Concrete: Killer Smile (1986-2004; collected 2006): written and illustrated by Paul Chadwick with Jed Hotchkiss: Writer-artist Paul Chadwick's Concrete was something of a critic's favourite during the late 1980's. It's the charming adventures and misadventures of former political speechwriter Ron Lithgow, a somewhat shlubby fellow who got his brain transplanted by aliens into the immensely strong, immensely durable 'Concrete' body of the title while on a camping trip.
That alien origin is generally avoided in the Concrete stories not dealing directly with Concrete's origins. The US government, surprisingly benign, gives Ron the cover story that he's actually a cyborg from a failed government program, has him keep his real identity and origins secret, and sets him up in L.A. with supervising scientist Maureen Vonnegut and assistant (and aspiring writer) Larry Munro.
Stories short, long, and multi-issue over about 30 years now follow Ron's attempts to live the adventurous life he always dreamed of as a booky kid. He climbs Mount Everest, swims across the Atlantic, works as a bodyguard for a Prince-like rock singer, and saves miners from a collapsed mine. And that's just over the first five years of his adventures. He works in movies, helps the environmental movement, and occasionally checks out stories that may indicate that the aliens who 'created' Concrete have returned.
Chadwick's stories and art remain fairly modulated and low-key throughout Concrete's run. The stories generally concern themselves with psychology and funny character bits as much as action and adventure. Chadwick also occasionally delves into his love of renditions of the natural world and its creatures, helped story-wise by Concrete's far-better-than-human day and night vision. How this never got at least a TV pilot is beyond me.
The major story here, originally a four-part miniseries, focuses on Larry Munro, with Concrete playing second fiddle. Larry gets carjacked by a homicidal couple at an L.A. gas station -- think Natural Born Killers Meet The Hulk. The four issues follow Larry's inner and outer turmoil, along with Concrete's attempts to find Larry and NOT to shoot him when they corner the couple turned trio. The story explores the gap between a person's beliefs in his (or her) own heroic self and the realities of being a hostage who doesn't want to die in sensitive and believable fashion. It's also a story of how great it is to have a friend like Concrete, even if the typically self-doubting Ron doesn't realize it.
Short pieces round out the volume, culled from 20 years of short Concrete tales. They are for the most part involving even as they show how Chadwick's renditions of Concrete evolved over the years and decades. A Christmas story involving Concrete and Larry's family is especially enjoyable. Recommended.
Concrete Volume 2: Heights: written by Paul Chadwick; illustrated by Paul Chadwick, Jon Nyberg, and Jed Hotchkiss (1986-1995; collected 2006): My only caveat about this reprint format from Dark Horse is that it's too small (smaller than the original comic-book pages, that is) to do justice to some of writer-artist Paul Chadwick's work with the occasional tiny panel or series of tiny panels. But I also realize that this format is a commercial necessity. Volume 2 of the collected Concrete gives us issues 6-10 of Concrete's original title from the late 1980's, along with assorted short stories.
Concrete was infamously called by Harlan Ellison the best comic book on the racks in an Ellison article on comic books in a late 1980's issue of Playboy. It really, really wasn't. It was an enjoyable and, for a marketplace dominated by superheroes, somewhat offbeat take on what was really a super-hero trope.
Concrete the character was originally a U.S. political speechwriter. While on a camping trip with a friend, he was captured by aliens and had his brain placed in a 7-foot-tall, super-strong body that looked an awful lot like it was made of concrete (though it wasn't).
Concrete escaped, while his friend either died or was again taken prisoner by the aliens, who proceeded to leave Earth as rapidly as possible. After being studied by the U.S. government, Concrete was finally allowed to live his own life under government supervision, and with frequent evaluation and testing by scientist Maureen Vonnegut. His cover story was that he was the sole survivor of a mostly disastrous U.S. government cyborg program.
So Concrete, forever a creature of the mind, decides after his release to become at least partially a creature of action. He does have super-strength, super eyesight, a super-tough skin, and super healing abilities. He doesn't have a sense of touch or taste (he can eat rocks and stay healthy, for instance, and so he does), and while he can hear, he doesn't seem to have ears.
Also, no genitals.
In this second volume, the full-length stories show Concrete, Maureen, and his assistant Larry trying to help a rural family save their farm (Concrete accepts letters from people asking for various types of help); Concrete climbing Mount Everest; and Concrete dealing with the death of his mother (who believes him to be dead thanks to the government's desire to keep his original identity a secret) and a mysterious illness that no one can diagnose, given that his biology is completely alien to Dr. Vonnegut and the other scientists studying him.
Chadwick maintains a nice balance between the mundane and the dramatic throughout this volume. Concrete may be strong and tough, but that doesn't mean he never gets into tight spots. In its own way, Concrete is as much of an exploration of the real-world possibilities of a super-hero as were other late 1980's works that most notably include Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen. Concrete remains hopeful about human society in the face of the extraordinary, with a lot of qualifiers.
The art of Concrete is pleasing and low-key, free of the standard superhero sturm-und-drang even in the loudest moments. It's about as naturalistic and unmelodramatic a take on a superhero as one could want. Chadwick does occasionally slip into network-TV-style moralizing at the end of a story, a tendency that would fade over the years as Chadwick became a writer more sure of himself, though it never entirely disappeared. Nonetheless, it's a pleasure to reacquaint myself with Concrete and friends nearly 30 years after I first read these comics. It's a very warm and mostly gentle series, and there should be room in comic books for a series like that. Recommended.
Concrete Volume 3: Fragile Creature: written and illustrated by Paul Chadwick (1986-1995/collected 2006): Volume 3 of the collected Concrete offers a selection of short stories about everyone's favourite alien cyborg with a human brain and, as the eponymous main feature, a reprint of a 1991 miniseries about Concrete's adventures in the film business.
Fragile Creature draws upon Paul Chadwick's own adventures in the film business (among other things, he worked on Bob and Doug Mackenzie's Strange Brew!) as it shows Concrete accepting a job doing a wide variety of on-set special effects so as to get a movie based on a line of toys made without breaking the budget. Super-strength has its advantages. Problems arise, of course, thanks to some resentment of Concrete taking jobs away from the people who would otherwise have done such effects. There are various squabble on the film as well, primarily between the main actor and the director.
The whole thing works well as both a dramatic but low-key adventure for Concrete and as a primer on movie financing, production, and marketing. Concrete's personal life also undergoes some changes as his personal scientist Dr. Maureen Vonnegut starts a relationship with another scientist, to the perpetually lovestruck (and in his cyborg body, completely without genitals) Concrete. Recommended.
Concrete Volume 6: Strange Armor: written and illustrated by Paul Chadwick (1986-2006/collected 2006): Writer-artist Paul Chadwick reworks a screenplay he wrote for a never-produced Concrete movie into a 150-page comic-book narrative, to mixed results. It's interesting to see his 10-years-later take on Concrete's origins and first adventures. Unfortunately, Hollywoodizing the story of Concrete also meant adding a prominent 'action' plot involving a corrupt CIA agent to the mix.
The Hollywoodized portions of the narrative don't add anything positive. Indeed, they make for a jarring contrast with the normal tone and content of Concrete, which was always fairly normative (or non-sensational, perhaps), even when our hero was dealing with aliens or Eastern Bloc secret agents trying to kidnap him. The Hollywoodization also turns Maureen Vonnegut, Concrete's government-assigned scientist, into a sort of action-movie/romantic-comedy version of herself, abandoning the organic growth of Concrete and Maureen's platonic relationship. Lightly recommended.
Concrete Volume 1: Depths: written and illustrated by Paul Chadwick (1986-1999; collected 2005): Concrete became a critical and commercial success in the 1980's in part because of the comic-book world's 'Black-and-White boom,' in which a rising tide of speculation floated all boats and then a declining tide nearly grounded all boats, forever. It also got the always understated Harlan Ellison to declare it the best comic book of its time.
It wasn't.
What it was, though, was a refreshing change for the superhero-dominated time: a low-key story about a guy stuck in a super-powered body and what he tries to do with that body. That the body looks like a Golem made of concrete and has an extremely limited sense of touch makes things tougher. Concrete has super-strength, but it's bear-level super-strength, not Superman-level super-strength. He can be hurt by explosive shells, long falls, or oxygen deprivation lasting more than an hour. Oh, and he has terrific eyesight, which allows Chadwick the artist to depict some pretty interesting undersea vistas during Concrete's periodic forays underwater.
Re-reading (most) of these stories 24 years later, I'm struck by how soothing the world of Concrete is. The adventures are low-key in tone even when they verge on the epic (Concrete saves miners from a collapsed mine; Concrete tries to swim the Atlantic Ocean); Chadwick's skills as both an artist and a writer lie in the depiction and accumulation of small, telling details.
Schmaltz and over-sentimentality always lurk at the threshold, but for the most part they're kept at bay with lovely little details (the look on Concrete's face when he accidentally steps on someone's foot, for example). And one of the early central conceits of the series -- that the best way to get people to stop talking about something is to over-expose it in the media -- remains fresh. Recommended.
Next Men: Aftermath: written and illustrated by John Byrne (2012): John Byrne's time-twisting superhero book finally comes to what may or may not be an end, 17 years after he started the project. It's been a mostly enjoyable ride.
Here, the reality-bending shenanigans come thick and fast, reminding me of one of Byrne's better efforts, the OMAC miniseries. Byrne's one of only a handful of creators of his era who seems truly comfortable with science fiction as a thought process and not as a series of symbolic markers deployed in the service of allegory.
This volume is probably a necessity if you've followed Next Men and completely pointless if you haven't. Byrne's art is very sharp, and his inking of himself has finally reached the status of some of the great inkers -- Terry Austin, Karl Kesel -- he had in the past. Recommended.
Top Ten: Beyond the Farthest Precinct: written by Paul DiFillipo; illustrated by Jerry Ordway (2005): Science-fiction writer DiFillipo and long-time DC artist Ordway do nice work picking up the story of the super-powered precinct five years after the events chronicled by creators Alan Moore, Gene Ha and Zander Cannon in the original Top Ten series from 1999-2000.
Ordway luxuriates in the chance to do hyper-detailed panels in the backgrounds of which lurk pulp and comic-book and comic-strip characters highly reminiscent of every such character ever created. The city of Neopolis houses virtually all the super-powered, supernatural, and just plain weird people of America. And Precinct Ten ('Top Ten') tries to keep the peace.
This time around, we catch up with old friends, especially Toybox, Smax, King Peacock, Peregrine, Shock-headed Peter, and Sergeant Kemlo, as they deal with an irritating new mayor, an even-more irritating new precinct Captain, and a bizarre apparition which swiftly goes from scary nuisance to potentially universe-destroying threat. The geography of Neopolis remains an odd delight and a commentary -- we again see the robot ghetto, but we're also introduced to Bugtown, in which reside insect-based characters, and insects, of all types. Don't ask me what it all means. Recommended.
The Five-Year Engagement: written by Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller; directed by Nicholas Stoller; starring Jason Segel (Tom Solomon), Emily Blunt (Violet Barnes), Chris Pratt (Alex Eilhauer), Alison Brie (Suzie Barnes-Eilhauer), David Paymer (Pete Solomon), Mimi Kennedy (Carol Solomon), Jacki Weaver (Sylvia Dickerson-Bauer), Rhys Ifans (Professor Winston Childs), and Mindy Kaling (Vaneetha) (2012): Advertised as another Judd-Apatow-produced romp, this movie is indeed that -- but also a surprisingly nuanced and accurate portrayal of life in academia. Now wonder it wasn't a hit!
The trials and tribulations of Emily Blunt's post-doctoral-fellowship-holding psychology Ph.D. and her hapless fiance Jason Segel, transplanted from his dream job as a sous-chef in San Francisco to life as the lightly regarded non-academic partner in Michigan, ring amazingly true.
Segel gradually goes crazy while Blunt putters along in her mostly laughable academic career, the romantic target of a lecherous supervisor played to unctuous, faux-sensitive perfection by Rhys Ifans. The stellar supporting cast has lots to do, with Community's Alison Brie doing a decent British accent and the Sarah Silverman Show's Brian Posein making good use of his giant beard and drunken Sasquatch charm as one of Segel's Michigan drinking buddies. And the leads are funny and charming.
This isn't a great movie -- like almost every Apatow-associated project, it's a bit too shaggy and a bit too long. But it certainly provides more laughs than almost anything else you're going to see this week. Recommended.
