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.

Satan's Six!

Satan's Six: written by Tony Isabella, Batton Lash, and Kurt Busiek; illustrated by Jack Kirby, John Cleary, Armando Gil, Steve Ditko, and others (1993): From the dark days of the 1990's collector's boom in American comic books comes this oddity. Topps, the sports card people, published comic books for a time in the 1990's because everyone else was doing it. They also created collector's card series tied into the comic books they published. 

And round it went until the industry collapsed into a black hole.

Satan's Six comes from the Topps Kirbyverse line, which consisted of titles and characters created and owned by comics legend Jack Kirby. Kirby wasn't drawing or writing anything at the time, only a few years before his death, mainly because of problems with his eyesight. However, other creators extrapolated entire series from various sketches, uncompleted stories, and the occasional Kirby-owned character who'd actually been published (Silver Star, for one). The results were uneven but generally fun. The Kirbyverse wasn't the grim and gritty place that much of mainstream American comics had become in the early 1990's.

Kirby supplies eight pages and a cover in the course of this four-issue miniseries, with a Who's Who of comic-book artists inking his work, including Todd "Spawn" Macfarlane and Frank "Dark Knight" Miller. I always love seeing Kirby's art regardless of its provenance, so these nine total pages make me happy. Satan's Six are six souls confined to Limbo who've been tapped by Satan to round up souls on Earth who should be in Hell. However, none of this is played seriously -- Satan's Six: The super-team is tremendously incompetent.

The rest of the comic book, all of it written by veteran scribe Tony "Black Lightning" Isabella, is a bit more uneven. Isabella's writing is fine, surprisingly funny, and maybe a bit too Meta at points. Penciller John Cleary strives for jagged, grotesque, cartoony style that seems to be heavily influenced by Todd Macfarlane's distorted grotesques in Spawn, though Macfarlane always set those grotesques off against his more conventionally, quasi-realistically rendered characters. Cleary's pretty much all-cartoony here. One gets used to it after awhile, though his story-telling sense in terms of coherent panel-to-panel flow is still clearly a work in progress. Still and all, I've read a tonne of early 1990's comic books I didn't enjoy as much as this one. Recommended.

Nexus: Space Opera: written by Mike Baron; illustrated by Steve Rude, Gary Martin, Al Milgrom, and Bob Wiacek (2008-2009; collected 2009): For more than 30 years, Nexus has been the crown jewel of its creators' careers -- those being the estimable comic-book careers of writer Mike Baron and artist Steve Rude. 

The bulk of Nexus came out in the 1980's. This was a time when science fiction and space opera flourished in American comics, mainly thanks to the rise of a number of new comics publishers that included Capital, First, Eclipse, Comico, and Dark Horse. Nexus stood at the top of the great science fiction titles that graced the comics world thanks to this explosion in publishing, perhaps only equaled at the time by Howard Chaykin's terrific American Flagg! and John Ostrander and Tim Truman's Grimjack.

Since the second on-going Nexus series ended in the early 1990's, getting a Nexus fix has involved long waits and at least two different publishers (Dark Horse and a brief time as the only publication of artist Steve Rude's creator-owned RudeDude Comics). Space Opera came out from RudeDude Comics in 2008-2009 and was collected in 2009. 

Rude and Baron are in vintage form for much of the miniseries. Is it worth reading for someone new to Nexus? Maybe. I can't really judge that. But it's great to see most of the major characters of the Nexus universe back in action. Nexus himself, born Horatio Hellpop, still tries to act as the conscience of humanity by executing murderers and tyrants with the help of his telekinetic FuskionKasting powers. He's still married to Sundra Peale, former spy for EarthGov. The imminent arrival of their first child drives the plot of Space Opera.

That's because the homicidal, genocidal, and extremely rapey Elvonics, religious fanatics with an Elvis obsession, have a prophecy that the Son of Nexus will destroy their god Elvon. So they launch a series of escalating attacks on Nexus's home planet of Ylum, a libertarian-democratic haven for refugees from across the galaxy. But there are assassins hired by someone else as well. And Ylum also continues to seek full recognition from the United Worlds.

So things are complicated, wiggy, action-packed, and occasionally satiric. Perhaps one long-time character or two will die. Perhaps a long-dead character or two will return from the dead. Perhaps not. It's all great fun, marred only by an insufficient number of pages over the course of the concluding chapter. A massive space battle involving Nexus and the Elvonic Warfleet ends almost perfunctorily, which is a shame. But there are enough good things for the series to be Recommended.

Doctor Solar: Man of the Atom Archives Volume 3: written by Paul S. Newman; illustrated by Frank Bolle; covers by George Wilson; Introduction by Mike Baron (1966-68/ Collected 2014): The strange 1960's adventures of Western Publishing's Doctor Solar, a one-man race of atomic supermen, continue here. Capable of a whole host of energy-based feats, Solar has to deal with arch-nemesis Nuro and his hilariously named henchman Uzbek (!!! -- is a crossover with SCTV's Hey Giorgi imminent?) on several occasions. 

Solar also splits into millions of microscopic selves to battle bacterial space invaders, takes on an evil robot doppelganger, threatens the world with his own terrible nightmares that become real because his radiation is 'out of balance,' and fights a giant lava monster from the Earth's core. 

The interior art by Frank Bolle isn't flashy, but his characters are indeed full of character and his matter-of-fact, low-key, realistic cartooning makes many of the weird events seem even weirder. Writer Paul S. Newman, who literally wrote thousands of comic-book stories, keeps things moving along and often shows a flair for super-scientific strangeness that's the equal of anything DC Comics writers invented during their Silver Age of the 1950's and 1960's. And boy, cover artist George Wilson is swell -- his paintings are an artistic delight from issue to issue. Recommended.

Batman Incorporated Volume 2: written by Grant Morrison and others; illustrated by Chris Burnham and others (2013/Collected 2014): Writer Grant Morrison concludes a Batman epic that spanned seven years, several Bat-titles, dozens of artist (including the excellent Chris Burnham on most of the art herein)  and at least one company-wide DC Comics reboot. 

Batman's Batman Incorporated (a Bruce Wayne company!) brings together masked crime-fighters from around the globe to defeat the equally globe-spanning Leviathan organization. The climax is crowded and occasionally hyperviolent and features at least one endless combat sequence too many. Maybe two. 

The tangential stories included after the main narrative are quite a bit jollier, as writers mostly other than Morrison tell stand-alone tales of such Batman Incorporated agents as El Gaucho, Red Raven, The Knight, and the Japanese Bat-man. And Bat-cow! 

There's absolutely no point to reading this compilation unless you've at least read the earlier Batman Incorporated volumes. Even then, a number of plot developments cast all the way back to the beginning of Morrison's tenure on Batman in 2006. The whole run is one seven-year, 100-issue story. The whole is superior to this part, though not to some of the arcs contained within it. Recommended, but not on its own.

Grimjack: The Manx Cat: written by John Ostrander; illustrated by Tim Truman (2011): This prequel to the 1980's science-fiction comic book Grimjack explains the significance of several elements in that series. John Ostrander's writes as pungent a science-fantasy swashbucker as ever, and original artist Tim Truman is in fine, grim, and occasionally grotesque form. This would certainly work as a gateway to the original series. 

This time around, there's more than a hint of Michael Moorcock's Eternal Champion to protagonist John 'Grimjack' Gaunt as he tries to stop an invasion of alien gods that he himself has inadvertently set in motion by stealing the 'Manx Cat' of the title. Like the Maltese Falcon, the statue of the Manx Cat is something that dreams are made on. Only literally and to increasingly dire consequence. 

Very solid science fiction/ science fantasy. Truman's art only disappoints on the way, way too digitally composed cover of the compilation -- thankfully, it's all pen and ink inside, or at least looks that way. Recommended.

Global Frequency Volume 2: Detonation Radio: written by Warren Ellis; illustrated by Lee Bermejo, Gene Ha, Simon Bisley, Chris Sprouse, Tomm Coker, and Jason Pearson; covers by Brian Wood. (2003-2004/ Collected 2004): The second half of Global Frequency by Warren Ellis and a relay team of 13 artists isn't quite as weird and wonderful as the first, but it's still both an enjoyable read and a great concept. 1001 operatives across the planet work for Global Frequency, a massive, private organization that rescues the Earth from problems the normal authorities can't handle. The threats are a bit more prosaic this time around and the artists a bit more uneven. Still, this is a nifty Mission: Impossible for a crowd-sourced age. Recommended.

Everybody was Robot-Fighting

Magnus, Robot Fighter 4000 AD Archives Volume 1: written and drawn by Russ Manning (1963-64; collected 2010): The late, great writer-artist Russ Manning did terrific work on everything from Tarzan comic books and comic strips to the Star Wars newspaper strip from the 1950's to the 1980's prior to his death in 1981 at the age of 52. But many consider the 21 issues of Magnus, a comic book he created in 1963, to be his magnum opus.

Manning's style favoured clean lines and nicely choreographed action. The art merits the term 'balletic' in a way that only a few other superhero artists truly do -- the great Gil Kane comes to mind as well. The in-panel and panel-to-panel action flows smoothly; one really races through the stories. Manning's propulsive artistic skill means that one has to go back to appreciate the non-narrative pleasures of his art, which are many.

Most notable from a design standpoint are Manning's depictions of technology, especially vehicles and robots. His robots have a wide array of designs suited to their function, while his vehicles, especially the spaceships, avoid the cliched 'V-2' designs of most comic-book rockets of the era.

The narrative is very simple. In the year 4000 AD, humanity has become too reliant on technology. And some of that technology has begun to turn against humanity, either on its own or as part of some human's evil plan. Enter Magnus, trained by an ancient robot to fight other robots with his super-strength and martial arts skills. And so Magnus does.

Pretty much every story ends with Magnus warning humanity against the dangers of becoming over-reliant on technology. This seems to have been a big deal with Russ Manning in the early 1960's. I'd love to see his reaction to today's world. Or at least Magnus's reaction.

There's currently yet another attempt to reboot Magnus on the market, but while it's skilfully done, it's not Russ Manning. And, reflecting our times, it's more like Magnus, Virtual Reality Computer Fighter. Where's the fun in that?

Magnus influenced a number of later comic books, probably none moreso than Mike Baron and Steve Rude's Nexus, which began in the early 1980's. Rude's art riffs on Manning at points in enjoyable ways without slavish imitation. And there was even a really enjoyable Magnus/Nexus crossover from Dark Horse Comics (who also issued this reprint volume) back in the 1990's. That was done by Baron and Rude, and is also well worth seeking out. So, too, the originals. Highly recommended.

Grimjack Too

Grimjack Omnibus Volume 2: written by John Ostrander; illustrated by Timothy Truman, Tom Sutton, and others (1985-86; this edition 2010): Serialized science fiction and fantasy really had their Golden Age in American comic books in the 1980's, with every publisher (including superhero-centric Marvel and DC) publishing multiple on-going and limited series. Grimjack came from the very science-fictiony First Comics, also then-home to Nexus, Mars, and American Flagg!, among many others. First is long dead, but Grimjack continues to be reprinted and has found new life at other publishers.

This omnibus collects 17 issues of the comic from the 1980's in a thick trade that's slightly smaller in page dimensions than a normal comic book. Grimjack follows the adventures of John Gaunt, the Grimjack of the title, as he battles a variety of threats to both himself and the pan-dimensional metropolis of Cynosure, where all dimensions meet. We do a bit less dimension-hopping in this second omnibus as instead the threats comes to Cynosure.

Gaunt's got the DNA of such conflicted heroes as the Man with No Name and Jonah Hex flowing through his veins. He's a gun for hire who nonetheless finds himself fighting for the common good on more than one occasion, either as a consequence of his employer's problems or as a consequence of his own partially submerged decency. While taking place in Grimjack's 'present,' the issues manage to fill in more of Gaunt's personal history as we go along.

Ostrander's writing is sharp and sympathetic. The science-fictional elements work for the most part, and there are clever riffs on such long-standing tropes as cloning, altered laws of physics, and machine intelligence. Because there are dimensions with wildly different physical laws, magic can also come into play in certain circumstances, though it's often no match for a good blaster in your hand.

Co-creator Timothy Truman's art is lovingly detailed and often unrelentingly grim and bloody, as befits the title character. Truman straddles the border between cartoonist and illustrator, with careful attention to linework and telling detail. His characters remain a bit stiff at times, but the overall effect is striking.

Once Truman leaves the book, Tom Sutton takes over with a slightly looser but no less gritty art job. Sutton does nice work as well, though his 'shattered glass' lay-outs can occasionally be difficult to follow. Overall, a fun piece of hard-boiled, dimension-hopping science fantasy, with enjoyable guest appearances from Nexus's Clonezone the Hilariator and Doug Rice's Dynamo Joe. Recommended.

Next Nexus Nested

The Next Nexus: written by Mike Baron; illustrated by Steve Rude (1989): This compilation of the Nexus miniseries of the same name from 1989 arrives from a time when comics companies weren't entirely sure what to put in their 'graphic novel' collections for the American market -- or, frankly, what to charge for them. This First Comics album would be a couple of bucks more than the individual issues. Why? I don't entirely know.

It's an enjoyable story for someone who had followed writer Mike Baron and artist Steve Rude's Nexus superhero space-opera serial for the previous decade. But it's not really a standalone story, and it doesn't exactly have an ending. The miniseries should probably have simply been part of the normal run of Nexus, which Rude wasn't drawing at the time. Complications, complications.

So as it's out of print and not the greatest introduction to the Nexus series, I'm not sure how to review it. It's great fun, and Rude's art is really at its late-1980's peak here. We get a nice look at the societies of the far future. Baron's writing is sharp and observant. Rude's art mixes up the superheroic and the comedic with elan: there's really still no one quite like him in comc books, and Nexus gave him the broad canvas to shine in a way that normal superhero books never did and never have.

The 'real' Nexus isn't Nexus at this point in the narrative, which means we have the de rigeur scenes of former Nexus Horatio Hellpop moping around and being noble now that he's no longer in charge of executing mass murderers across the galaxy at the whim of a hyper-powerful alien known as The Merk. A number of sub-plots from the main series play through the miniseries, making me wonder if this really was supposed to be four issues of the main series. So it goes. Great Goulessarian! Recommended for Nexus readers.

Execution and Remorse

Nexus: Nightmare in Blue: written by Mike Baron; illustrated by Steve Rude and Gary Martin (1997): Nexus, that jolliest and jauntiest of comic book series about a brooding, 25th-century, human executioner of mass murderers, has now been around, in fits and starts, for about thirty years. Thirty years! And it now seems to be back at Dark Horse Comics again, after more than a decade in the self-published wilderness. This calls for hyperspeed!

Creators Mike Baron and Steve Rude have always done their best work together on Nexus. Here, in what I believe was the last Dark Horse miniseries prior to a lengthy hiatus and a brief flirtation with self-publishing, Nexus looks somewhat unusual in black and white, though he did start off his adventures in B&W with Capital Comics lo these many years gone. There's some brooding, some cosmic space-opera action, some developments in Nexus's relationship with long-term partner Sundra Peale, and a host of political shenanigans on the inhabitable moon called Ylum.

I wouldn't recommend this as a starting place -- for that, I'd say go to the actual starting place in either single issues or collected editions, if you can find them, and immerse yourself in the greatest superhero/space-opera mash-up comic book ever created.

Baron's writing is sharp here, in any case, and Steve Rude continues to showcase his oddly retro ability to combine cosmic action, heroic poses, and near-funny-animal cartooning into a potent blend. Nobody draws aliens like Rude. Or guys with a rocket instead of one foot. Recommended.