pages to go. It also gives us a former Nazi Ishmael who shows up and then has almost nothing to do. Was this novel edited down from a much longer manuscript? I wonder.

Anyway, an expariate American scuba diver with a tragic past which will, of course, become a vital part of the story's machinery is compelled to unearth the submarine that's lain on the sea floor since 1942. It's the same sub that shelled the small Caribbean island of Coquina during World War Two before being sent to its apparent death by several sub-chasers and a lot of depth charges. But rise it does, to the astonishment of all, whereupon it drifts into the harbour and gets stuck on a reef. So the good people of Coquina elect to tow it into an abandoned military dock despite the fact that the sub managed to kill one fisherman during its trek into the harbour.

And from within the decades-sealed submarine...is that the sound of someone pounding with a hammer? Well, let's open it up and find out!

Did I mention that Voodoo plays a role as well? Of course it does. And undead zombie Nazis with an unquenchable thirst for blood and the ability to use tools. They can smash you with a hammer or fix a submarine. These are not your garden-variety stupid zombies. They have an ethos, and it's called National Socialism!

All in all, The Night Boat is a wild romp that pays off on enough plot threads to be pretty thoroughly enjoyable. McCammon would write much better novels, but no more enjoyable ones on the basic level of pulp melodrama. Recommended.

Necessary Assassinations

The Debt, written by Matthew Vaughn, Jane Goldman, and Peter Straughan; based on the Israeli film Ha-Hov, written by Assaf Bernstein and Ido Rosenblum; directed by John Madden; starring Helen Mirren & Jessica Chastain (Rachel 1997/Rachel 1966), Tom Wilkinson & Marton Csokas (Stephan 1997/Stephan 1966), Ciaran Hinds & Sam Worthington (David 1997/ David 1966), and Jesper Christensen (Dieter Vogel - The Surgeon of Birkenau) (2011): Tense little thriller with a big name cast, adapted from an Israeli film. In late 1965, a three-person Mossad team was dispatched to East Germany to locate and apprehend Nazi war criminal "The Surgeon of Birkenau" so that he may be tried for his war-time crimes in Israel.

In 1997, the daughter of Rachel, one of the three Mossad, writes a book about the now-legendary operation. Her mother doesn't seem too happy about, and neither do the other two former agents, one the daughter's father, the other a wanderer who has just returned to Israel after twenty years abroad. And then things start happening.

As much of the pleasure of the film lies in the revelations of what is and is not 'real,' it's difficult to summarize the plot any further. The workings of the kidnapping plan seem realistically byzantine and thus prone to failure at every turn; the actors in both eras do fine work (though Jessica Chastain really doesn't look at all like Helen Mirren); the ambience of Communist Berlin is suitably wormy and dilapidated and devoid of sunlight. When the team returns to Israel, they're greeted by a burst of sunlight as they exit their military plane. But the difference between Israel and Berlin is not that ethically clear-cut. Recommended.

Truth and Continuity

Captain America: Truth: written by Robert Morales; illustrated by Kyle Baker (2004): A jeremiad turned superhero comic book, Truth reminds me a lot of Spike Lee's Bamboozled in its audaciousness, its fierce satire, and its often distracting flaws. It's not a great graphic novel, but I read it in one sitting and it left me wishing for more both in terms of length and, more pressingly, depth and context.

Basically, everything we know about the origin of Marvel's Captain America is a lie because before there was (white) super-soldier Steve Rogers, there were a number of African-Americans experimented upon so as to perfect the super-soldier formula. Morales bases this idea in part (as he notes in the Appendix) on the Tuskegee Experiments, an infamous U.S. Public Health Service study in which several hundred African-Americans with syphillis were studied for 40 years without ever being treated for the disease. Eugenics programs throughout Europe and North America are also folded into the super-soldier ethos.

In short, the first Captain America ultimately turns out to be an African-American who has been erased from the white history books, though African-Americans all know about him. We follow several African-American men through the horrific program and on to Europe. They're a secret, even as the 'real' Captain America becomes famous.

There's a large-scale problem with the idea of creating African-American super-soldiers that somewhat undercuts the plausibility of the events. Many, many terrible things were done to people in the name of 'science' by Nazis and others, but I don't recall any experiments which could have turned a despised Other into a superhero. It seems awfully counter-intuitive, as there's a qualitative difference between letting someone suffer from untreated syphillis (or, for that matter, injecting gasoline into someone's veins to see what happens) and potentially turning someone who hates you into an unstoppable killing machine. It's really, really Mad Science, even for superhero comics. The satiric point may be that the U.S. government is arrogantly confident that its 'Negroes' would never rebel, but that satire isn't even borne out by moments of African-American civil defiance referenced in the story itself.

Morales keeps things moving at a blistering pace, so much so that character development and historical context often get skimmed over. I'd like more before, during, and after, but as with a lot of Marvel comics, telling detail gets repressed in order to show more battle sequences. I don't know how much editorial interference there was here -- the book did get painfully shoehorned into official Marvel continuity at some point after it had been started.

Still, though, this is a fascinating book. Kyle Baker's art is marvelous, cartoony and exaggerated when it needs to be, realistic and detailed when it seeks to place the reader in a real place and time. It's not 'normal' 21st century Marvel superhero art at all, as Baker's influences are as much cartoonists and animators as they are Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko. Well, really moreso. The contrast between the nominally realistic and the outlandishly caricatured can be jarring at times, but it serves the story well, especially with the recurring character of one racist soldier who looks like a debased, flop-sweating Elmer Fudd.

Is this a great book? No, but it's certainly more interesting than most Marvel product and, for all its flaws, possessed of surprising and rewarding strengths. Recommended.

Underground Horror

The Chosen Child by Graham Masterson (1997): Solid and mostly riveting horror-thriller from the prolific and talented Masterson. And you'll learn tons of interesting things about the history of Poland, where the novel is set in the present day! It's like a twofer -- come for the horror, stay for the history of Warsaw.

In the late 1990's, something or someone periodically emerges from the sewers of Warsaw to kill and behead seemingly random victims. The murder as the novel begins threatens to derail the construction of an American hotel group's new Warsaw location, so Sarah Leonard, the Polish-American woman in charge of the hotel's construction, ends up inserting herself into the investigation, led by old-school detective Stefan Rej.

Soon, all hell is breaking out on a number of fronts as corporate and civic corruption, organized crime, and office politics threaten to derail the investigation. And the body count continues to mount both beneath the streets and above them.

The main characters here are surely drawn and sympathetic when they need to be, while the horrors caused by the killer -- dubbed The Executioner by the press -- are evocatively and brutally shown in several setpieces. The revelation of what The Executioner really is may strain one's suspension of disbelief -- it certainly did mine -- but overall Masterson manages a fairly fascinating mix of the police procedural and the supernatural thriller.

Rej is an especially well-drawn character, occasionally mourning the moral clarity of the bygone days of Communism while doggedly continuing his investigation regardless of opposition from above or danger from below. And the history of Warsaw, especially its opposition to the Nazis, really is gripping stuff. With a number of key scenes set in reeking, filth-clogged sewers, The Chosen Child generates a real sense of dread and bodily horror: it's about as cloachally horrible as a thriller can be. Recommended.