Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. (2007): written by Warren Ellis; illustrated by Stuart Immonen and Wade Grawbadger: Warren Ellis' brilliant, fractured satire of all things superhero somehow got 12 issues from Marvel in 2007, possibly because Ellis was and is such a popular, ostensibly sort-of mainstream writer of superheroes.
With Stuart Immonen on art, best known for fine work on Superman and other DC characters, Ellis crafts a Marvel book that feels more like a revisionist DC book -- Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol most specifically, from the late 1980's and early 1990's. Nextwave is a bit more Juvenalian in its satire, though -- the heroes are pissier and the metacommentary doesn't show much love for the weirdness of the characters it lampoons.
A lot of those weird characters -- Machine Man, Fin Fang Foom, Devil Dinosaur -- are oddballs from one of Jack Kirby's stints at Marvel. Some are riffs on 'real' Marvel characters from the pages of Dr. Strange. H.A.T.E. parodies S.H.I.E.L.D.. Ellis even brings characters previously seen only in the pages of Marvel's short-lived superhero parody comic Not Brand Ecch! on stage, with ridiculous results.
The Nextwave team itself consists of has-beens and never-weres, most prominently Monica Rambeau, Marvel's second Captain Marvel, then Photon, now just going by her real name. Machine Man also now goes by his civilian name. The Captain is one or another or possibly all of those lesser-known characters who used 'Captain' in their superhero monikers. There's a minor X-Men/X-Force superheroine with a major shop-lifting habit and the ability to make things explode by pointing at them. And there's Lady Bloodstone, daughter of a really minor 1970's Marvel monster-hunter and Doc Savage knock off.
It's funny and nasty if you know all the characters and situations Ellis chooses to pummel. It's hilarious if you don't. As Ellis pummels many of his own superhero writing tics, it all seems fair among the figurative and literal blood-letting. Immonen is an able collaborator, looser and more cartoony than I remember him, shining especially in stretches that parody the art styles of others and in a series of two-page action spreads that are both dynamic and completely ridiculous. Tik tik tik BOOM! Highly recommended.
Nextwave: Agents of H.A.T.E. (2007-2008): written by Warren Ellis; illustrated by Stuart Immonen and Wade Von Grawbadger: Fast-paced, hilarious, and nasty. Warren Ellis takes a handful of minor Marvel heroes and uses them to parody pretty much everything about superhero comics past and present while also delivering plenty of high-speed, densely plotted thrills and chills and a certain number of spills.
Nextwave only survived for 12 issues, which is a shame, though it ends at pretty much the right place. Along the way, Ellis and his brilliant cartooning collaborator Stuart Immonen take the piss out of S.H.I.E.L.D., Fin Fan Foom, Captain America, the United States of America, and boring comic books. This is one of the funniest, funnest things Ellis has ever written. Stuart Immonen's deft, uncluttered cartooning constantly pleases and thrills and elicits laughs at the appropriate places. Highly recommended.
JLA: A League of One (2000): written and illustrated by Christopher Moeller: Moeller was mainly known for his fantasy painting when this graphic novel came out. And it is a fantasy adventure of a sort. A typically oblique warning from the Oracle at Delphi causes Wonder Woman to figure out how to get the rest of the Justice League out of the picture so that she can go it alone against the newly reawakened last dragon. Yes, dragon.
The Oracle claims that the Justice League will die if it confronts the dragon. The Justice League being the Justice League, Wonder Woman realizes that she'll have to trick them out of the fight -- there's no way otherwise they will let her fight alone against a 200-foot-long dragon. Moeller's painting is fine and often quite interesting -- the dragon looks great, and he gives the members of the Justice League recognizably human-type proportions. He also uses Wonder Woman's connection to Greek myth in effective ways, though having a dragon out of Northern European mythology as an antagonist really isn't Greek at all, is it?
Like a lot of 'event' graphic novels of its time at the turn of the century, A League of One is embedded a bit too firmly in existing continuity, making it seem at times like a really long Annual rather than a special, standalone volume. Still, more fun than a lot of superhero stuff, and with some appeal to fans of fantasy and sword-and-sorcery. Recommended.
Jew Gangster (2005): written and illustrated by Joe Kubert: The art is typically great Joe Kubert, pared down after seven decades of cartooning (!!!) to an evocative, spare combination of lines and shadows. Kubert's writing isn't as good as his cartooning. The plot is a fairly rote fall-from-grace story of a young man's transformation into a gangster. It also seems to end about halfway through a narrative. But while the characters and situations are often only slightly reworked clichés, the art is finely observed and completely human-sized. Recommended.
Superman: Secret Identity: written by Kurt Busiek; illustrated by Stuart Immonen (2004): Busiek takes a decidely Meta concept inspired by a Superman comic book of the 1980's and extrapolates it into a moving tale about the Man of Steel. In a weird way, OUR Man of Steel.
The Superman team-up series DC Comics Presents offered an odd story towards the end of its run in the 1980's. In it, the Superman of DC's main Earth, Earth-1, met the Superboy of Earth-Prime. But the thing was, Earth-Prime was, in DC's multiverse, 'our' Earth, one without superheroes, one upon which all of DC's heroes were simply characters in comic books. That included Superboy and Superman. So Superboy of Earth-Prime found himself with superpowers on an Earth where he was already a fictional character.
Borges, eat your heart out!
Busiek takes this initial concept and, not in a situation to write an ongoing, in-continuity series about Superboy-Prime, instead writes a non-continuity story that follows a Superboy from a world where he's a fictional character through the course of the super-powered portion of his lifetime.
This Superboy has been teased for years because his parents thought it would be cool to name a male baby with the last name Kent who hails from a small town in Kansas (Pickettsville, not Smallville)...Clark. And one night, when he's 13, Clark suddenly wakes up with a pretty fair approximation of all of Superman's powers.
What follows is a really charming story which allows Busiek to explore the aging of a superhero. Most 'adult' superhero books explore either the beginning or the end of their hero's career. Busiek's best work lies here in exploring the middle -- adulthood, parenthood, grandparenthood. His Superman, who consciously adopts the classic costume in part because it means people who see him won't be believed, operates in secrecy, leery of a U.S. government that apparently wants to dissect him.
But as a fundamentally decent person, Clark continues to help people, despite the risk of being followed home. His powers aren't great enough to always protect him from being knocked unconscious, but he keeps going anyway. And perhaps the government will eventually decide that he's not a threat -- or develop superheroes of its own.
Busiek and artists Immonen, who's never done better work than he does here, do a lovely job of pointing out the ways in which it would be great to be Superman, both through the soaring, two-page vistas that periodically appear to show the world as Superman sees it, and through the little things that he takes for normal, such as being able to go to any restaurant in the world whenever he wants to. It's a great take on Superman, wonderfully told, with expressive character work by Immonen. Recommended.
Thor: Death of Odin: written by Dan Jurgens; illustrated by Stuart Immonen, Jim Starlin, and others (2001; collected 2008): Dan Jurgens and Stuart Immonen were longtime members of the Superman family of comics creators over at DC in the 1990's. Their take on Thor is definitely Supermanesque, with the God of Thunder having secret identity problems galore.
Oh, and he also gets a self-styled 'cousin' who wears a distaff version of his costume and hammer and calls herself Thor Girl. She's actually a shape-changing energy being, though that, too, has its antecedent in 1980's Superman mythology and its bizarrely rebooted Supergirl/Matrix.
It all makes for light, mostly enjoyable superhero stuff. Odin is his usual pontificating, dopey self (a tradition continued from the Lee/Kirby Thor of the 1960's). Ragnarok/Gotterdammerung looms. The Muspelheimian fire giant Surtur again threatens the Earth. Thor is once again mortal for awhile as a punishment from Odin (a punishment which crops up metronomically every four years or so in the Thor comic book).
Much thee-ing and thou-ing occurs. A heavily inked Jim Starlin draws one issue. The Enchantress once again tries to get into Thor's pants. Hercules shows up for comic relief. Volstagg is still really fat. Dire future events are foretold should Thor become the ruler of Asgard. Balder and Sif have almost nothing to do. A new enemy from space threatens to kill off all the gods in the universe -- given that we're shown a bunch of awful, vindictive pantheons, I can't say this strikes me as a totally bad idea. But the climax of that storyline will come after this collection. Hidey ho. Lightly recommended.
