Yearly Archive: 2015

One of the most interesting aspects of the comic book is the creative process by which the writer, artist, inker, letterer, and colorist make a specific issue.  This process, which centers on the embodiment of the story and plot ideas and not on the ideas themselves, is usually only noticed in passing by the average comics reader.

Attention is typically drawn to the dramatic or moral content of the story, the character design and visual presentation, and the colors and shading.  Eye candy and the cool ideas dominate the discussion and the craftsmanship of the page itself seems only an afterthought.

Nonetheless, there are a multitude of books on the market that propose to teach the aspiring creator how to construct a compelling comic (and, ostensibly, get paid for the effort).  Some of the ones in my collection (I do love to collect books of all kinds) are:

• Alan Moore’s Writing for Comics – Alan Moore
• Writing for Comics & Graphics Novels – Peter David
• Understanding Comics, the Invisible Art – Scott McCloud
• Making Comics – Scott McCloud
• The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics – Dennis O’Neil
• The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing Comics – Comfort Love & Adam Withers
• How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way – Stan Lee & John Buscema
• How to be a Comic Book Artist… Not Just How to Draw – Tim Seeley
• Foundations in Comic Book Art – John Paul Lowe

In addition to these full-bodied treatments, there is a smattering of small introductions or pro-tips to working the creative process that are usually found in the filler material for reprint editions or give-aways.  Some of the memorable ones are:

• Summary of the Neil Gaiman approach to Sandman
• Example of the Feldstein approach used in Tales of the Crypt featured in the first reprint volume
• How to Build a Comic by John Barber as a backup for the Marvel Adventures FCBD offering in 2005

If one were to represent the content of each of these sources in terms of a Venn diagram, one would find a core section of overlap where they each say the same essential things, and then a lot of areas where one or two of them stake out a position on technique or style that is in opposition to some of the others.  For example, all of them will talk of the importance of establishing shots or varying the angle from panel to panel to keep it fresh.  That said, most of them will differ on the details of how to pull off a proper establishing shot or how much the angle should be varied.

Of course, this is to be expected.  Creative endeavors, of any kind, are a human process where matters of taste, style, competency, skill, and craftsmanship differ from person to person.

To my knowledge, no one has ever attempted to compare and contrast what these different works have to say, and I thought it might be fun to try.  I am, by no means, a comics creator, and, although I think it would be a blast to be able to produce a comic, I have never devoted the time and energy needed to even be called an amateur.  But I can analyze and critique, and so I will be pursuing a multi-part analysis of what these various works say and how much of it is universal.

The plan for pulling this off is as follows:  In the coming weeks, I will be using this column for digesting and summarizing what each author has to say.  There will be no attempt at exhaustiveness nor thoroughness but rather a general impression and a sampling of the highlights.  At the end, I’ll try to produce a broad look at all of them side-by-side.  Whether I succeed or fail remains to be seen but what I do know is that it should be a fun ride and I, and hopefully you dear reader, will learn a lot.

Some months back I wrote of my growing ambivalence towards the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.  On one hand there is no question that their dedication to the comics community, in general, and to creators, specifically, is needed.  One need only look at the incidents surrounding the Charlie Hebdo incident to understand the value of protecting free speech.  On the other hand, there is a growing concern in my mind about the methods that CBLDF uses to makes it point.

A case in point arose this past May when I journeyed out on Free Comic Book Day to generally shop local businesses, stimulate the hometown economy, and indulge my comic book appetite by acquiring some back issues missing from my collection and to sample some of the new stuff out there.

This year, the CBLDF offered for as a free comic the first issue of their ongoing publication Defender.

The issue covered free speech concerns and talked about some important and, at times, troubling developments concerning the freedom to express oneself.  These included the joint brief filed by CBLDF and the Cato institute urging SCOTUS to protect First Amendment liberties; a blurb about a cartoonist by the name of Zunar who was arrested in Malaysia for ‘offensive speech’ on Twitter; and a discussion of the aftermath of Charlie Hebdo attacks.

What troubled me was there coverage of the dust up in the Chicago Public School (CPS) district over the exclusion of the graphic novel Peresopolis.

It began with the front cover of Defender boasting a provocative splash “Chicago vs. Persepolis: Conspiracy and Cover-up”.  The inside of the issue sports a one page story entitled “Lies My School Administration Told Me”.

The main paragraph reads like the typical movie trailer melodrama ‘In a world they didn’t make…’ with an all too common use of the logical fallacy of the strawman in to boot.  The article implies that someone in the CPS had judged that a book had ‘content that is inappropriate for children’ and then goes on to ask “What sort of filthy, degenerate book could draw demands for removal?” CBLDF doesn’t produce a single email from the CPS that claims the book is ‘filthy’ and ‘degenerate’.  These terms are simply examples of emotional hyperbole added by the writer to provide an extra dash of saucy flavor.

The article then goes on to say

My question to the CBLDF is simply why shouldn’t CPS officials have the authority to take Persepolis off the shelf?  There are at least two good reasons why CPS officials should and do exercise their discretion when it comes to any book.

The first reason is that these officials have a responsibility to educate the students of the Chicago Public Schools according to how the citizens of Chicago want their children educated.  In that capacity they make decisions daily about what curriculum to teach to the children in their care and to pick and choose which ideas they expose and which they keep quiet.  Ask yourself if any reasonable person should harass the CPS to promote hardcore pornography as suitable material?  How about propaganda from the Ku Klux Klan or the Neo Nazis?  What about a display of the Confederate flag? If your answer to any of these questions (or any other material you judge to be inappropriate or controversial) is no then you support the notion that some material should be excluded.  At this point, the argument is not one of principle but of degree – just where should the line be drawn.  That is a healthy argument to have but it is not one that should be swayed by emotional language like ‘conspiracy’, ‘cover-up’, or ‘lies’.  And these terms were used as emotional triggers on the cover and in the headline of the piece as nothing in the narrative of what CPS officials did indicated that any of these terms applied.  It may be true that they do apply, but there is no evidence provided to support that claim.  Fundamentally, it is up to school officials to decide what is and is not appropriate based on their entire demographic and in conjunction with school boards, parents, and the like.  Every community has the right and the obligation to set its own standards of decency.

The second reason is not rooted in questions of a moral aesthetic but in economics.  School systems, like any other human agency, are limited by scarcity.  Simply put, there is only a finite amount of money to be used to purchase materials.  The district is under a fiduciary responsibility to make the most of its money.  That means that they always ‘censor based on finite resources’ – that is to say that they don’t and can’t purchase every book out there.  Often, they don’t even consider material because it is inappropriate for their students.  I’m not speaking of material which may be morally questionable but rather material that is simply not appropriate by reason of age.  I doubt that one would find books on advance quantum field theory or Neo-Platonist philosophy on the CPS shelves.  I actually find the omissions of these types of works much more severe than omissions driven by morals or taste as the former limit the intellectual achievement and the world view of students.  Controversial material can always be found on the internet because its very controversy draws attention.  But important material associated with deep intellectual achievements is rarely discussed in the media.  So how is a student going to be exposed to the finest offerings of human thought if no record of it can even be found on a library shelf?  But I recognize that in a world of finite resources hard choices have to be made.

The final point worth noting is that CPS is not engaged in censorship in any real fashion.  They are not stopping students from owning it; stopping the publisher from selling it; stopping the author from writing or profiting from it, or locking any of these up in jail.  If CPS had the power to indulge in any or all these actions then their conduct would certainly rise to actual examples of censorship.   They would then constitute a government that infringes on the rights of its citizens by force.  What CPS did may offend our sensibilities or make us question their judgement, but it doesn’t rise to level of government led book burning.  Equating real censorship with the actions of a community deciding its own standard of decency is akin to the use of the word ‘Nazi’ when talking about someone who you don’t like – it conflates real evil with annoyance.

Real evil was portrayed in Persepolis with the author’s narrative.

Whether that is worth discussing in the Chicago Public Schools is a matter for the citizens of Chicago to decide and to choose – a right that was denied the people of Iran in the fashion described in Persepolis.  I certainly support CBLDF’s right to advise, persuade, and even coax the district to reconsider its actions.  I also understand their concern that the CPS are invested with a lot of power and authority and that power must be held in check.  But the rhetoric rises to the level where CBLDF is using propaganda to bully, then I say that they are engaging in exactly the same heavy handed techniques they deplore.

When I was a young man, comics were not as main stream as they are today and yet, in some real sense, they were more pervasive.  To flesh that out a bit, comics were considered a young kid pursuit and their presentation and marketing were treated as such.  I can still recall, with vividness, the comics rack in the local Kroger grocery store.  It was to left of the teen magazine (Seventeen, Tiger Beat, and the like), which were to the left of the serious magazines that all grownups should be reading – things like Time, and US New and World Distort.  Almost every store had a rack of this kind, supposedly as a pacifier for the stressed mother who simply could not deal with her precious little snowflakes while shopping.

This was the age before direct marketing, Previews, online ordering, and certainly reprints in the trade paperback or glossy hardbound form.  Little care was given to the treatment or care of the issues and the release to and duration on the news stand was completely unknowable.  Sometime consecutive issues showed up, sometimes there was a gap.

As an avid collector, I had limited ways to find or afford the older material from which many of the comics of my formative years drew upon.  I remember being perplexed by such questions as “Who was Gwen Stacy?” and “Why did she die?” and having no real way to find out the answers.

Then finally, there was an attempt by the marketing wizards to fill in some of the gaps by bring affordable reprints to a hungry audience.  How they actually decided what to reprint remains a mystery to this day but the format they chose was perhaps even more puzzling.  It was common to find reprints in the form of a regular paperback book.

The very first example that came into my hands was a Pocket Book, Doctor Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts #1.

Published in 1978 and sporting a Frank Brunner cover, this collection of reprints actually takes material from Strange Tales #110-111, #114-#129.  Measuring about 4¼ x 7 inches, each page bore a photo-reduced facsimile of one of the original pages in published in comic form on a page of about 7¾ x 10½ inches – reduction to about 37% the original size.  Below is a scan of two facing pages from the Pocket Book reprinting a material from the story “Return to the Nightmare World”, from Strange Tales #116.

Despite the reduction, the art is clear, the text readable, and the colors vibrant.

Also, the original material was tersely sourced, with only a brief one page preface by Stan Lee telling the reader that this volume contained the first eighteen stories featuring Doctor Strange. There was no way for an aspiring collector to know that there was a sequence break between issues #111 and #114.

Shortly thereafter, a second edition followed in 1979.

The stories reprinted here picked up immediately after the original run, spanning Strange Tales #130-144, but were of a different character entirely.  In the first volume, most stories were self-contained within one issue, with only one run of stories lasting three whole issues.  Almost the entirety of the second volume concerns itself with multi-issue confrontation between Doctor Strange and Dormammu, including the first appearance of the entity known as Eternity.

About that same time in 1979, the paperback book entitled Star Hawks came out.

This volume reprinted the daily comic strip by Gil Kane and Ron Goulart that ran from October of 1977 through May 1981.  Since the original publication was sized and layout for the ordinary newspaper, the staff at Tempo Books choose to layout the panels in landscape rather than portrait mode.

The panels remained at their original size, although their relative orientation changed. One simply read the book ‘sideways’.  Because the original strip was in black-and-white, the reprinted strip was also monochrome.

This approach was a really convenient way to consume a daily strip all at one go, without fear of interruption due to a missed delivery or, as was my case, without access to the original as it wasn’t carried in my local paper.

A companion volume, entitled Star Hawks II, followed in 1981 that brought the reader up to about October of 1978.

Taken together, the two books brought about one year of a really good comic strip to the reader for a total investment of $3.50, which is cheaper than many comics on the market today. (Even adjusting for inflation, the price of about $10 was still a bargain).

In 1982, DC Comics offered a reprint paperback for The New Teen Titans.

This volume picked yet a third way to present the original source material.  Like Star Hawks, the staff at Tor Books chose not to photo-reduce the pages.  Instead, they rearranged the panels so that they fit on the smaller page.  In 226 pages they were able to reproduce only the first three issues of The New Teen Titans.  However, they also chose to make the reprint in black-and-white.

So there you have it: three different approaches for reprinting three different series and two different types of source material.  In spite of the drawbacks, these small paperback opened a whole vista of reading excitement.  Here were unbroken runs of original stories that I wouldn’t have been able to afford then and still can’t now, printed in a fairly durable format that could be easily transported and, if the truth be known, read during school hours when the teacher was particular dull and unobservant.  All things considered, I wish they would bring it back.

Well this week was supposed to be the finale of the review of the first story arc of Big Trouble in Little China, the comic.  But due to a production delay, as of this writing, I don’t have Issue #12, which seems to tie it all up.  I make that last comment based on the descriptions of Issue #13 in Previews that states that a new creative team is taking over and Jack Burton is being brought into the 21^st century.

Perhaps it’s all for the best as this review will end with a bit of a cliff hanger that may whet the reader’s appetite even more.

Anyway, of all the three acts, the last one is the poorest.  While still fun, it lacks some of the originality found in the first two.  At times, it seems that one is reading the same set of panels as in the previous issue.  In addition, the narrative is confusing in places and there is still a strange interaction that I haven’t yet figured out.

At the end of Act 2, Lo Pan was once again defeated and killed but at the expense of Jack’s death being thrown into the bargain.  Where Act 2 was darker and more grim, Act 3 captures more of the light heartedness of the first set of issues.  Perhaps this explains the lapses in storytelling.

In any event, the action starts in the Hell of No Escape, where we find the spirit of Mr. Burton consigned with his arch-enemy, David Lo Pan.  Since Jack can’t suffer any bodily harm at the hands of Lo Pan, he is even cheekier with the ancient Chinese sorcerer and much of the humor in this act comes from the back and forth between the two.

As an example, shortly after their arrival in the underworld, Lo Pan turns his frustration on Jack and laments the fact that he will not be able to have his earthly pleasures with Miao Yin.  When Jack points out that Miao Yin was never into Dave, Lo Pan begins a pouty ‘yes she was’ back-and-forth with Jack responding in turn with a ‘no she wasn’t’.  Finally Jack asks

further confirming Lo Pan as a total nut job.

Their argument is soon interrupted when a demon cohort comes to torture them.  Captured and soon to be ravaged, Lo Pan convinces the demons to free him and, in return, he will show them where a martyr can be found to make their ‘games’ all the more fun.  The demons agree and Lo Pan explains Jack’s situation.  As he leaves the Hell of No Escape (come on there is a way in there must be a way out), Lo Pan is quite happy at the thought of Jack’s imminent suffering.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Egg has Wang Chi dump Jack’s body into a pickle barrel and off they go to find someone who can help restore Jack to the land of the living.  The pair soon arrives at the home of Tai Sui Laohu

who is chowing down on some rice as he’s kicked back in an easy chair with his bunny slippers.  Tai Sui Laohu thinks there is a way to get Jack back but says that all of them are going to have to consult a guy who rides a turtle.  More on this later.

Back in hell, things don’t work out quite the way Lo Pan hopes and soon Jack has the demons ponying up their stuff in an all-out game of Texas Hold ‘Em.

Whether demons are stupid or whether these ones had an sinister plan is never quite clear, but Jack wins a way of the Hell of No Escapes with all their stuff by cheating them in a manner reminiscent to the classic episode of Star Trek called ‘Piece of the Action’.  As Jack leaves hell, he makes an interesting observation about marriage which is best consumed straight from the horses mouth.

Note the amulet around Jack’s neck, for reasons I can’t explain, it plays a critical role in some later events.   As Jack leaves the Hell of No Escape behind, he finds himself in the spaces between and then soon in a new hell where he meets a reptilian demon whom Jack dubs Slinky.  Jack tells Slinky he could really go for a trip to a bar and is amazed when Slinky points out that there is one handy.  Jack offers to buy Slinky a round

and almost immediately Jack has a new demon BFF. Another inexplicable item is worth mentioned here (as seen from the advantage of hind sight).  Note the curious hole in Slinky’s breast plate.  It looks like something round and amulet-sized might fit in there. Hmmm….

Well off they go to get some brew and no sooner do they enter the gin joint then what do theirs eye behold?  None other than David Lo Pan, belly up to the bar with a face that could curdle fresh milk.

Jack and Lo Pan get into a fracas.  In the commotion, Jack loses the amulet and Slinky (who is much smaller than his armor implies, finds himself able to seize it as a prize.

He flees with the amulet while Jack and Lo Pan are cuffed by the owner and forced to pay of the damages by washing dishes.

Some while later, Slinky returns to liberate Jack, sporting the amulet in his breast plate, sort of like Iron Man’s main repulsor ray on his chest.  Why Slinky took the amulet and why he comes back are quite a mystery to me – and one I don’t believe will be explained in the final issue of this arc.

Slinky and Jack face overwhelming odds in their attempt to escape but, at the last minute, a giant flying demon, like something out of the demented mind of H. P. Lovecraft, swoops in to kill all their pursuers.  And you thought deus ex machina was dead and gone.

Unfortunately, Lo Pan also escapes and threatens them with a horrible revenge as soon as he retrieves something called the Black Serpents Tongue.  Playing the role of Captain Obvious (or a Cistercian Monk for those who get that reference), Slinky steps in with a handy explanation of why they should be worried.  He tells of the god Yama defeating the Black God of Chaos by ripping the beast’s tongue from its mouth. Somehow, Yama forged it into a sword of great power but he soon lost it

In order to get the power to retrieve the blade from the Hell of Ice and Sorrow, Lo Pan makes a particular evil deal with the Dark Gods of the East

who consent to give Lo Pan the power of the Breathe of Green Flame.

While Slinky and Jack pursue Lo Pan in the hopes of preventing him from retrieving the sword, Egg, Wang, and Tai Sui find the man on the turtle

whose name is P’an Ku (although it should be Master Roshi).

And this were it ends.  As explained above, Issue #12 looks like it should draw this story arc to a close.  If I had to guess, I imagine that Lo Pan is lost forever in the Hell of Ice and Sorrow.  Jack returns to the land of the living but somehow 28 years into the future, probably due to some spell cast by P’an Ku.  And what about Slinky?  I think he’ll open his own bar in the Hell of a Thousand Hangovers.

Okay, Lo Pan is back, and he is particularly annoyed with Jack for not only having killed him in their last encounter but for consigning him to torment in the Hell of Those Killed by Idiots.  And his renewed presence on our plane means yet another demise of a relationship between our mullet-sporting hero and a loved one.  This time it is Pete, who once more under Lo Pan’s control, turns on Jack.  Even all the good times traveling in the Pork Chop Express aren’t enough to save marriage number five

Fortunately for our adventurous band, the Chang Sing show up just as things get hairy, allowing Egg Shen and company to use the old ‘vanish in a cloud of smoke’ routine to get out from under Lo Pan and his twisted boy band.

Despite their narrow escape, things aren’t rosy.  Egg reminds them that Lo Pan has vast resources and all of those will be bent towards revenge.  As a spirit, Egg is unable to harm Lo Pan and the only way to make him flesh again is rather unpleasant.

And so a quick plan is put together off panel.  Not one to be daunted by tales of death and destruction, Jack leaves in a conspicuous fashion with Wang disguised as Miao Yin to lure everyone away – including the Lords of Death.

Once on the road together, Burton takes a few opportunities to tease Wang about how good a a women Wang makes.  These comedic observations must be pretty accurate, though, because when Wang and Jack stop at a biker’s bar for some food, Wang comes under some unwanted attention

Feeling sexually harassed, Wang reacts in the only way he knows how – with his feet of fury.  He is in the process of taking the whole bar down when the burrito he just ate drives home a bad case of Montezuma’s revenge.

Green to the gills, Wang sinks to his feet, about to get stomped, when he and Jack are saved by an old acquaintance by the name Moonie Joe, who also happens to be the big man at the biker bar.

Meanwhile, the real Miao Yin walks the Midnight Road with Egg Shen under the assumption that this would be the last place where Lo Pan and company would look for them.  Like her husband, it seems that Miao is having a hard time keeping her temper, perhaps due to the ‘coitus interuptus’ events surrounding her wedding.  Whatever the reason, she goes off in hilarious fashion over the smallest of slights leaving Egg to wonder what exactly has happened

Back at the biker bar, Moonie Joe, Jack, and Wang confer about the next steps unaware that two men in black, the Zhang Brothers, are on their trail

Jack unveils his master plan to take Boot Nail Highway, a mostly abandoned and scenic stretch of highway.  Much to his surprise, Moonie Joe freaks out and begins to tell a story of a dead alien whose ghost haunts Boot Nail Highway looking for people to eat.

Jack dismisses the warnings and soon he and Wang are camped out on the side of the cursed road, drinking beer and slurring their speech.  They look like sitting ducks and indeed the Zhang brothers are quite sure that they will be able to bring Jack back to Lo Pan, although perhaps not in one piece,

Before the campers are caught unawares by the Zhang Brothers, the ghost alien that Moonie Joe warned them about shows up and eats the assassins, putting an end to a brilliant mayhem career.

While these events are happening on the earthly plain, Egg and Miao continue their journey in the spirit realm.  As they climb through the bizarre, other-worldly scenery, they discuss what it means to be a hero

What they don’t realize is that agents of the Seven-Faced Widow are tracking them and they are soon subdued and brought to face the lady with seven faces and five hundred pounds of flesh for each one.

Jack and Wang continue eastward, stopping for lunch at a truck stop in Nashville.  It seems everywhere he goes, Jack is known by the locals, and this truck stop is no different, and the pair are waited on by a giant, slow-witted country cook by the name of Bert.  And what a good thing that turns out to be, for when Wang and Jack head back to the Pork Chop Express, who do you think is waiting for them?  None other than the Lords of Death.

The Lords start taking a bite out of Jack and things look bad when Bert gets involved and levels a beat-down on the Chinese street gang.

Sadly, before he can finish the job, his ma shows up and scolds him and drags him away.  But by this time the locals have joined Jack and Wang in the free-for-all.  The cops show up shortly thereafter and propose a southern-styled solution to the ‘disagreement’ between the two sides

The Lords of Death pick their leader, Black Knife, to represent them and the rednecks pick Jack (mostly because of his hair).  Facing off in the pig pit, Jack looks grossly overmatched and it seems certain that he’ll be the one the pigs dine on that night.  However,  fate seems to be on the side of our hero as she so often is, and when Black Knife rushes forward he slips in the muck and accidently impales himself on a broken shovel handle.  In typical style, Jack greats the sudden victory with a “It’s all in the reflexes” response.

Having defeated their leader, the Lords of Death now swear their allegiance to Jack.  With a small army now under his command, Jack resolves to head back to San Francisco and confront Lo Pan.

Back in San Francisco, we find Egg and Miao prisoners, after the Seven-Faced Widow had turned them over to Lo Pan.  Her asking price is that Lo Pan whacks Jack – something he’s already itching to do.  Egg is tied up while Lo Pan prepares Miao Yin for his pleasure.  Qiang Wu pays a visit to Egg but is doesn’t end too well for Qiang’s ego

Jack soon launches his offensive and lots of action takes place with Wing Kong, Chang Sing, Lords of Death, and demon combatants all going at it in the subterranean lair of Lo Pan. Egg takes down Qiang but is exhausted.  As Jack joins his side, Egg asks if Jack is ready

Jack allows himself to get captured and Lo Pan stabs him through with a sword.  Gleeful that he is finally going to have some ‘earthly pleasure’

Lo Pan is heedless of the fact that now that he is flesh he can be killed and Egg runs him through, thus ending the threat, at least for now.

Egg consoles a grieving Wang Chi suggesting that there may be a way to bring Jack back – after all Lo Pan didn’t seem to stay dead long.  And Jack, as he journeys to the afterlife, decides that it isn’t too bad.  Not what he imagined but not too bad – that is until he finds that he and Lo Pan are sharing a common hell.

So ends Act 2; a little darker and less humorous than Act 1 but certainly a lot of fun.

Next time act 3.

Without a doubt, one of the best movies of the 1980s was John Carpenter’s ‘Big Trouble in Little China’.  This offbeat action, horror, comedy, fantasy is hard to match in fun and excitement.  From the opening scene with Egg Shen, the enigmatic Chinese sorcerer, to the final glimpse of the Pork Chop Express as it rides off into a torrential downpour, the movie has just the right mix of humor, camp, action, and plot.  Since its release in 1986, the story of Jack Burton’s short visit to San Francisco has stood alone.  No sequels, no prequels, no television spin off.  That is until Boom Comics started publishing the comic by the same name.

For those who haven’t seen the movie I have things to say.  First, what is wrong with you?  Do you starve yourself of good food, the great outdoors, and human companionship as well?  Second, stop reading this now and go out and watch it – I’ll be here when you get back.

Okay, now that we are all on the same page, some comments about the comic.

Brought to you by the creative team of John Carpenter (yes that John Carpenter) & Eric Powell on story and dialog and Brian Churilla as the artist, Big Trouble in Little China is a blast as a comic book.  The initial storyline is roughly in three acts with about four issues per act.  All the action and favorite characters are there along with a lot more humor, weird, and Jack Burton backstory.  We also get to see a lot more hells than just those mentioned in the movie (the Chinese have a lot of hells).

The first act picks up precisely at the moment the movie leaves off.  We see the Pork Chop Express fighting its way through rainy northern California weather with an unwelcome hitchhiker

stowed in the back of the rig. Not content to just sit there getting wet, Lo Pan’s demon soon bursts his way into the cab and lunges at Jack.  Just as Burton is deciding that his time is up, the creature starts licking his face affectionately

and suddenly a beautiful friendship is born.  Dubbing his new pet Pete, Jack decks him out in spare clothes and then promptly turns around and heads back to San Francisco.

When Jack and Pete arrive just in time to attend Wang Chi’s wedding to Miao Lin.  At the reception, Egg explains that the bond that Lo Pan had with Pete transferred to Jack when the later killed Lo Pan.  Jack and Pete kick around at the buffet table and at this point we are treated to the first of four flashbacks to previous Mrs. Burtons.

It seems that wife #2 became available after she ‘encountered’ Jack in a broom closet at his cousin’s wedding.  On pregnancy test and shotgun marriage later, Mr. and Mrs. Burton are enjoying what passes as marital bliss when the bottom falls out.  Wife #2 had no bun in the oven and a father, who as the leader of his local cult, is trying to resurrect a Babylonian death god.  It seems that Jack is destined to be surrounded by the supernatural. Needless to say a quicky divorce follows.

Just as Wang Chi and Miao Lin are about to start their honeymoon, the Wing Kong crash the party and a full-fledged melee breaks out.  The action comes to a screeching halt a few minutes later as a new villain makes the scene.

Deeply annoyed with the fall of Lo Pan, Qiang Wu gives Egg and Jack three days to retrieve the spirit jars of Storms, his brother disciples.

So begins the quest on the midnight/black road (one complaint – the writing staff keeps switching the name).  As Pete, Jack, and Egg travel along the midnight road in the Pork Chop Express, we are treated to a whole big plate of strange and, often crude humor.

Along the way, we are treated to the back story for wives #3 and #4.

It seems that the third Mrs. Burton, troubled with the prospect of growing old, joins a band of goth vampires and becomes one of the undead.  She comes back for one more marital bed tussle before she ends her human husband’s wife.  Lucky for Jack he’s an early riser and that his bedroom window faced east on a sunny day – scratch wife #3.

Mrs. Burton #4 has an even stranger hookup with our romantic lead.  It seems that she was a mind controlling gypsy who put her beloved to the sinister task of killing and robbing those hapless souls who came to her to have their fortunes told.  Unfortunately for her, the local villages finally have enough and, gathering their torches and pitchforks, put her to a gruesome end – scratch wife #4.

The funniest exchanges occur when they near the lair of the Seven-Faced Widow.  Her lair sports a fantastic image of her

but as our heroes soon discover images can be deceiving

Despite coming face-to-face with the Seven-Faced Widow’s impressive stature, Jack remains unfazed and delivers some biting commentary about the state of art on the midnight road.

The widow poses some challenges that the trio must conquer in order to obtain the jars.  But Jack, being rather quick in his reflexes and comfortable thinking outside the cultural-sensitivity box, simply steals the jars and heads back to Qiang.

At this point we actually get to hear about Mrs. Burton #1.  It seems that she was a beautiful and decent soul and that she dies of some disease or condition.  This flash back is about the only poignant note one finds in the series to date but it gives a lot more depth to Jack’s character.

Finally, Egg, Pete, and Jack make it back to our world and deliver their cargo.  Once the former Lo Pan fan boy has the jars he quickly reconstitutes the storms

and then brings back a petulant Lo Pan from, get this, the hell of those killed by idiots.

Thus ends act 1.  Next week, I’ll cover the new quest to beat back Lo Pan in Act 2.  It gets weirder and a lot more fun.

Captain Ahab as an alien, space-faring whales, giant praying mantises, and the corpus callosum.  What do all these things have in common?  They are integral story elements in the lost classic comic story called Abraxas and the Earthman.

Originally published in serial form in Epic Illustrated issues #10-17, the mature magazine offering of Marvel Comics in the 1980s, Abraxas and the Earthman was the brain child of Rick Veitch.  Veitch is primary creator and seems to have done the plot, dialog, layout, finished art, and coloring all by himself. The work is best enjoyed in the bound edition published by King Hell Press, even though the page size is slightly smaller than the original.

Veitch’s retelling of Moby Dick seems to have borrowed as much from the hippie culture of the 1970s as it does from the Romanticism period in American history that birthed Melville’s 1851 tale.

The story centers on the bizarre otherworldly adventures of the cetologist John Isaac.  Isaac’s psychedelic odyssey starts aboard the nuclear submarine the Barb under the command of Navy Commander Falco.

Their mission is barely underway when they are attacked in true 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea-fashion by a giant squid.  This squid, however, is no ordinary denizen of the deep.  It sports what looks to be a log cabin on its back, and its large and immensely strong tentacles begin to tear gaping holes in the submarine’s hull.  The Barb is soon destroyed and Isaac and Falco face death in the murky waters well below the surface.  They are spared this fate when something grabs a hold of Isaac and pulls him to safety while he, wildly clutching at Falco’s leg, rescues his commanding officer.

As soon as they are inside the squid, they discover just how their rescue was effected.  A large, purple alien, named Staub, dressed in 18^th-century sailor’s garb, had yanked them from the sea and is addressing his captain saying

This is our first glimpse of the strange aliens and bizarre world that inhabit the space whaling fleet, and our first hint that the unusual (perhaps unique) structure of the human brain will play such a major role in the story line.

In answer to Staub’s call, Captain Rotwang walks in on one good leg and one peg

and informs Falco and Isaac that the ‘Great Red Abraxas’ took his leg and that the Xlexu surgeons were ones who fashioned its disgusting replacement.

Rotwang then turns and orders his men to ‘put your backs into it’, leave the Earth and its puny whales behind, and head for the whale planet.  The squid/longboat breaks the surface and, hauling two humpback whales in toe, sets out for space.  Shortly afterward, they near Rotwang’s giant whaling vessel, named the Yorrikee, which looks more like a self-contained ecosystem than a sailing vessel.

If Melville intended the Pequod to be a microcosm of human existence, I suppose that Veitch intended this star-sailing ship to a be a microcosm of the entire universe.

Once aboard, Rotwang orders the Xlelu surgeons to prepare Isaac for lookout duty and Falco for the furnace.  The Xlelu, large aliens that resemble praying mantises, incapacitate each man and then carry them off.  Through the strange venom in its bite, the Xlelu merges his consciousness with Isaac. The latter watches in muted fascination as the surgeon removes his skin and then turns his attention inward.

In a dream that isn’t quite a dream but a mental representation of the biochemical changes acting within him,

Isaac witnesses the landscape of his mind.  He sees a sea of faces each with a vivid red gash down the center of his forehead.  The Xlelu states that these are the faces of John’s former lives, each bearing the mark of the divided double-lobed brain.  The Xlelu then merges John’s brain into one harmonious whole.

The Xlelu hang the modified cetologist, now cocooned in a chrysalis, to a branch of one of the trees to await his rebirth.

The physical changes are profound.  Where his skin once covered his body, there is now a clear membrane that allows the passerby to see muscle, bone, ligament and tendon as clearly on display as in a medical student’s anatomy book.  In addition, Isaac can now see almost the entire electromagnetic spectrum.  As radical as these changes are, they are nothing compared to what is in store.

Rotwang shows up on the scene with a devil’s bargain.  He offers to restore Isaac if John will help him hunt down the great red whale Abraxas.  Convinced that he needs more incentive, Rotwang then shows him the rest of the Xlelu handiwork.  A living, body-less Falco is now a plaything, subject to Rotwangs’s whim

while  Falco’s body, complete from the neck down, tirelessly tends the Gravity Root, the power source for the Yorrikke.

Reluctantly, John agrees to help, and Rotwang immediately seals the deal by forcing John to participate in the flensing of a whale that has been captured. Flensing involves stripping the outer flesh of the whale from its body, including the skin and the blubber underneath, which is then boiled to get the valuable whale oil contained therein.

Once the whale has been completely butchered, a dispirited John Isaac climbs in some tree branches and falls immediately asleep.  Shortly after he begins to slumber, the Yorrikke encounters the whaling vessel Ymir headed by Captain Dolphin.  In a meeting closely paralleling the one between the Pequod and the Rachel in Moby Dick, Rotwang sees the horror that Abraxas has visited on the Ymir but, nonetheless, continues in his self-destructive path of vengeance.

The next day, Isaac is forced to take part in the customary post-flensing meal.  Rotwang forces him to drink the blood of the slain whale and to take part of its giblet, an organ located in the head of the whale, used to create its song and said to be the seat of its soul.

The giblet acts as a mind-altering drug and Isaac’s aura soon leaves his body to fetch Abraxas.

Finding that Isaac’s job is now done, Rotwang welches on the deal and tries to kill the now insensate human, but he is unable to carry his plan through because at the moment Abraxas arrives, his size dwarfing even the immense extent of the Yorrike.

Seizing the distraction, the Xlelu intervene on John’s behalf and rescue him.  They carry his limp body and drop him down the maw of Abraxas.

For the most part, this is the point in which Abraxas and the Earthman begins to depart from Moby Dick.  Safely inside the red whale, Isaac, unaware as Abraxas destroys the Yorrikke, begins to piece together what the Xlelu have been up to.  He finds a host of Earthmen transformed just like him, all mad from the incessant whale song of pain that Abraxas sings.  They force John, who they call self, into the living giblet of Abraxas, where he achieves a kind of soul-communion with the whale.  Once inside this mysterious organ, his soul (here defined as the conscious mind joined with his aura)

is liberated and helps to heal Abraxas.

Rotwang is not quite out of the picture though.  After acquiring deadly technology from giant aliens (yes it did get weirder), he convinces the rest of the fleet to unite with him to destroy Abraxas.  He forces the Xlelu to join the two lobes of Falco’s brain.  Falco immediately has a vision where Abraxas is floating and the hunt is back on.  Meanwhile, John and Abraxas have now completely merged into a single symbiotic creature – two bodies, two souls, but one entity.

They go on to save numerous souls from the grip of Aion, “the devourer of awareness who strips all memory from souls before sending them back to live another life.” The symbiote then deposits each soul in a whale, thus starting a new race of man-whales.

Rotwang and the fleet close in for the kill but, despite the savageness of their attack with the stolen alien technology, Rotwang’s final grasp at revenge fails to do anything more than injure Abraxas and lead to the destruction of the whaling fleet.  The Isaac/Abraxas soul emerges once more, pulls the stinking, blackened soul of Rotwang from his body, and sends it on to be purged by Aion.

As the story closes, the Xlelu, who have tended Abraxas’s wound suffered at the hands of Rotwang, perform a last bit of exposition.  They say that as agents of evolution, they have been entrusted with the seed of life (DNA). From that seed they created whales first.  Ages ago, the whales engaged in the Great Migration, leaving the whale planet behind and spreading across the universe, giving rise to the various races of men.  Now is the time for men and whales to exist in communion.

The Xlelu ask Isaas/Abraxas what they will call their new race.  Their answer:  “Call me Ishmael.”

And so ends one of the trippiest comics stories I’ve ever read.  Part science fiction, part allegory, part moralistic tale, ‘Abraxas and the Earthman’ has some rough spots in both pacing and plot.  The end chapters seem rushed as if the serialization were coming to an end and Veitch had to fit some pieces in at the last minute.  That said, there is simply no way to view this work as anything other than a classic tale doing what comics do best.

The art and panel layout are vivid, beautiful, and imaginative.  The story line is weird in the best sense of that word, exploring concepts that can only be expressed in the medium of sequential art.  No amount of descriptive prose can bring home the wonder of the Yorrike, the horror of the bodyless Falco, or the alien nature of the Xlelu.  ‘Abraxas and the Earthman’ is a classic tale worth reading and adding to any comic collection.

I got a request from a friend after we both went to see Avengers 2: The Age of Ultron.  My intention was that last week’s post on this installment of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), and what is likely to be a huge pot of money for the power structure of Disney, would be my only post related to the movie.  Alas, that intention is now derailed as my dear friend asked for some back story on the Maximoff Twins, Pietro and Wanda.

Just in case you’ve been living under a rock, Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, also known as Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, are some of the new Avengers featured in the film.  They received a cameo appearance in the mid-credit teaser from Captain America 2: The Winter Soldier.  Quicksilver is super-fast, running so quickly as to be only a blur.  His representation in the movie closely parallels the original conception of this character in the comic books.  The Scarlet Witch is a bit more complicated.  In the film, she possesses both telekinesis and the ability to manipulate the minds of her enemies.  While stylistically similar to her comic book version (scarlet clothing and exotic gestures to invoke her power), the Scarlet Witch of the movie differs in some key ways, making it much easier to integrate her character into reasonable storylines.

The back story from the comic book begins with their premiere in X-Men #4 in 1964.  When we first meet Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch, they are seated at a dining table, eating an evening meal with the Toad and Mastermind. Brother and sister are not only mutants but also official members of Magneto’s Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

It seems that Magneto had saved them some time earlier from villagers intent on harming them for being different.  In their first battle with the X-Men, Quicksilver’s incredible speed doesn’t prevent him from being literally out-maneuvered by the Angel.  The Scarlet Witch quickly retaliates with a small movement of her hand and the ceiling caves-in on the Angel, incapacitating him.

This is the first occurrence of her mysterious hex power.  This choice of mutant ability will cause problems for Marvel from here on and will become a sort of ‘deus ex machina’ that some writers avoid and others embrace but which will continue to generate controversy even after it is ‘fully explained’.

The twins appear repeatedly in X-Men #5-7, but with the action always carefully scripted so that Wanda either doesn’t need to or is prevented from using her hex power in any significant way. There is even an occurrence when, while meeting the Sub-Mariner, Wanda is overcome by girlish emotion an accidently unleashes a hex his way.

They stay under the thumb of Magneto until the end of X-Men #11, when the dread master of magnetism is snatched away by the Stranger. Feeling their debt to Magneto fully paid and longing for a more wholesome way to employ their mutant powers, brother and sister bid their time by laying low in Europe and looking for an opportunity to become heroes.

Such an opportunity presents itself in Avengers #19, when they read a newspaper account of how the Avengers had just added Hawkeye to their ranks and that other new members might be accepted as well.

A quick letter is penned and sent to the Avengers (ah, the good ole’ days of snail mail and low security).

And the next thing you know, Wanda and Pietro arrive in New York, where they are greeted by none other than Tony Stark (looking vaguely like Robert Downey Jr).

The Avengers do name them as replacements, as the heavy hitters on the team, Iron Man, Thor, and Giant-Man, had decided to step down from team adventuring for a while.  At the end of Avengers #16, the first really new lineup is introduced

with Captain America leading the Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, and Hawkeye.

In many ways, this is one of the best Avengers lineups, since the team now lacks in raw strength and has to compensate with teamwork, strategy, brains, and resourcefulness. It also provides a showcase for the talents of both Hawkeye and the Scarlet Witch.  In particular, the nature of her hex power gets better defined and a limit on her ability is set down – most probably in order to cap the open-ended nature of her appearances in the X-Men.  Wanda is only able to produce 3 hex bolts before becoming too exhausted and needing some time to recharge.

Unfortunately, this approach was probably too much of a strain on the writing crew and the roster gets switched again by issue #28 with the return of Giant-Man and the Wasp. Shortly thereafter, the twins return to Europe in Avengers #31 to regain their power. A brief stay seems to rejuvenate them both but with a greater impact on the Scarlet Witch.  They rejoin the team in Avengers #36 and remain there until issue #53. During this time the Scarlet Witch is an on-again/off-again character – sometimes deadly strong with her hex power, sometimes weak.  I think the writers simply didn’t know what to make of her powers and, by issue #48, she’s lost her hex powers completely.  This happens during the opening round of a cross-over battle between the Avengers and the X-Men, on one side, and Magneto and his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants on the other.

After Magneto’s defeat in issue #53, Wanda and Pietro again return to Europe looking to revitalize Wanda’s mutant powers.  The readership is denied even a glimpse of the pair until nearly two year later, when Wanda and Pietro resurface in issue #75.  This time Wanda is lured into reciting a spell and releasing a menace from another world.  This is the first inkling of her possessing magic as well as mutant powers.

Brother and sister again rejoin the Avengers shortly thereafter and a romance almost immediately blossoms between Wanda and the Vision.  Indeed they almost kiss in issue #91 but, at the last minute, the Vision demurs.

By now, nearly 8 years have passed since Wanda and Pietro made their first appearance and during that time they were never really parted.  That said, their paths diverge in Avengers #104.  After a battle between the Avengers and the Sentinels, Quicksilver is mortally wounded and, being stranded in an unknown location, is left behind.

As I recounted elsewhere, he is eventually rescued by Crystal of the Inhumans; an act of kindness that entwines his fate with theirs.

Wanda remains with the Avengers, where her romance with the Vision deepens.  Eventually the twins are reunited at the marriage of Quicksilver and Crystal.  Shortly after the ceremony, the witch known as Agatha Harkness, who had been the Fantastic Four’s governess, chooses Wanda as her new magical apprentice.

Under Harkness’s tutelage (and Steve Engelhart’s scripting), the Scarlet Witch begins to evolve from a love-smitten damsel into a strong, mature character.  Part of that maturation results in her marriage to the Vision in a joint ceremony marking the end of the Celestial Madonna storyline that ran through the Avengers from 1972-1974.

By now, the attentive reader might have noticed that I have not used the name of Maximoff in describing the Wanda and Pietro of the comic book universe.  This is because their parentage and surname went unrevealed for a long period of time, and when revealed it was given as Frank (Giant-Sized Avengers #1, 1974).  The Golden Age hero Robert Frank, aka the Whizzer, maintains that Wanda and Pietro are his children, and this identification seemed natural as both the Whizzer and Quicksilver possessed super speed.  Robert, distraught with grief over his wife’s death in childbirth, abandoned the children to be raised by Roma in Eastern Europe. Frank’s assertion of paternity remains unchallenged for five years until John Byrne ties all of the various pieces together into one of the best storylines in Marvel’s publication history.

It starts in issue #181, when a Roma by the name of Django Maximoff ‘kidnaps’ Pietro and Wanda and tells them an alternative origin.

He insists that Pietro and Wanda are his very own children and urges them to remember him.  They soon free themselves from his clutches but decide to journey with him to Eastern Europe to find the truth.  After all, they had returned there on two other occasions when they needed to.  Their journey leads them to the awful truth that neither the Franks nor the Maximoffs are their parents.

By eyewitness testimony of the cow-woman Bova, they come to learn that their mother, a woman named Magda, had fled from her husband and sought refuge on Wundagore mountain.  Wundagore is the home of the High Evolutionary, a scientist obsessed with creating a race of sentient animals.

Magda soon gives birth to Wanda and Pietro, but her happiness is short lived.  Fearing that her husband would soon hunt her down, Magda leaves Wanda and Pietro with Bova, who then brings the babies to her master.  The High Evolutionary first attempts to give them to the Franks,

who were expecting their own child. However, Madeline Frank dies after giving birth to a stillborn baby and Robert flees under the weight of his own grief.  The High Evolutionary then gives the babies to the Maximoffs to raise as their own.

While not explicitly stated, long time readers knew that Magda’s mysterious husband was none other than Magneto.  Thus the twins had been saved early on and subsequently bullied by their own father, even though they were unaware of it.

Later writers build upon this structure.  Wanda’s mutant powers are explained as manipulating the probabilities of the universe.  These powers, her magical training, and her kinship to Magneto lead to weirder and weirder storylines.

Thankfully, the creators involved in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have the sense to limit her powers and, since Fox owns the Marvel mutant property, this twisted history will never see the silver screen.

Well, the first big summer blockbuster comes out this weekend – Avengers 2: Age of Ultron.  Based on the original Avenger’s movie success, the fantastic track record of Marvel’s cinematic universe, including the shows made for television, and the marketing undertaken by them and their parent company, Disney, it is likely that this installment will make well over a billion dollars.  Clearly, with a draw like that, the majority of moviegoers will be people who have only a cursory familiarity with the comics history that is the backdrop for the movie.  So, this week I will try to give some background about the villain called Ultron.

I would venture a guess that most people know that Ultron is some sort of artificial intelligence that has grown too big and fast and has now become hostile towards its creator and, by association, the whole human race.  Given the demographics of the audience, it is likely that people will say that this particular concept is reminiscent of the Matrix or Terminator movies.   Ultron, however, appeared on the scene much earlier than either of these films.

The original appearance of Ultron was in Avengers (1961) issue #54, where he went by the equally bizarre name of the Crimson Cowl.  He appears on the scene as the sinister leader of the new Masters of Evil – a group rounded out by the bunch of lesser-known super villains comprised of Klaw, the Radioactive Man, Whirlwind, the Melter, and the Black Knight (I guess pithy names were hard to come by in the 1960s).  Nothing in either his appearance or in his mode of speech reveals his mechanistic, man-made origins, and no doubt he would have passed Alan Turing’s test.

The ensuing clash between the Masters of Evil and the Avengers features a set of one-on-one battles:  Hawkeye vs. the Melter, the Black Panther vs. Whirlwind, Klaw vs. the Wasp, and Giant Man vs. the Radioactive Man.  Despite being betrayed by the Black Knight, the Masters of Evil gain the upper hand and quickly subdue and imprison the Avengers.  After some meaningless plot twists, including Jarvis, the Avengers butler, being subjected to mind control so that he appeared for a time as the Crimson Cowl, the real Crimson Cowl finally reveals himself to be Ultron-5.

The Avengers manage to get free and defeat the Masters of Evil, but they fail to catch Ultron-5.  The story closes with a melodramatic threat from the robot that has more of the feel of a human villain simply dressed as robot rather than the artificial intelligence with thought patterns and behaviors quite different than Man’s.  This overly abundant mimicry plagues almost every story of Ultron going forward, and the metal menace is often portrayed as having an inferiority complex, as being jealous that he is not quite human enough.

Ultron reappears a few issues later in #57.  This issue not only fills in the back story of his origin, but it also includes the first modern appearance of the synthezoid called the Vision.

Visually patterned after the Golden Age hero of the same name, this Vision has a robotic body but a human mind.  He quickly rebels against his ‘father’ and sides with the Avengers against the ambitions of Ultron.

It seems from the Avengers 2 trailer that we will be seeing at least a glimpse of the Vision in the movie as this still shot shows.

Issue #57 is also notable for the iconic ending involving the remains of the Ultron-5, who is destroyed in his clash with the Vision.  A young boy discovers Ultron’s severed head and plays with it against the narrative of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem Ozymandius.

The Ultron saga doesn’t end there.  Issue #58 fills in some of the gaps in both the Vision’s and Ultron’s back story.  It seems that Ultron was created ‘accidently’ by Hank Pym (aka Ant-Man [the original], Giant Man, and Yellowjacket) and that the nascent intelligence quickly grows beyond his ability to control it.  Feeling (exactly how?) malevolent towards his creator, Ultron erases Pym’s memory, and then chooses not to kill him but to exact revenge on him when he least expects it.  When the Crimson Cowl ploy proves useless, this metallic Frankenstein creates the Vision as his agent of retribution, but rather than giving the Vision a machine mentality, Ultron imprints on him the brain patterns of the deceased Wonder Man, an old foe/friend of the Avengers from Issue #9.

Over the next decade, Ultron shows up in a variety of roles.  Each time, he emerges with a new model number but with the same old insecurities, hostilities and delusions of grandeur that led to his defeat in earlier incarnations – so much for machine learning.

The interested reader can consult the Wikipedia article on this robot menace, but I advise against it.  Ultron never rose to inspire the dread or wonder that other machines-run-amok have in other venues.  It/he lacks the frightening, single-minded and logical purpose of Proteus from Demon Seed.  Ultron never demonstrates the ruthlessness of the Terminator or the utter disdain to man that Agent Smith from The Matrix does.

Fortunately, the movie version of Ultron, what little has been revealed, seems a great deal more sinister and powerful; perhaps because the writers have borrowed from these more successful versions of out-of-control a.i., perhaps because our level of sophistication has increased.  In any event, Avengers 2 looks to be a blast.

When I saw the solicitation for Herald:  Lovecraft & Tesla (HLT) I was intrigued.  Action Labs originally billed this title, by the creative team of John Reilly, Tom Rogers, and Dexter Weeks, as a 3-part limited series starring Nikola Tesla and H.P. Lovecraft and what’s not to love about Tesla or Lovecraft.  In addition, the action takes places in one of the most interesting periods of world history, firmly sandwiched in that era between the end of the Great War (World War I for those of you unfamiliar with the notion that WWI would be the war to end all wars) to the beginning of World War II. And the supporting cast is filled with some of the most intriguing historical figures, who are perhaps more interesting than the main protagonists.

The promise of the book is mostly realized in the execution and there are a number of delightful twists on the historical narrative but there are also a number of flaws that detract from the overall presentation.  In order to understand all these points better, what follows is a brief recap of the action so far presented.

The story starts at an undisclosed airfield in October 1923 where we see a thin, young, and glamorous woman, clad in aviation attire, standing next to a twin-propeller airplane.

The young woman is none other than Amelia Earhart, seeking to travel solo across the Atlantic Ocean to Europe.  Just before she boards the plane, we catch sight of an odd ring that she sports upon the ring finger of her left hand, prompting one of the reporters to ask if the unusual piece of jewelry is an engagement ring (see below for just who Amelia’s love interest is).

The scene jumps to a brooding Nikola Tesla sitting in his workshop pondering dynamos, induction and electromotive forces, the concept of fields, and the farewell letter from ‘Melia’ saying “Sorry.  Off to make history.  See you soon.”

Suddenly a contraption on his desk whirls, pulses glows, and then winks out of existence and into another dimension.  As we find out later, the same contraption is aboard Earhart’s aircraft and, alarmed by the possibility that she is in danger, Nikola leaps into action.  His attempts to rescue Amelia from this trans-dimensional fate form the main thrust of the story and the reason for his eventual partnership with H.P. Lovecraft.

He packs and begins to leave his laboratory when an odious, toad-of-a man barges in, declaring himself the duly designated legal representative of Thomas Edison.  He rudely points out that Tesla has failed to live up to his contract with the ‘Wizard of Menlo Park’.  In particular, Tesla was required, in fine print no less, to deliver an eighth invention 24 hours after delivery of the seventh one (or maybe before – carefully read the word balloons below).

The action then switches to Boston, Massachusetts, where a rapt audience watches as a man defies death, being released from an air-tight, water-filled canister after a 20-minute imprisonment, still alive and well.  Backstage, we find our escape artist, none other than Harry Houdini, sharing a few words with the second key player, Howard Phillips (H.P.) Lovecraft.

Lovecraft threatens to expose just how Houdini pulls off his amazing ‘illusions’ unless Houdini buckles down and investigates someone who ‘calls himself the beast.’  Houdini is not interested in eventually calls upon his bouncer to help Howard find the door out.

In the meantime, Tesla is having his own form of consultation with a historically notable personality.  This one is certain patent clerk going by the name of Einstein.  Nickola (Nik as Albert addresses him) shows his plans for the unfinished prototype contraption that so violently shunted itself off to another world.  Tesla goes on to confess that he is in love with Amelia and has proposed to her (hence the ring?), that he fears for her safety, and he begs Einstein for help. Albert solemnly advises Tesla to retrieve the device before it can throw her off course but he has no tangible advice how to rescue her should the worse happen.

Fortunately for Tesla, a would-be inventor had eavesdropped on his conversation and advises his to seek out and consult with H.P. Lovecraft.

And so, Tesla journeys to Rhode Island to find the semi-famous writer of bizarre fiction.  Arriving at Lovecraft’s home, Nik discovers a rather strange household headed by a domineering mother, who casually asks to be addressed as Ms Lovecraft as her ‘husband’s heart was eaten by a demon’.  She waves aside Tesla’s concern that he has breached social etiquette by arriving unannounced since she knew he was coming and she insists that he go down to the basement and interrupt her Howie since he would be writing ‘more of that nonsense.’

Tesla descends and finds Lovecraft hard at work writing.  An interesting exchange take place between the two, where each of them, one firmly committed to science and the other as deeply committed to mysticism, talks down to and past the other.  This dialog shortly interrupted when a lobster-like entity (latter identified as a Mi-Go) attacks them both.  After a prolonged battle, they manage to repel the monster’s assault but not before Lovecraft is stabbed through the chest by the creature’s large claw.  Fortunately, Howard’s mother seems to be a witch of some sort and she miraculously heals his wounds.

After a hasty consultation, our two heroes reach an uneasy alliance and head to Brown University in search of the Necronomicon.  Having no success with obtaining the whereabouts of the university’s copy through normal channels, they each resolve to break into the library using different routes.  They make it in only to be caught by the ‘bad guys’.

More mayhem, violence and destruction take place, before Telsa and Lovecraft escape with a clue to the Necronomicon’s whereabouts.  The ‘bad guys’ are in a position to pursue but the head villain holds them off with a mysterious comment clearly hinting that one of our two heroes is the ‘Herald’ from which, I gather, the series takes its name.

Now if the narrative so far disclosed sounds complicated rest assured that it is even more confusing than my text makes out.  While the visual exposition is nice and clean – each distinct character looks clearly different, the written exposition has several gaps.

First and foremost, there is a substantial amount of prior knowledge and participation required of the reader.  As an example, consider the magic act that Lovecraft attends in Boston. I don’t know if most readers would immediately understand that the escape artist is Harry Houdini.  His last name never appears, except on a show bill that is mostly covered by a word balloon.  The readers are left to ferret this information out for themselves.  In addition, Lovecraft alludes to the familial reason why Houdini can ‘hold his breath’ so long underwater but I doubt that many of the readers would understand that the creative team is implying that the Houdini family are Deep Old Ones and may have got their abilities by marrying into the Innsmouth population (see Lovecraft’s Shadow Over Innsmouth).  Other examples include knowing that Einstein was a patent clerk, that Mi-Go are the lobster creatures featured in The Whisperer in Darkness, and that Amelia Earhart disappeared while on the trans-pacific leg of her world flight in 1937.

Another set of confounding items are the anachronisms and historical inaccuracies that creep into the narrative.  I can’t tell whether they are intentional twists on the accepted record or are due to ignorance on the part of the creative staff.  The most disturbing of these is the mixing of dates.  Earhart was lost at sea in 1937 while flying over the Pacific Ocean rather than 1923 (when she was just starting to learn to fly).  Other less egregious examples include Lovecraft referring to transistors and diodes

decades before their invention and the fact that Einstein was a patent clerk in Germany not in the United States.

Also worth noting is some queer language associated with the confrontation between Tesla and Edison’s lawyer (see the appropriate figure above).  Explaining how Tesla defaulted on the contract, the nasty, insufferable word-stretcher says “An additional device must be generated in its entirety and submitted precisely twenty-four hours in advance of the seventh project’s completion.”  It’s not clear if the writer meant to have the text read “…twenty-fours hours after…” or whether there is some hidden time-travel or legal mumbo-jumbo afoot.  Perhaps he believes that a reader will figure it out or forgive a mistake but I have seen too many shoddy expositions in modern comics to have much patience for a teams that lack attention to detail.

So overall, I find HLT to be a mixed bag.  The motif, setting, and characters has a lot going for it.  The art style is clean, crisp, and easy to figure out who is who.  The story requires some yardstick for the average reader and would benefit well from either footnotes and/or endnotes, a technique almost completely forgotten in the modern comic.  I suppose that I will refrain from final judgment until issue 4 of 3 comes out.  And no, that isn’t a misprint on my part.  The team apparently is aiming for the all too common approach of offering the book as a limited run and then extending the story if they 1) can’t fit it all in or 2) have good enough sales to warrant milking the story line for more money. Hopefully the team will clear up several of the dangling plot threads including what exactly is the ring that Earhart is wearing, is it connected to the strange contraption with the dimensional hopping instability, and why does a new character that seems to be Adolf Hitler, show up in the final pages of the third installment talking to two men, one of whom is wearing the same mysterious ring we first saw on Amelia’s finger.