Alan Moore's Twilight Proposal

Introduction by Alan David Doane:

Honestly I didn't intend the irony, but this week's FMF, looking at Alan Moore's never-published Twilight proposal, also represents the twilight of Flashmob Fridays. This is our final outing.

I love the idea of a bunch of great writers getting together each week to take many and varied looks at a particular comic or graphic novel (...or unpublished proposal), and I'd be more than happy if someone else picked up the ball and ran with it somewhere else. But my current schedule and energy level just aren't allowing me to enjoy bringing this thing to life every week as I enjoyed it when we first began. And to half-ass it week in and week out is not fair to the contributors here, or the people coming to read their work each week.

So thanks for hanging out with us here every week, and I hope you'll check out our efforts over at Trouble With Comics, where any future writings-about-comics by at least myself and Christopher Allen (as well as any FMF contributor who wants to join us -- the door's always open, gang) are likely to be found.

With that, here's our final Flashmob Fridays. Take it away, gang.

Roger Green:

Okay, that tricky Alan David Doane fellow threw us a curve this week. Instead of critiquing a comic book, we're to evaluate an "unpublished series proposal for DC Comics" written by Alan Moore that runs 27 pages and was written more than two decades ago. Oh, why not?

Moore made some cogent observations about previous attempts to tie together events of a comic book universe. He notes the merchandising angle that Marvel used to create the Secret Wars series and crossovers in 1984 and 1985. In fact, if the Wikipedia page about Secret Wars is correct, it was the Mattel merchandising that dictated at least some of the story structure of Secret Wars. As Moore noted, and I agree, the "assembled multitude of characters look merely banal, which I personally believe happened with Secret Wars." It was also a retailer's puzzlement. The ancillary books would likely receive a spike in sales, but for how long? Would readers decide that they did not REALLY have to read the crossover books at all, but merely follow the story in the titular book? Reorders, in those days, were pretty difficult to come by in those days, and reprints just didn't happen that often.

Comic readers are often a loyal lot. While I wasn't a big DC fan in the 1980s, I got the sense from our store's customers that the result of DC's Crisis on Infinite Earths was unsettling. As Moore put it: "In the wake of the time-altering at the end of the Crisis we are left with a universe where the entire past continuity of DC, for the most part, simply never happened." That angered some fans that "the larger part of DC's continuity will simply have to be scrapped and consigned to one of Orwell's memory holes along with a large amount of characters who, more than simply being dead, are now unpeople."

Interestingly, Moore shows himself to be a bit of a fanboy himself, and opposed to messing too much with certain conventions when he noted his disappointment "at the end of the first Superman film, when he turns time back to save Lois. It ruined the small but genuine enjoyment that I'd got from that first movie and destroyed all credibility for any of the following sequels as far as I was concerned."

Continuity of a 40- or 50- or 70-year old icon is always complicated unless the character is allowed to age. "There are a number of people in the industry...who feel that it's time to break down the continuity and try to get rid of a lot of the rather anal and obsessive attitudes that have been allowed to dominate the marketplace and to some degree have hindered it in its periodic attempts to be taken seriously." Anyone who listen to comic book fans debate incessantly knows to be true. "I suppose a shining example of this would be Frank [Miller's] Dark Knight."

Moore believed his Twilight outline would serve both the "audience thirsty for the stability that an ordered continuity gives them" and those would throw "continuity to the winds altogether." Yet it shouldn't be the dystopian model used in Dark Knight or his own Watchmen.

Soon thereafter, Moore got into the details of the various "Houses" of superheroes, and I rather tuned out at this point. Whether it would or would not have worked is impossible to say, in retrospect. That Moore spent so much time analyzing the CONTEXT of the crossover was much more interesting to me than the storyline itself.

Christopher Allen:

It's difficult and not really fair to review an unfinished project. In this case we have a project that wasn't really even begun: Twilight, a proposal for a massive DC crossover series that would have been a big DC event around 1987. Seemingly on the strength of Watchmen, Alan Moore was asked to come up with it. I'm not sure if his bad feelings towards DC developed this early to kill the project, or DC just decided to go in another direction, but it never happened. DC instead followed Legends with a ho-hum event called Millennium and went on from there.

Like most Moore scripts, this is fun to read, and I thought I might just make notes as I'm reading it rather than waiting until the end. First off, it's charming but also sad how much of a DC team player Moore is trying to be at this point. He's coming off Watchmen and looking to give DC another big hit that meets their commercial goals while hopefully being a creatively rich and satisfying experience. Moore understands that his job isn't just to deliver a good book; he's got to give other creators good ideas to mine for new or revamped series of their own. He also knows that DC will want the book to provide merchandising options, like Twilight t-shirts and the like, and he's okay with it. He's engaged with the current mainstream comics world, effusive with praise for Miller's Dark Knight, respectfully critical of Secret Wars.

At the same time, there is a sense that Moore is going to try to resist going too far with working out the story until the project is approved.

The proposal is subtitled, “First Gleamings” and the self-deprecating tone of it makes explicit he can't guarantee he's going to get to the finish line. Although Moore asks for the reader's (editor's) indulgence that fuzzy or flat areas will be polished up and improved in the actual scripting, there is at the same time a feeling that some of these details will be figured out at the moment Moore is writing the proposal.

One interesting thing about the proposal is that Moore expresses concern that big reboot events like Crisis on Infinite Earths can make older readers feel that the stories they grew up with, that meant something to them and for which they're nostalgic, have been invalidated by the fiat of the current hot creator or editorial powers-that-be. It's a core concern of Moore's, and it reminds me of his famous quote that all comics stories are imaginary. At the time, he was attempting to show there was no difference between the stories a company like DC deemed “imaginary” and the ones that were considered part of continuity. Essentially, he's saying that it's really up to the reader to take what they want from the stories, to believe or not believe in whichever one they want.

Moore eventually starts laying out the basic idea of Twilight, which is an attempt to put superheroes into a mythical context by using actual mythological underpinnings, in this case the Norse end-of-days myth, Ragnarok, when the old gods are killed off. This in itself is not a particularly original idea. Offhand, I know only about fifteen years earlier, Jack Kirby's Fourth World Saga drew inspiration from Ragnarok as well, though his books were canceled before he really got around to the Darkseid/Orion battle that might have brought on Ragnarok. And of course, Thor writers have written about preventing Ragnarok for decades. But as they say, it's all in the execution.

Moore recognizes that superheroes, while arguably our modern mythological characters, usually lack mythological resonance in the actual stories because superhero stories rarely have an end. He cites DKR as one of the few that has this resonance because it does provide an end to Superman and Batman, while at the same time making it irrelevant whether any creators after Miller ever actually fill in the gaps to make DKR the “real”, in-continuity end to Superman and Batman after all. It doesn't matter. What's ironic is that this is one of the reasons Watchmen is still resonant over a quarter-century later. It probably would have been well-regarded if it had featured the Charlton characters originally planned for use—characters that went on into other DC Comics stories not long after, from other creators. But using new characters in a self-contained story that felt complete is unfortunately a rather rare thing in comics. Here, Moore is interested less in trying to create a similar luxurious situation than in creating something that feels like a meaningful modern legend that creates new possibilities for further exploration while being simultaneously just another possibility, a story that doesn't close off other stories or the feelings readers have about them. It even allows for the revisiting of old continuities and discarded storylines and timelines. It seems like about the best way to try to put together a work-for-hire story, a very generous challenge to oneself.

The mechanism for revisiting these sometimes wonky but charming old stories and characters like Brother Power, Prez, the Rainbow Batman and such, is a “fluke field” created by old Legion of Super-Heroes villain The Time Trapper, perhaps facilitated by the timestream already being weakened by the Crisis and other continuity-ordering/altering events.

Moore envisions the story structurally much like Watchmen; twelve issues, no ads, 28 pages each. There’s an end-of-days event going on 20 or 30 years in the future, and so the superheroes of that time send a message back in time, to then-current DC continuity, hoping those heroes can prevent this Twilight. He envisions Legion of Super-Heroes villain The Time Trapper creating, yes, a time trap, in order to prevent heroes from stopping his evil future plan. This creates a time bubble or “fluke field” that allows for the existence of characters previously booted out of continuity like Prez, Brother Power, presumably alternate Earth versions of other heroes, and also lends itself to use in current continuity LOSH stories by Paul Levitz as well as the rest of the DCU, if the other creators want to play along. Eventually, the heroes escape and return to their respective times, while Rip Hunter goes to the future and meets an older John Constantine, who tells him to go back to our time and enlist the aid of the younger Constantine to prevent the Twilight.

The story, in Moore’s mind, will ripple back and forth between different times, so in the dystopic future he sees, the superheroes essentially rule the world, having had leadership thrust upon them in the wake of governments and social institutions crumbling. They are divided into various houses, as with royalty. If this sounds a bit like Kingdom Come, Squadron Supreme or House of M, well, yeah. I’ll leave that for others to dig into the various similarities. We have the House of Steel, led by Superman and wife Wonder Woman (now Superwoman), and they’ve got two kids, the son being a bad apple. Next is the House of Thunder, with a married Captain and Mary Marvel, though it’s a marriage of convenience and strategy, and she’s having an affair with the now-grown Captain Marvel Jr., who struggles under the shadow of Captain Marvel. This is interesting, as you’ve got Moore exploring not just, as he describes, a Guinevere/Lancelot type of story, but it’s also Oedipal and quite similar to the conflict he explored in Marvelman between Marvelman and Kid Marvelman. And, let’s face it, it’s a de rigueur plot for any superhero family: the sidekick or junior member always rebels against the patriarchal original hero.

The House of Titans is made up of grown, grimmer Teen Titans members, including a Nightwing every bit as driven as Batman but lacking his compassion. It’s funny; when this proposal was assigned to us to review, one of my colleagues felt that the natural course of a review of an unpublished project would be a “I wouldn’t do it that way” approach, and I thought to myself that that was the last thing I would be concerned with. And yet, I have to say I don’t see Nightwing this way at all. He not only had parents who loved him, like Bruce Wayne, but unlike Bruce, he was around them all the time, essentially learning his acrobat’s trade from them. I kind of think he would have been a bit warmer and well-adjusted than Bruce, and indeed, that’s generally how he’s portrayed. But that’s not to say Moore couldn’t have done a very credible job with his interpretation, or that that interpretation might have changed a little or a lot as the real writing began.

After intriguing takes on the increasingly robotic Cyborg and mentally deteriorating Changeling (now Chimera), we meet The House of Mystery, the old DC spook story anthology title being a slam-dunk for use in Twilight’s vision of Houses. As one might expect, it’s peopled by DC’s supernatural or magical characters like Deadman, Zatanna, the Spectre, and a reformed Felix Faust. Moore does not at this point have much to say about them and they don’t look to figure very prominently in the plot, so he moves on to The House of Secrets. They’re analogous to the Legion of Doom, with Lex Luthor, Catwoman, Captain Cold, Dr. Sivana, Gorilla Grodd and other villains. They’re the bad guys who’ve managed to survive the superhero purges of villains and have become the de facto protectors of a remote region of Nevada. Moore hints here at moral relativism, which is clearly a major theme in a story about heroes who’ve become corrupt, warring factions.

The House of Justice is made up of some ex-Justice Leaguers and second-or-third generation heroes like a female Dr. Light, a female Flash (Slipstream), Wonder Girl (now Wonder Woman). The House of Tomorrow is comprised of time-lost characters like Rip Hunter, Jonah Hex, and Space Ranger. The presence of a younger version of Time Trapper indicates this House might be fairly important to stopping the Twilight. The House of Lanterns is shuttered, all aliens having been banished from Earth, other than the grandfathered-in Superman. They’ll be pulled into the story somehow.

One thing I like about Moore’s vision of the future is that he wants to avoid the clichéd, nuke-ravaged version and instead focus on a society that has unraveled and is evolving into something else, as happened with the Industrial Revoltion. What exactly that is and how it will be explored, he’s not so clear on in the proposal.

While even Moore himself has taken a share of the blame for, and turned against, the mid-'80s grim ‘n gritty, deconstructionist take on superheroes that became the status quo by 1990, that doesn’t mean it’s not a lot of fun to read what he would have done in that regard with Twilight. We’ve got the remaining heroes living in a rundown barrio, unaligned with any Houses and, aside from Constantine, seemingly rather useless. There’s a drunken, gibbering Uncle Sam, a Doll Man who’s mutated into some sort of six inch walking stick type of insect-man, the former Phanton Lady as a kind of caretaker/hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold type, and a legless Blackhawk, recruiting a new squadron from the barrio’s leather bars. Doubtful DC would have let that get through. Plastic Man is a male prostitute because, well, why not?

Moore also touches on the idea of the exchanging-body superhero, both with Captain Marvel and Congorilla. In the case of Congorilla, his human form is 90 years old and frail, but alive, while none of the Marvel Family’s human forms age. Congorilla spends all his time as the immortal gorilla, now a Gotham crime lord, while Captain Marvel is the only one of the Marvel Family who still occasionally changes to his human counterpart, Billy Batson, still a child. This causes problems in his marriage, which Moore doesn’t explain yet, but it would seem that this difference makes Marvel a character who could conceivably change and break out of the downward spiral he and the rest of the heroes are on. Also, it’s pretty clear Moore intended to use the detail about not changing back to human to symbolize and help explain the detachment from humanity these superheroes experienced, which led to their corruption and justifies their bloody ends in the Ragnarok event.

Curiously, Moore casts Green Arrow and Black Canary as editors of a radical newspaper, and two of the nicest characters in the book (thus the ones most identifiable to readers). It’s an unusual take on Green Arrow, who usually works well as a loudmouth (if righteous) jerk, but as so many heroes have taken dark turns it makes sense to take one who was already somewhat antisocial and make him a better person.

It should be no surprise to anyone that when in doubt about characterization, Moore gives a character some sordid or darkly comic details. Bondage figures into The Question, Platinum from the Metal Men is a sex worker (dating Robotman), Gold has to hide because gold is in such demand he’s in danger of being melted down. Billy Batson has gone quietly mad, apparently due to a mental puberty and maturation in his prepubescent body.

Again, as with Watchmen, there is a mystery to kick off the story, this one a sordid, bondage-filled locked-room murder. I thought the solution to where the murderer was would have to do with the murderer killing an ancestor and thus ceasing to exist, but no, it’s a little more prosaic: invisibility. The rest of Moore’s plot involves a lot of hero-on-hero violence, the arrival of the Lanterns and other aliens to essentially rescue humanity from the so-called heroes, a kind of unmasking and rolling up of sleeves, with a hard-earned utopia ahead.

Looking at all this again, despite the hundreds of words above I find it really is impossible to “review” an unpublished work. You recount details and ideas, because that’s all there is. You notice similarities of themes in other Moore work, and similarities to actual published work that came after this proposal was written. But to say whether it “works” or not is impossible, because it’s not finished. We have some story beats, lots of character details, and several sketches of character conflicts, but there’s no dialogue. There are no captions or page breakdowns. No artwork. Who would have brought this to life on the page? There are indications of storytelling conceits that would add resonance to the work, like the decrepit, jingoistic monologues of Uncle Sam possibly tying into the action on subsequent scenes, but we don’t see any real examples of this in action. It’s an ambitious work, no doubt. Whether it’s more or less ambitious than Watchmen is unfair, because it’s unfinished and could have changed a lot in the actual scripting. In the end, I feel like it was a lost opportunity for DC that certainly wasn’t replaced by Kingdom Come or anything else, but the fact it never got done is no real tragedy. It presents itself as a potentially very rich and entertaining story, surely one of the more interesting unpublished superhero stories ever, but Moore has gotten to explore similar themes and ideas in subsequent work like Supreme, Promethea and elsewhere, and indeed, the central theme of power being a corrupting influence was already done to a faretheewell in Watchmen.

Joseph Gualtieri:

There is something odd about reviewing a comic that never was for a comics review site. Except, well, you probably have read Twilight, and I don’t just mean that you found a copy of Moore’s proposal on the web before DC issued a cease and desist letter. Over the 25 years since Moore wrote the Twilight proposal, DC has strip-mined it dry for many of its ideas. The most infamous example of this Mark Waid and Alex Ross’s 1995 Kingdom Come, which even mined Moore’s Houses iconography in its ads. Brad Meltzer and Rags Morales’s Identity Crisis (2004), too, owes a debt to Twilight, in this case taking other key half of the plot, the locked room murder mystery (which is not handled half as well as Moore’s). It’s hard not to see shades of Twilight in numerous other works though — Steve Darnell and Ross’s Uncle Sam (1997), Geoff Johns’s Booster Gold (2007) and Flashpoint (2011), and even Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers (2005) and Final Crisis (2008) all take an element or two from it, and that’s not even counting how Moore correctly predicts further Crises down the line to muck with DC’s continuity — Zero Hour (1994), the Kingdom (1999), Infinite Crisis (2005), and Flashpoint again.

Re-reading the proposal for the first time in years two things struck me. The first is that there is no way DC would publish the plot as-is. Structurally, the time travel device involving the Time Trapper Moore uses to set up the scenario is on the complex side even for a time travel tale, and just seems superfluous to the actual story. I can’t see why it’s there unless it was a sop to editorial concerns of the time (pun intended). Then there’s some of the content. Blackhawk picking up teenage boys is a gag (he’s really recruiting them into a private army), sure, but Moore also has Sandra Knight sleeping around, Plastic Man as a gigolo, and an incestuous relationship between Billy and Mary Batson (more on this in a bit). Especially after what happened with Watchmen and the Quality characters, I’m curious as to what extent Moore included some of this material just so DC would cut it, leaving content he really wanted in there.

The other thing that occurred to me this time about Twilight is how in a lot of ways it’s the ultimate product of Moore’s decade of strip-mining Robert Mayer’s Superfolks that saw him produce Marvelman, Watchmen, and “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” When Moore finally spoke publicly about Mayer’s book, he tried to minimize its role in his career and attack Grant Morrison for bringing it up (in a coded manner) in a magazine column:

I can’t even remember when I read it. It would probably have been before I wrote Marvelman, and it would have had the same kind of influence upon me as the much earlier – probably a bit early for Grant Morrison to have spotted it – Brian Patten’s poem, ‘Where Are You Now, Batman?’, [...] I’d still say that Harvey Kurtzman’s Superduperman probably had the preliminary influence, but I do remember Superfolks and finding some bits of it in that same sort of vein. I also remember reading Joseph Torchia’s The Kryptonite Kid around that time. I found that quite moving. I can’t remember whether… I did read it, certainly, but as I say, I think Grant Morrison, by his own admission, said in an interview that, back at that stage of his career, that was his way of making himself famous, by actually attacking a more famous writer, who incidentally had got him his job at Vertigo.

The Twilight proposal may be the best example of just how untrue what Moore said is — he clearly internalized Superfolks to such a degree that he never, ever makes note of the fact that Mary and Billy Batson’s relationship is an incestuous one. For those unfamiliar with Superfolks, the coupling of the book’s Batson analogues is a key plot point, producing one of the book’s major villains. Meyer’s take on the Marvel Family hangs all over Moore’s take on Billy’s sexuality in the proposal.

The Alan Moore writing Twilight is a very different person from the one we’ve all come to know over the last few years worth of interviews; some of that obviously has to do with his awful relationship with DC, but the Alan Moore who wrote Twilight was also quite clearly into superhero comics, particularly in their post-modern, third wave form in a way that’s incredible discordant with the Moore of today. Comparing the ending of Twilight to that of Kingdom Come may reveal that more than anything else. Kingdom Come, for all its sturm und drang, ends on a happy, hopeful note as the superheroes give up their identities and re-dedicate themselves to humanity. In Twilight, the epic clash of the different superhero houses ends with nearly everybody dead and an inter-dimensional war being fought on multiple fronts across the galaxy. And then the John Constantine of the past screws over his future self by denying himself true love. Twilight, despite just being a proposal, is dramatically more satisfying than its foremost actually published child, which is absolutely hilarious.

There is a lot more to talk about with regards to Twilight, but I think it may be best to wrap it up here, and leave some surprises for those of you who have not read it yet. It’s a shockingly satisfying as a read by itself, and there’s some excellent dramatic irony in there with how Moore starts off with a section on its marketing potential. Frankly, we should all be thankful that we live in an age when it’s possible for something like this to easily be passed around, as it is an utterly invaluable document in examining Moore’s career and the development of the superhero genre. Track it down if you haven’t already.

Time Warp #1-5

Introduction by Alan David Doane

All apologies, as Kurt Cobain once said. I have to apologize for us missing our first scheduled Friday last week, but for one reason or another this one didn't come together as smoothly as our past outings. Maybe I should have realized it would take longer to read and review five 64-page comics than our usual one comic or graphic novel. (Note to contributors: next week's title is Cerebus. All of it. Ha ha ha!)

I also have to apologize for not writing a review myself (still acclimating to my new job) and for blowing this introduction. Thankfully Johnny Bacardi covers much of the historical context that I really, truly wanted to write about, and very well, at that. All I can add is that as a 10 or 11-year-old comics reader, I loved the idea of the Dollar Comics line that Time Warp was a part of, and I think the North American comic book industry has really failed itself and its potential and actual readers by not continuously having a format like this available on a regular basis. Sure, a lot of the stories stunk -- it was a DC comic in the 1970s, after all. But the idea behind the Dollar Comics format was a brilliant one, and I remember joyously grabbing up every one I could back in those long-ago days. Marvel tried something similar with the 100-Page Monster format (Tom Brevoort said outright he was inspired by the Dollar Comics of his youth), but in my opinion, they didn't give it enough of a shot and probably overpriced it by a buck or two.

But hey, comics industry? If you are serious about still existing in 2 or 3 years as anything other than a digital dream of what comics used to be, you need to figure out a way to collect large chunks of good-to-great comics in a cheap and lengthy format like the Dollar Comics. Like Time Warp. Not necessarily this exact format, but a big chunk of good, cheap comics kids can get excited about, collect, trade, and read under a tree on a nice summer day. Is that really too goddamned much to ask? Think carefully before you answer, comics industry -- your very survival may depend upon whether you can be as clever and experimental as DC Comics in the mid-1970s.

Johnny Bacardi

"I remember...doing the Time Warp..."

Towards the ass-end of the '70s, inspired by the desire to make a buck in the recent aftermath of the notorious DC Implosion of a year or so prior, the Company Formerly Known as National Periodical Publications decided to take a tentative stab at publishing oversize comics again, and therefore justifying the decision to charge a whole dollar for them, rather than the 40 cents they were charging on the average for the normal-sized titles. Most of the dollar titles were those that DC was already publishing, like World's Finest, Detective, and Adventure Comics, and thus provided opportunities to burn off unused Implosion inventory rather than utilize reprints, like they did in the early-mid '70s via the 100 Page Super Spectaculars. By the way, and I hope you'll let me digress even more than i already have, those 100-Pagers served as teenage me's introduction to many excellent Golden Age stories and creators, such as Jack Cole's Plastic Man, Bernard Baily's Spectre, Gardner Fox/Howard Sherman's Dr. Fate, the Reed Crandall-era Doll Man and Blackhawks, Lou Fine's Ray, and Siegel and Shuster's Superman. Now those were some damn fine comics, and only cost 50 cents to boot.

Anyway, most likely inspired by the recent success of Star Wars and the reception given Heavy Metal magazine as well as Warren's fairly popular 1984, DC also decided to try and launch a couple of straight science fiction anthologies, and Time Warp was the first; they also later exhumed the Mystery in Space title as well. Enticed by the as-always splendid Mike Kaluta covers, I bought every darn one of them back when I was 19, and as my recent rereading of the run for this review has revealed to me, I also promptly forgot about the contents of pretty much all of them, which probably tells you pretty much what you need to know, at least from my vantage point.

Most of the stories in these five issues, by a panoply of writers both veterans of (Bob Haney, George Kashdan, Jack C. Harris, Dennis O'Neil of course) and new to (Dan Mishkin and Andy Cohn, soon of Amethyst; J.M. DeMatteis, pre-Justice League; don't know what his first comics work was but I bet there wasn't much of it before this) comics, adhere pretty closely to the time honored Sci-Fi tradition, which can be traced from the pulps through EC Comics through DC's own early-'60s perpetuation, mostly at the behest of Julius Schwartz. People in spaceships, alien encounters, malevolent computers and/or robots, twist endings...nothing especially fresh or original, not even then...and certainly not now. So, the focus shifts to the art...and that's where Time Warp acquits itself in much better fashion. It was a mix of creators either past their prime, like Steve Ditko and Gil Kane, or just approaching that status, like Jim Aparo (who by 1979 had already begun the streamlining process which made his art much less of a joy to behold just five years previous) or the redoubtable and under-appreciated Tom Sutton. Personal favorite Jerry Grandenetti contributed a story in every issue or darn near it, and while none of them displayed the expressionistic excess of his '60s work that I love so much, each of his jobs were solid and did the slight stories justice. I don't think he did much comics work after this. Also of note was the presence of the late Don Newton, whose somewhat moody work was very popular in those days; I was always hot and cold on him myself -- his Batman was a standout, as I recall, but I wasn't a fan of much else with his byline. Lots of South American artists represent; some I had heard of and have gone on to achieve some standing, like Alex Nino, John Celardo, or the late Fred Carillo, and a handful whose name I don't recall seeing in any comics credit box since, like Joel Magpayo or Ernesto Patricio. Howard Chaykin contributes a rushed-looking art job, on a story by someone named Wyatt Gwyon (a pseudonym?). It was amusing to see Joe Orlando drawing a tale of a man, stranded on a planet, who creates a robot to keep him company...it brought back echoes to me of his stint drawing Otto Binder's Adam Link for Warren in the mid-'60s. Young Trevor Von Eeden turns up, post Black Lightning but pre-Green Arrow and Thriller, inked beyond recognition. And so it goes.

Each issue is a real mishmash; legends past their salad days rubbing shoulders with young turks and newbies just happy to see their name in print, all on the crappiest yellowed paper stock you can imagine. I suppose if you should happen to run across an issue or two in a quarter box it might make for a decent read on a slow afternoon, for nostalgia's sake if nothing else. I can't imagine why anyone younger than, say, 45 would even be interested, unless they were just hardcore fans of the likes of Ditko, Chaykin, Kaluta, or Kane.

For my part, though, I'm of the "Let's NOT do the Time Warp again" mentality.

Christopher Allen:

“Step this way for the safety spray!”

After the “DC Implosion” of 1978, DC actually continued to pump out 64-page Dollar Comics such as Superman Family and World's Finest, while exploring the war genre in G.I. Combat and new title All-Out War. But editor/writer Jack C. Harris and Executive Editor Joe Orlando also put together Time Warp, a bimonthly science fiction anthology that would serve as a kind of reboot of '60s DC sci-fi titles like Strange Adventures. Interestingly, Time Warp was chosen as a name precisely because Harris and Orlando didn't want to just reboot Strange Adventures or another old book, concerned that young fans might be confused. This is, of course, the opposite of current editing/marketing strategy for DC.

“I wanted to die on the surface, like a human, though I would die as a smellie...”

Time Warp only lasted five issues (10 months), but boy, that's like 250 pages of comics. If, like me, you decide to read them all in one day, chances are good you'll be numb and exhausted. Basically, a good 80% of the stories are either Man vs. Hideous Aliens/Monsters, Man Turning Into Hideous Monster (or Cyborg), or Man Destroying His World. Sometimes the destroying the world leads to the turning into a monster, sometimes it's the aliens destroying the world, sometimes Man destroys not only Earth but the aliens' planet, too...you get the idea. There are also several tales of greedy, heartless opportunists/poachers/thieves who put money, pleasure or fame ahead of others and pay dearly for it. These are the stories most reminiscent of the kind Orlando worked on or was exposed to at EC Comics in the '50s on books like Weird Science and which influenced countless other '50s stories from National/DC and Atlas/Timely/Marvel, stories with twist endings, spaceships and slimy aliens who were just asking for some laser pistol payback. The kinds of pulpy, occasionally grisly SF stories that thrilled young comics fans until the Kefauver/Wertham era took the teeth out of such tales, followed by the ascendancy of the superhero subgenre.

“Renamed in honor of his achievement...Chief Mushroom Cloud!”

I would like to say that Time Warp is a real underrated gem, a lost classic cut down too soon. I can't say that, but there is a baseline competence throughout, even though it features stories from folks who came and went through the comics industry without making much of a splash, names like Mimai Kin and Wyatt Gwyon. Yes, those are correctly spelled. There's also an artist called only, “Vicatan,” and I'd like to say the art was as addictive as the name suggested. The stories themselves are often wearingly formulaic and familiar, with at times absurd twists: the two bitter enemies who are reincarnated or who appear in slightly different form on another planet and can't help but be enemies; the future world free of disease that faces doom from the common cold; the hunter who unwittingly kills his friend who's metamorphosed into a monster, who then becomes a hunted monster himself. We've seen most of it before, with a few stories diverging from the formula. Perhaps it's unfair to knock the book for familiarity when so many superhero books are virtually identical, but when you have each issue being a chunk of 50 pages or so at a time and there's one story after another about humans ruining the planet or growing tentacles because the planet is already ruined, enjoying the book becomes more of an academic exercise.

“Surely you were meant for...Vipswarzznee!”

Which is okay, because there's a lot here to enjoy on a moderate level. I was reminded of the recent Steve Ditko reprints, where the stories themselves are routinely mediocre and the pleasure is to be found in just seeing how Ditko tells the story. Ditko is actually the most frequent contributor to Time Warp, charmingly corny and timelessly cool at the same time, though it's fair to say he doesn't add many of his trademark flourishes and patterns.You do get to see him draw a woman in a bikini, though, which is a real rarity for him.

There's also sturdy work from DC stalwarts like Don Newton and Jim Aparo and a robust and distinctive style to Jerry Grandenetti's work in this era that makes me much more interested in him than I ever was before, and a Sheldon Mayer-written tale that I found amusing for its take on time travel paradoxes. For instance, if you travel to the past and kill an architect, you can come back to your time to find that the building he designed still exists, but is about to collapse and kill hundreds of people. Among the highlights, however, along with the Ditko stories and several detail-stuffed Tom Sutton efforts, are one-offs from the reclusive Trevor Von Eeden (with Carl Potts), Gil Kane (a gorgeous but brief return to DC before signing on for a Tarzan newspaper strip), and a young Howard Chaykin working in a style clearly influenced by Alex Toth.

“Pardon the interruption, Captain Moonkid.”

It's also useful to examine the stories within the context of the era in which they were produced, 1979-1980, with the Cold War still going on and Russia thought of by most Americans as a dangerous enemy. The dread of nuclear war or chemical weapons permeates almost every story, (one evil character is given the Russian-sounding name of General Smerdyakov, though the story doesn't take place on Earth) with characters destroying the Earth, mutating into monsters, and in few instances is there any hope or signs of rebuilding, of getting a second chance to get things right. I think in one of those hopeful stories, the two humans had changed into crawling green slime monsters with eyestalks, but you take what you get. It's also interesting to consider this era for comics, and DC in particular. You have a mix of older and younger talents here, but perhaps due to DC's conservatism, or maybe just the pervasive influence of EC Comics and Twilight Zone type storytelling, even relatively young writers like J.M. DeMatteis, Paul Levitz and Dennis O'Neil for the most part turn in standard, if reasonably well-crafted, fare, although again, it's generally informed by the fears of the times they lived in. Although the samey quality of the work gets to be overpowering, a well-chosen collection of about 100 pages worth of this stuff would actually be pretty fun.

Johanna Draper Carlson

I didn't read all five of the Time Warp issues we were assigned this week, because even with my fondness for another era of comic storytelling, 300 pages was a bit much all at once, especially without continuing characters. But the one I did read, the first, reminded me of several things:

1. Short stories are harder to do well than longer stories, which might be why the comic anthology is all but dead while the collection-told-in-serialized-chapters rules the comic market.

2. I've always been surprised that science fiction isn't more successful in comic form, since it seems the perfect medium for it: idea-driven, cheap to show the most outrageous concept, capable of portraying anything that can be imagined, sharing much of the same fandom. But if one rules out superheroes (which are only SF in the loosest definition), then it's difficult to think of any well-known, successful SF comics. (Manga, as usual, is the exception, and many more people should be reading Finder.)

3. I miss the art style of the '80s, where competence was required at a minimum. Ah, the glory of Dick Giordano inks and relatively realistically drawn and posed figures. These were filler work, but they're all readable and easy to follow, artistically.

4. Science fiction is where O. Henry-style stories went to multiply. The twist ending -- aliens are just like us! judging by appearance is bad! love will show you how bad prejudice is! murderers get what's coming to them! aliens may be bigger or smaller than us! -- is a requirement, it seems, to make the tale meaningful. It's the EC influence, I'm sure, with everyone remembering those classic morality tales disguised as fiction.

5. Yet science fiction ages badly. All these technological marvels, and no one could envision equality between the sexes, or a world run by people who weren't white. Maybe because the future is shown as a scary place, full of things that can kill you. That's the biggest twist ending of all: technology can't protect you.

6. My gracious, the limited color palette made for some vibrant choices. Purple shirts, orange machinery, bright yellow walls, reds, blues, and of course, lots of green tentacles.

I think the piece I'll remember most is yet another "Martians want our women" story with Steve Ditko art, because, aside from the cliched premise, his showgirls are really strange-looking. His aliens, in another chapter, are much better.

Joseph Gualtieri

In its two-hundred and fiftieth issue, the Comics Journal published an article by Ng Suat Tong called “EC and the Chimera of Memory.” The actual article is, aside from the target, a fairly standard Journal rip job. Arguably a necessary one, as the critical regard for New Direction EC Comics does outstrip their merit in some ways, but I bring the article up for the tagline given to it on the title page, which does not have anything to do with the actual content, “[...] Tong explains why EC comprises a ‘legacy of mediocrity.’” Frankly, that description would pretty much fit this week’s Flashmob Fridays installment, as DC’s Time Warp anthology sadly amounts to being a little more than a pale imitation of EC at its best.

Last week, with Chainsaw Comics’ Fear, we did briefly discuss the problematic nature of anthologies — they are always going to be a mixed bag. Unfortunately, the best part of Time Warp, on all five of its issues, comes on the cover. Each one is a lovely illustration by Michael William Kaluta, usually divorced from any of the tales inside. Of perhaps more historical interest though, is that DC chose to place the names of the creators on the cover, above the title even. This is not a subject I’ve had time to research to see if it’s a first for a major American comics publisher, but even if it is not, it is genuinely shocking and pleasing to see such a thing in a comic from the late 1970s.

As with the EC comics, the art is generally the best element of the interiors. Steve Ditko has at least one story in 4/5 issues (though this is not his best work). Don Newton, an artist I know but whom I’m largely unfamiliar with, is I believe in all five issues and is usually delivers the best-looking story in each issue. Tom Sutton, Howard Chaykin, Dick Giordano contribute one or more nice-looking tales to the series, but by issue four, less and less of the big names are appearing.

The writing is rarely worth talking about. These are all EC-style twist ending sci-fi horror tinged stories and despite a Murderer’s Row line-up writers from the period, they largely fail to even be as entertainingly lurid as the EC comics from 25 years prior. There’s one stand-out exception to this; it is still not very good, but “Pen Pal” by Bob Haney and Fred Carrilo probably comes the closest to matching EC. In it, a woman takes up correspondence with an astronaut stationed far away. She begins having nightmares about being sexually assaulted by an alien; her Freudian psychotherapist suggests this means she needs to go and finally consummate her relationship with her pen pal. Shockingly (or not), the pen pal turns out to be the alien of her nightmares, which are produced by him having sex with a clone of her produced from a lock of hair she sent him. The woman destroys the clone, and the final panels are a look of horror on her face as the alien caresses her and tells her how now she’ll have to stay with him because killing a clone is a capital offense. Again, this story isn’t actually good, but it is as close as Time Warp gets to truly capturing the tone and spirit of EC.

The other exception to the blending together of all the cliché twist endings for me is “The Truth.” Lushly illustrated by Sutton, it is one of several early stories by J.M. DeMatteis found in Time Warp, and seems like the most like his mature work. In it, an astronaut encounters a humanoid race that seemingly practices human sacrifice. After crashing there and falling in love with a priestess, he learns that what looks like a barbaric practice, is actually the final stage of their culture’s method of mind-expansion. As with the other stories, there’s nothing ground-breaking here, but it’s quite well done and shows themes DeMatteis would go on to explore in more depth with his more mature work.

As it only lasted five issues and there was a clear talent drain on the final two issues, Time Warp was a failed experiment for DC in 1979, and time has not exactly been kind to it. In 2012 reprints of the EC Comics it weakly draws on are (mostly) readily available, rendering Time Warp essentially superfluous. Still, if you’re a fan of any of the big-name artists involved in the early issues, Time Warp is relatively inexpensive to pick up and it’s probably worth your while to track them down if you’re a Ditko, Sutton, Newton, Kaluta, or Chaykin fan.

Scott Cederlund

Reading DC's Time Warp #s 1-5 for this week's Flashmob Fridays, I'm trying to figure out how I'm so unfamiliar with this short-lived series (though that may have something to do with it) even though it features stunning Kaluta covers and art by names like Grandenetti, Chaykin, Ploog, Giordano and Ditko. At the height of Star Wars fever, a huge comic featuring science fiction stories was something that I think a 10 year old me would have been all over. Sadly, I don't remember this title at all and it would still be a few years into the Reagan decade before I'd discover anthology comics thanks to Dark Horse Presents. More and more as I grow older, I realize how much of my own comic book tastes that I still have to this day are formed thanks to the old newsstand distribution system and the local drugstore's magazine racks.

Time Warp is a perfect example of a blind spot in my history and how it was formed. Discovering comics back around the ancient days of 1976, the only places I would go to regularly that had them was the neighborhood drugstore and the Ben Franklin Five and Dime store. The drugstore was a weekly store for entertainment, one quarter at a time. I remember plenty of Spider-Man, Avengers, Batman and Justice League in the racks but not a lot else. Compared to the wall-to-wall new comic shelves that most shops today have, I think I was stuck with a selection of only 15 books to choose from, mostly the most popular superheroes that DC and Marvel offered. No war comics, no horror comics and no science fiction comics other than Marvel's continuing Star Wars series.

I can't imagine that they ever carried Time Warp. Even if they did, I was already conditioned to think that my comics should look like second-generation Kirby knockoffs and not like Kaluta's graceful and delicate cover images. The eighties and the discovery of comic shops and back issues would open up the world for me. I started to discover that there were more comics than just the few I regularly could see on the magazine racks. But even as my knowledge of comics grew, my tastes still stayed fairly focused on superheroes.

Now, thirty years later and reading Time Warp for the first time, it makes me wistful for other books that I wish I had discovered as a kid -- EC's old horror and science fiction comics. The stories in Time Warp also draw heavily from The Twilight Zone, delivering cautionary tales about the future and man's small role in a great big universe. Half of the stories look and feel like classic science fiction comics, more Flash Gordon than Star Wars. These are odd stories, relics and imitators of those old EC comics, stories that are about cliches of science fiction. Then in the same issues, there are cutting edge stories, using science fiction to comment more on the world around the creators.

It's thirty years since these issues came out and I've just read this series for the first time, thanks to a drug store that just didn't carry these books. Unlike when I read EC comics or old Creepy magazines, Time Warp doesn't leave me feeling like I missed anything. Some nice art, some fun stories but Time Warp's stories all kind of felt the same. Unlike DC's other anthologies House of Secrets and House of Mystery that my store didn't carry that I've learned to love through the Showcase reprints, Time Warp was a series that didn't offer enough new and exciting stories to make it a timeless series.

The Wrap-Up Show: Action Comics #5

Hello hello! Friday's post on Morrison and Kubert's Action Comics #5 got our critics typing furiously -- so furiously, in the case of Scott Cederlund, that he was so spent after writing his contribution that he forgot to actually send it to your humble editor. So, with no further ado, because as Stan always noted, we've run all out of ado -- here's Scott's take on Action Comics #5.

Grant Morrison has already done the near-perfect version Superman’s origin story in All-Star Superman #1:

“Doomed planet.

“Desperate Scientists.

“Last Hope.

“Kindly Couple”

For the story we’ve no doubt seen countless times, Morrison and Frank Quitely reduced it down to eight words and four pictures. It reminded us of everything we needed to know about Superman. It’s not tied into any particular continuity or story but it’s so simple that it’s about all Superman stories. In that way, it made All-Star Superman a universal story. Anyone who knows anything about Superman could pick up that book and not have to worry about whether they were reading the Golden Age Superman, John Byrne’s reboot, Waid’s version of the story or Geoff Johns’s most recent retelling. Morrison created the platonic ideal of a “baby is sent away from an exploding planet to be found and raised by a farming couple.” Action Comics #5 does in 28 pages what Morrison slyly did in four panels.

The problem is that those four panels are expanded to the story beats in Action Comics #5 and they don’t even come together as a story. Slotted-in between the main story in issues #4 and #7, Action Comics #5 has the stink of an old-fashioned fill-in issue, complete with a story that has tangential ties to the rest of the series and a different artist. Morrison shows us these moments on Krypton and on earth that we’ve seen countless times without adding anything substantial to it. The costumes and the rocket look different. The Kent’s child-bearing problems are a bit more realistic and emotional but in a sense they were always implied. And in the end, mysterious, shadowy characters show up to tease us about future plot points.

In his book Supergods, Morrison describes Siegel and Shuster’s Superman as a socialistic hero a man trying to bring down the corrupt businesses of the late 1930s. He’s a hero of the people who isn’t actually of the people himself. He’s the perpetual outsider who’s strongest wish is to have the American dream life everyone wishes for. In Action Comics, Morrison has tried to recreate that version of Superman. This isn’t the Silver Age hero that he paid homage to in All-Star Superman and this isn’t any Superman we’ve seen in the last 40 years. This is a Superman who is going to be an American hero because he’s going to fight for the American people.

That’s where Morrison’s story started. Not with Brainiac and cities being stolen. Not with exploding planets and doomed races. Action Comics #1 started with Superman trying to force a confession out of a corrupt businessman. That doesn’t sound very super but I think Morrison knows that his Clark Kent isn’t Superman yet. Anyone can wear a t-shirt with the S-shield on it. I do it all the time. Morrison’s Superman is a primitive proto-hero and that’s the story that Morrison should be telling. Everything he’s done in the last three issues feel like Superman stories we’ve read countless times by Mort Weisinger, Curt Swan, John Byrne and Dan Jurgens.

In this last few years of political, economic and social upheaval in the United States, I think Morrison is on the right track in trying to redefine Superman. The 21st Century started out with a Superman that somehow tried to renounce any American citizenship and even was proclaimed as standing for “truth, justice and all of that other stuff.” But like the times when Superman was created, the “American way” is either corny, an anachronism or a lie depending on your views of the country. And how does the country’s #1 adopted son respond to that? That’s the story that it felt like Morrison was trying to tell in the first two issues of Action. How does the ultimate boy scout live in an era where the Boy Scouts are eventually sent overseas to fight wars that no one understands while those who stay home get rich and fat?

After only a couple issues of a 21st century Superman, Morrison falls back on retelling the stories we already know with Krypton and Kansas and Lex Luthor and Brainiac. Maybe that’s the new DC, the illusion of change and progress as the stories end up recycling everything we’ve seen before. We expect more out of Morrison though, don’t we? We expect to see some reinvention of these stories and these concepts but any changes in Action Comics #5 to the familiar origin are purely cosmetic and don’t add anything to the story that he has been telling. DC has become the masters of illusion with this revamp but it’s a thin illusion. Maybe if Morrison had shown us something we hadn’t seen before this issue would feel more significant but like the rest of Morrison’s Action run so far, it’s full of ideas and concepts that feel like they want to find a story to be a part of.

Buy Action Comics Vol. 1: Superman and the Men of Steel from Amazon.com.

Action Comics #5

Introduction by Alan David Doane:

In my more contemplative moments (those moments I contemplate comics, anyway), I sometimes wonder whatever happened to the Grant Morrison that wrote The Invisibles, JLA: Earth 2, Flex Mentallo, The Filth, New X-Men, Marvel Boy, or even All-Star Superman.

To say Morrison's output in the days since Seven Soldiers of Victory has been largely a disappointment would be a huge understatement. It seems like, somewhere along the line, he lost some key element of his gift for writing comics. I was astonished at how poorly Final Crisis held up, after eagerly anticipating a reunion of the creative team from Marvel Boy, which was a work of sheer genius, and one of the best Marvel books of the past 25 years. So what happened to Morrison? I'd hazard a guess that spending much time literally or metaphorically with his DC Comics colleague, the witless writer of fanboy fiction Geoff Johns would be enough to damage anyone's brain cells. Short of that, perhaps Morrison is just phoning it in. I have no idea why the quality of his his work has fallen off so precipitously, but I am rock-solid in my conviction that it has.

I've kinda-sorta followed Action Comics since The New 52 event, but I haven't found anything in it to engage me. Unlike my fellow traveler Chris Allen below, I don't care much for the artwork of Rags Morales (I don't hate it, it just does nothing for me), and the first four issues seemed like so much placekeeping. This fifth issue feels more like a first issue, like the beginning of something new, but of course it's Superman, so we must relive his origin story for the 18,674th time. Seriously, DC? Hollywood? There are intelligent, highly-evolved blue-green slime molds living millennial lifespans in the southwestern rim of the galaxy of Andromeda that are bored as fuck with the retelling of Superman's origin. So you can bet your ass that we are too, right here at home. Besides, Morrison had the last word in Super-origin-retelling in the first page (see illustration, click it to see it bigger) of All-Star Superman. So why are we sitting through this again?

The gimmick that the rocketship is telling the story is new, and somewhat clever. Almost Morrisonesque, one might say. The art, by Alleged Watchmen 2 scab Andy Kubert, is attractive in that "half my dad, half Jim Lee" way that Kubert has about him. The shadowy, half-familiar villains lend a hint of intrigue. Which is a hint more than just about any New 52 title has issued forth, with a rare Wonder Woman or Swamp Thing-type exception. (And frankly, Swamp Thing is getting fucking draggy, folks.)

So here we are with Morrison feeling slightly more like Morrison than he has in some time, a clever idea or two, and much more attractive art than the title has seen at all to date in its relaunch. I'd recommend you check this issue out if you like the creators, or even the character, but I won't tell you it's a work of genius, or even worthy of being held up in the mid-range of Morrison's complete body of work. He's done worse, but he's done far better, too. As someone who generally likes Morrison's take on DC's major superheroes (his JLA remains one of the company's best-written books ever), I really wanted to love this issue. That I didn't hate it seems something of a miracle given the current quality of corporate superhero books as a whole, but I could have liked it a lot more than I did, if only it had been a little better written, and had any reason whatsoever to exist.

Christopher Allen:

Grant Morrison's short Action Comics run has thus far been plagued by a seeming lack of ambition unusual for Morrison. Usually, if a book isn't successful, it's due more to trying to do too much and not pulling it all together, so it has been dismaying to get through four issues where not a lot has happened besides a decision to write Superman as a cocky punk. In the past couple weeks, readers have discovered that DC put the New 52 together very quickly, and are now changing some creative teams, so it could be that Morrison had to come up with something quickly, making a hasty claim to another big character so as to not get lost in the Lee/Johns vision of the DCU of today. Who knows? What is known is that Action has been pretty forgettable, if nicely drawn by Rags Morales.

This issue marks a departure from the series so far, the beginning of a two issue flashback drawn by Andy Kubert that retells Superman's origin yet again. The story provides a chance for Morales to catch up, arriving suddenly in the middle of the first arc, and in some ways it could provide a bit of a breather for Morrison as well. How hard is it to write another wrinkle on Superman's origin? But Morrison digs in and does a nice job capturing the sacrifice of Jor-El and Lara and the pain of the childless Jon and Martha Kent, while tweaking past history with a rupture in the Phantom Zone leading to Kal-El being sent to Earth and Krypto disappearing, while Kal-El's craft is navigated by an early version of Brainiac, which goes into sleep mode when it's discovered by the government. Add to that a team of new enemies for Superman that seem to be embodiments of the goofy old alternate forms of Kryptonite of the '50s, and this is an issue that, while it isn't close to Morrison at the top of his game, is still clever and entertaining. Kubert isn't one of Morrison's more imaginative collaborators -- as witnessed by the ho-hum depiction of Krypton's destruction -- but Morrison has worked with him enough by now to know how to use him well, and Kubert is at least a solid storyteller who keeps things moving without drawing attention to himself rather than the tale being told.

Yan Basque:

One of my favourite things about Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's All Star Superman is the brilliant way they dispense with Superman's origin in a single page. It's the very first page of the comic and consists of four panels and a total of eight words: "Doomed planet. Desperate scientists. Last hope. Kindly couple." Those words - combined with the images of (1) Krypton about to blow up, (2) Kal-El's birth parents, (3) the rocket flying away from exploding Krypton, and (4) a shot from baby Kal-El's POV with Martha and Jon leaning over him, Martha holding a piece of red cloth, and the big, bright, yellow sun in the background - perfectly encapsulate Superman's origin story. It's one of the best examples of compressed storytelling I've come across in modern superhero comics.

Part of the reason All Star Superman's first page works so well is that we already know the origin story. We've seen it, heard it, read it a thousand times already. For some reason, DC is obsessed with retelling it over and over again. In the past decade, we've seen versions of it in Superman: Birthright (2003-04), All Star Superman (2006-08) Superman: Secret Origin (2009-10), Superman: Earth One (2010).

So here, in Action Comics #5, we get a completely unnecessary retelling of that origin. What Grant Morrison had reduced to a perfect single page in All Star is now drawn out into a convoluted mess to fill a whole issue of one of the most overrated titles of DC's New 52.

I've read the first couple of issues of the relaunched Action Comics and found nothing to enjoy in them. The extremely inconsistent and rushed art was already getting patched up by fill-in artists by the second issue. Meanwhile, Grant Morrison's younger, cockier and angrier Superman feels to me like a very boring take on the character. This is just not what I want out of Superman comics. (But then again, neither was "Grounded" or much of what we've gotten in the past few years.)

This particular issue is about as insular and cryptic as an already well-known origin story can get, which seems to be exactly the opposite of what the New 52 relaunch was supposed to achieve. Wasn't it going to simplify things for new readers. Well, guess what? If new readers know anything about superhero comics, it's probably Superman's origin. So why is DC taking what those potential new readers already know and complicating it with this mess of a story?

In the opening scenes, Jor-El and Lara exchange some of the worst expository dialogue Morrison has ever written. They keep telling each other things they already know: "We built it together, you and I." Meanwhile, the narration from Brainiac/Superman's rocket's point of view might be kind of a neat trick, except that it's hard to figure out what he/it's talking about some of the time. Then when time travel got involved, I was having some bad flashbacks to the more nonsensical parts of Return of Bruce Wayne and I completely lost interest.

Andy Kubert's art is serviceable but unremarkable.

There's also a backup story by Sholly Fisch and Crisscross, about the Kents trying to conceive a child before Kal-El's arrival on Earth. I have no opinion about this story, but Crisscross is one of the worst artists at DC right now and I can't stomach the way his weird faces are constantly morphing from panel to panel, making you question how they could possibly belong to the same character.


Joseph Gualtieri:

Grant Morrison’s long-form comics projects, post-Invisibles anyway, tend to get off to a fast, appealing start, descend into a slow burn, and then reach an exciting climax that ties the series up nicely. New X-Men and the pre-Final Crisis Batman run are probably the two best examples of this. In the case of the former, “E for Extinction” clearly marked the beginning of a new era, then things settled down the series received some poor reviews until the rush of “Murder at the Mansion,” “Assault on Weapon Plus,” “Planet X,” and “Here Comes Tomorrow” turned general opinion around. The reaction to “Batman and Son” wasn’t as positive as the one for “E for Extinction,” but Batman fighting ninja Man-Bats against a backdrop of Lichtenstein paintings is a fun one. Unfortunately other than the JH Williams III illustrated “Black Glove,” Morrison’s Batman did not seem to gain any critical traction during its middle period. Then “R.I.P.” hit, and while it is one of the more divisive stories in Batman’s long history, it worked quite well for some critics and readers. The next period of Morrison’s long Batman run, on Batman & Robin, would go through a similar spectrum of critical reaction, with a positive response to the first arc, disdain for the second, and then an upswing towards the end.

So why take the long look at the reaction to some of Morrison’s more recent superhero work? Because from what I’ve seen, people hate Action Comics #5, and I think it’s well worth viewing it within the past lens of Morrison’s pattern of work. Whatever Morrison’s doing in Action, it isn’t close to the end yet, and his work usually does not become clear until that point. Reviewing a single issue in the middle of one of Morrison’s long form epics is not going to give you much of a sense of the totality of the work or of where he’s going.

In the very first Flashmob Fridays, we looked at an issue of Mark Waid’s Daredevil that was the conclusion and frankly, I savaged it. The comic did not provide the information necessary for a new reader to pick it up and follow what was going on in it. Action Comics #5 may be part of a longer epic, but unlike the DD issue reviewed here, it is comprehensible on its own terms. Yes, it’ll be clearer if you’ve read the previous four issues of the series, but for the most part it is a straightforward new telling of Superman’s origin, with the added twist of some of the story being from the sentient rocket’s perspective. Other than the mysterious new villains (who are mysterious new villains) it is clear enough who all of the major players in the comic are, so it passes that crucial test while Daredevil failed it.

There is another reason why this issue is not being well received — the first page of All Star Superman #1. It covers much of the same material as Action #5 in just four panels with eight words; it’s a masterpiece of economical storytelling and one of the best single pages of Morrison’s career. Consequently, at least some of the negative reaction to Action #5 seems to come from the change in approach; instead of super-condensed, now Morrison’s told the origin in a (relatively) decompressed fashion. If there are two things superhero fans seem to be sick of these days, it’s retelling origin stories and decompression; combine the two and it’s no wonder people hate this comic. Take those prejudices away though, and there is actually nothing wrong with this comic. Did the world need another telling of Superman’s origin? Not particularly, but this was obviously coming given the remit of the new 52. To steal a point from Comics Alliance’s Chris Sims, if Morrison didn’t write this someone else would have. Better to have a writer of Morrison’s caliber do it, and again, he isn’t just doing a straight retelling. Whatever’s going on with the ship that brought baby Kal-El to Earth is intertwined with Morrison’s on-going plot and this issue provided what will likely be key new details in that direction.

That all out of the way, there is one big flaw with the issue. It comes after #4 ended on a cliffhanger for Superman’s battle with the revamped Brainiac, which promised it would be resolved in #7. Clearly, the production on the comic is screwed up and as result the next story arc was moved up. Financially, this is clearly a better alternative for DC than not publishing Action for two months. As a reader, I’m not sure this is beneficial.

Action Comics #5 is far from being Morrison’s best work, but it works on its own terms, as a new version of Superman’s origin, and seems to provide key pieces of Morrison’s on-going storyline. It does nothing to deserve the critical drubbing it’s received, which seem to have more to do with love for All Star Superman than anything genuinely wrong with the comic.

If you’re wondering why I’ve no mentioned the Sholly Fisch back-up, it’s because now that’s completely unnecessary and adds to neither the on-going storyline nor to the Superman mythos in general.

Buy Action Comics Vol. 1: Superman and the Men of Steel from Amazon.com.

Flashmob Fridays #006: Scalped, Vertigo, and the State of the Floppy

Introduction by Alan David Doane

We're back with another episode of the semi-regular Flashmob Fridays, but it's a little different this time. Usually, someone suggests a comic, and within a couple days whoever wants to participate can weigh in with their thoughts. This time, one of Christopher Allen's columns this week garnered a lot of reaction -- some from readers, but even more from the other TWCers (Troublers? Twickers?), who turned out to be big fans of Jason Aaron's and R.M. Guera's series, Scalped. First up, Chris expands on his thoughts, then the rest of the gang piles on weighs in.


Christopher Allen

My goal in reading Scalped #31 and the other two Vertigo books was pretty simple, though admittedly I didn't put a lot of thought into the ramifications of it. As I think I've written before, I hadn't been reading many monthly comics for a few years, preferring to pick up hard-and-softcover collections of things I'm interested in or that had good reviews/word of mouth. But in getting back into much more frequent reviews and enjoying the renewed practice of hitting the comics shop every Wednesday, I figured I'd check out these three series about which I'd been pretty curious. In the case of Scalped, it very well may have been a recommendation from Johnny Bacardi a month or so ago that planted that seed in my head.

So, anyway, I know the score: monthly series from Marvel, DC, Image, Dark Horse, IDW and others (you can call them "mainstream" if you want; I'll just call them genre comics) are structured so as to be fairly easily collected in hardcovers and trade paperbacks not long after each story arc concludes. But, without ill intent, I just wanted to see if a random issue of one of these Vertigo series (and Vertigo was chosen only because I was interested in those particular books) could provide a satisfying reading experience on its own, without being too confusing for a new reader. Would it be clear enough, and good enough, that I would want to go back to the beginning as well as continue forward? And so I approached the books with those parameters, which to me seemed fair enough.

I was surprised at the passionate Scalped support that followed from Matt, Johnny, David Wynne and Marc Sobel, who either thought I was too tough/unfair on the book, and/or that it was unfair to judge either that series or Vertigo books in general that way, as a) the series needs to be read from the beginning, or b) Vertigo's story arcs are intended for collection, so one should only review the collection.

I did, and do, bristle at those assertions, I have to admit, though it was throughout a respectful exchange with all of them. To me, I do believe in that old saw about every comic being somebody's first. Yes, there are plenty of series where I've taken the plunge and bought the first trade based on word of mouth or liking one of the creators, but I also pick up semi-random monthly issues, too. If I like it, I might just wait for the collection and give the one issue away, or continue with the monthly issues. I have my methods.

Although there was some attempt at a correlation between monthly comics and complex cable TV shows like Deadwood, I couldn't really agree with the idea that it would be nearly impenetrable if one decided to start in the middle of the second season. Episodic television like that, and The Sopranos, Mad Men, etc., may have long, overarching storylines, but there's always a story that begins and ends in that one episode, plus at the 46 to 50 minutes, there's a lot more room for the stories to develop, and for lots of characterization, than in one issue of a monthly comic. Is it Jason Aaron's fault that in the original format for his series, he only gets 22 pages a month to move his story and characters along? No. Is it his fault that he chooses a decompressed style where the action depicted would equate to about ten minutes of screen time, at $2.99? Sure it is. Or I should say, "fault" isn't quite the right word, but it's a storytelling choice he has to live with, just as he has to live with not putting his best foot forward on what appears to be a fairly pivotal issue of the series and instead lacks memorable dialogue and seems filled with cliched or one-note characters.

But again, I gave the benefit of the doubt to the series that what was there wasn't too bad and I might want to start from the beginning. It wasn't really about Scalped, anyway; that just kicked off a larger discussion. And getting back to that point, yes, I think it's perfectly fair to judge an entertainment product on its own terms, be it a television show, comic, book, whatever. If I had the slightest interest in Twilight: New Moon, I might go see and review it, without having seen the first or having read any of the books. It would only be fair to throw those caveats into the review, but sure, I could review it. If Vertigo, DC and any other publisher choose to continue to put out comics in this format, then they can be judged in that format.

The larger issue it brought up to me is that I really think the decompressed style you see in a lot of monthly comics are really hastening their demise. I remember a few years ago wondering if "compression" would be the next big thing -- to me a sound strategy to add more value to the expensive comic book. Aside from Warren Ellis's Fell and the odd effort here and there (I just read the first Agents of Atlas trade and it's exceptionally brisk), it hasn't really happened. I'm not asking for anthology titles with bang-bang six page complete stories, or a series with every issue a "done-in-one" story. I just think when editors and creative teams allow stories to feel stretched out, when not a lot happens from issue to issue because the writer's got three issues of story he has to make last six, then what they're doing is selling that series short. It could be canceled earlier, if enough fans get turned off, or it could be one of those books that everyone loves at first and then it overstays its welcome, like 100 Bullets, maybe Preacher. Is Fables still a passionate read for many, or more of a duty or habit now? I dunno. I better stop now before all the Fables, 100 Bullets and Preacher fans jump on me.

I promised my colleagues I would get off my soapbox and let them have the last words. I thank JB and Matt below (as well as Marc and David, who added their own sharp comments on our email group but didn't have time to formalize them here) for the lively discussion.

Johnny Bacardi

I've been reading Scalped since the first trade, and I believe that the more you get into the story, the more some of the characters and their motivations will become apparent. Chris is right in that there are a lot of standard crime-drama beats being hit, and the setting is providing novelty, but Aaron has built his characters up slowly, and it does help to at least read an arc to get a feel for them. It's kinda like judging Deadwood after watching one mid-season two episode. Guera's art had to grow on me a little, too-- it's really an amalgam of a dozen different artists, but he's good at staging and creating dynamic-looking pages, and capable of doing emotions well (something that comes in really handy, given all the angst).

Guess you can tell I'm in the bag for this series, huh!

Really, though, the gist of what I was going to say is that the corrosive Dash/Carol relationship that caused consternation is one that's been coming to a head through the last dozen or more issues, and I can see why it wouldn't make sense coming in cold. But I don't think I'd want to see a lot of expository dialogue explaining things either, so I guess that's just the nature of that particular beast and I see your point in that respect. I still hope you sample a bigger set someday!

I re-read the first issue this morning, and I was a bit surprised how clunky it came across in places--Aaron was trying to establish a lot of things through dialogue, and a lot of it read flat and obvious. Once he got established, though, I think it got a lot better in that respect.

Matt Springer

You may not know this but the Trouble With Comics writers room frequently breaks out into near-mudwrestling matches over such trivial topics as the quality of Howard Johnson's room service and the length of Wolverine's pubic hair. (It's shaved. SHAVED I SAY YOU VARLOT!)

I confess, I helped begin the latest tussle with my reaction to Chris Allen's reaction to Scalped, Air, and Northlanders in a recent
installment of his excellent Daily Breakdowns.

Overall, his reviews seemed to indicate that he believes any comic book series should be accessible every issue, without fail, to a new reader. Personally, I can see where that would be a virtue for mainstream superhero series but I think it's pretty well-established at this point in the comics world that Vertigo series tend to be large, rich stories told in arcs/chapters that aren't usually easily accessed randomly.

Vertigo is actually doing two things to encourage that viewpoint -- the $1 first issue and the $9.99 debut trade. It might be more fair to judge the series on their first trades since that seems to be the method they're encouraging. The issue of jump-on-ability is almost secondary to the issue of Vertigo's specific strategy, if that makes sense -- Vertigo has clearly chosen a path that emphasizes trade collections with the floppies acting as merely a secondary concern toward making back perhaps cost. At least that would be my guess based on the apparent success of something like Fables which still sells easily under 10,000 copies per issue.

So ultimately, saying you can't really jump onto a Vertigo book at any point is sorta judging them on standards they themselves reject, which gets me to the issue of floppies as a viable entertainment unit at all. I feel like we're actually watching floppies die before our very eyes. I'm not gonna value judge that statement, like "Let's set a fire to help them die" or "Let's save them with polybags and lotsa luuuv!" I'm just saying that pretty much across the board, comic book series have rejected the notion that "every comic is someone's first comic," and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Honestly, these pamphlets are
basically being sold into the same dwindling audience of obsessives, and we all know the drill, so what does it matter?

It makes me think of HBO shows; most of the long-form series I've watched in the HBO model (Sopranos, Wire, Rome, Big Love, Mad Men) are pretty damn impenetrable if you just picked up the remote one night and said, "Hey, I'll give this a try." I think you could get a really good feel for the tone and the mood of the show, and possibly decide if you liked it or not, but plot-wise, you'd be lost.

Again, let me say I don't think this is a bad thing; I think the opening of this vista in both print and television has enabled some amazing storytelling that would have been unimaginable even twenty years ago. But let's not pretend something should still be true when the vast majority of us all know it isn't: No modern-day comic book is really anybody's "first comic," and floppies are going the way of Wolverine's pubic hair.

Flashmob Fridays #004: Planetary #27

Introduction by Alan David Doane

You may recall that Planetary was to have been finished around the same time as the 20th century. It appears that time has finally come.

Planetary #27, the final issue of the sometimes-celebrated series by Warren Ellis, John Cassaday and Laura Martin, is here at last, and the subject of this week's Flashmob Fridays. In a post on his LiveJournal, Ellis reflected on the end of the series, saying "It’s a book I associate with bad times: protracted illnesses, big arguments...my physical collapse and months in bed, and my dad’s long illness and eventual death. All of these things are intertwined with PLANETARY for me, and make it difficult to enjoy the moment."

Of course, any individual is likely to suffer some setbacks and tragedies in any given ten year span, but it did seem at times like this particular comic book was cursed -- a phenomenon that would have gone unnoticed if not for the fact that, at its best, it was one of the most exciting and beautiful adventure comics being published. Together with The Authority #1-12 with Bryan Hitch, Paul Neary and (again) Laura Martin, these two series represent a pretty high peak for Ellis's writing powers and excellent comic books that are always worth re-reading and losing one's self in.

But of course, it's been hard to judge the series as a whole as long as this one, last issue remained unpublished. Now that it's in print, the TWC gang shares their thoughts on the epoch-ending issue.

Christopher Allen

I won’t be commenting on the long-awaited twenty-seventh and final issue of Planetary. I haven’t read it. But like a baseball player, you want to get your swings in, and the reason I’m not reviewing the final issue right now is what I wanted to write about.

Planetary and The Authority hold some meaning for me, as much as any superhero comic of the past decade. I first encountered both series in mid-1999. I hadn’t been reading comics for a year or two, having gotten married, bought a house, and tried to get serious about work. One day I noticed a nice-looking comics & collectibles shop in a strip mall in my new neighborhood, and went in, marveling at such things as busts of superheroes, and wondering what this card game was that the kids were playing at a table in the middle of the shop. Well, the need to read some new comics gripped me, and I looked over the shelves, which had new releases with prior issues underneath. Being out of the loop, I looked for some familiar faces. Hey, that looks like John Byrne art, and he’s doing my favorite character, Spider-Man in a kind of Year One thing? Cool! Hey, it sounded like a good idea at the time.

But I also noticed a couple other books, nearly jumping off the shelves with their stylish covers, and these were the two Warren Ellis series. I wasn’t reading many comics when Ellis made his earlier splashes in comics, so his name meant nothing to me at the time. But these books, they really had the look of the state of the art in superhero comics, and so I picked up the first couple issues of each (there were complete runs there) and read them that night. The Authority was a glorious kick up the pants to superheroes, with stories of real scope and consequence and a fresh attitude to solving them, while Planetary was an ingenious way to pull together every cool superhero/sci-fi/horror character or concept, with either some new tweaks or a good scrubbing to get them down to what made them cool in the first place.

The Authority was great, but it had already been out for a while when I discovered it, and Ellis was just about done writing it, a rare case of a comics creator making the perfect exit, but Planetary only had a few issues out when I started with it. I recall my boss at the time, who was my age, sharing a fondness for superheroes, and I soon lent him these books, making him an instant fan as well. As The Authority passed through many creative hands and with increasingly diminishing returns, Planetary kept going, and with generally good stewardship by Ellis, aside from some less-than-stellar one-shots.

Unaccustomed to paying for high-priced hardcovers, Absolute Authority and Absolute Planetary were nonetheless instant purchases for me. As they were state-of-the-art monthly comics, so too did they lead the way towards the boom in fancy slipcased editions. It was upon my purchase of these that I stopped buying Planetary on a regular basis. It’s not that I was disillusioned at all—I forget a lot of what I read, but several years on, The Drummer, Jakita Wagner and Elijah Snow are still there for me in my mind, along with certain scenes and dialogue. No, it’s just that I felt like the next time I read them would have to be in another Absolute edition. I didn’t want fifteen minutes of brilliance whenever Ellis and Cassaday could get together to make it happen, once a year or so. It’s really nothing on them; I’ve never been one of those guys who turns on creators for missing deadlines as long as the work’s good. It’s just that I set Planetary aside, a reward of hours of images and ideas to be enjoyed fully upon its completion. Various projects, illnesses and other difficulties aside, I really think this has always been a special book for Ellis and Cassaday, and that neither wanted to do it unless they could bring their best effort to it. And so, when the time comes, I will read it in the best format possible. A thank you to both for some great memories, and more to come.

Michael Paciocco

I had become largely bored and uninterested in comic books by the time I was twenty. Not surprising really; the adolescent power fantasies and melodramas that I was all too familiar with by the time had no longer anything to offer me except the promise of the same, and I was ready to move on out of comics. However, needing some kind of stimulation that wasn’t offered by mass media, it was a combination of boredom and experimentation that I picked up issues #3-6 of Planetary from the local comic shop.

So, it’s all Ellis, Cassaday, and Martin’s fault that I’m still buying comics at all nearly ten years later. And not just because I’ve been waiting for this particular issue either, although there were a few occasions where it certainly felt like it.

At the time I started reading the series, there was nothing like it, and that there still isn’t anything comparable to this is a credit to the creators, and the strength of their vision, despite the waxing and waning of the title over the years as various, sundry reasons, both professional and personal, diverted some of the energy and immediacy from this work. Still, it was worth the wait for this epilogue and endcap for the series.

Ellis’s best works are often obsessed with “A Finer World” and the efforts, sacrifices, compromises, and rewards of the quest to create them. In that sense, this finale represents a Platonic ideal of how such a world might come about. There’s a sense of unbridled optimism and selfless altruism that is absent in most of his other writing, which makes it all the more rewarding to examine and immerse oneself in. As an epilogue, it is more concerned with wrapping up various loose ends, some of them going back a decade (in publishing time). Most of the mysteries are solved, one is left wide open, and a few more are actually created.

It’s often been claimed (and by Ellis himself) that Planetary was his ultimate meta-story about the transformative powers of fiction, and comic books in particular. If that’s the case, I’ve long held to the belief that the core members of Planetary are metaphorical stand-ins for Ellis’s own instincts as a comic fan: the ‘mad idea’ lover, the action junkie, and of course, the puzzle-maker and problem solver as embodied by the acerbic and brilliant Elijah Snow. And this final issue is, like many of the best issues, a story about Elijah, about the quests that drive him, the decisions he make to better the world, and how much of the world and its wonders he’s willing to risk for the sake of making the world a more tolerable place.

I’ll make an admission here that I’m sad to admit -– I generally don’t like Cassaday’s art on other works, as there’s just no way for me to separate his visual style in my head from this series. I can’t think of any other artist that can create the rich tapestry of worlds that seem both old-fashioned in their opulence and at the same time incredibly advanced beyond our technical grasp. I hope that he enjoys a successful career in the years to come because I do admire his work, but it is as difficult for me to imagine this series as presented by any other artist as it is for me to see his work and not immediately think of his efforts on this series.

Laura Martin is the unsung hero of this series, and her palate here, as with the rest of the series, is as vibrant as it is necessary. Martin’s colors here and in the rest of the series has been essential in setting both the tone of the series, and in subtly bringing out characterization and mood in many of the defining sequences of the book; take a look at how a shadow never falls on Elijah’s white suit, and yet it never appears to glow or reflect light. There’s a dozen unique effects just like that in this issue alone, and hundreds more over the length of the series. Martin shows how vital color can be in a story, and that makes her as indispensable as anyone else on this book.

And so Planetary ends, not with a bang or a whimper, but with the final pieces falling into place and locking together into a complete picture, as it should. I admit, I’ll miss this series, and I highly doubt we’ll see something like this from the Big Two for a long time to come. What I will miss more than this book though, was its effect on me – this series lead me to scour the net for good comics and for fellow fans to discuss the series with. It led me to Warren Ellis’s site, to that of other creators, to meet fans that I still talk to today, and of course, to Comic Book Galaxy. I will miss discussing the various mysteries and fan theories that circulated about the story over its long run, and I’ll miss the thrill of turning the cover of an issue to see something new and unexpected behind it. It was a strange world, and let’s keep it that way.

(But I think I know who the fictionaut really is, and if you’ve read the series carefully, you’ve probably come to the same conclusion. If you want to discuss it with me, feel free to contact me anytime...)



Marc Sobel

Alright, let's get the issue of the delay out of the way first so we can get to the actual comic.

I've never been one of those fans who gets too uptight when a comic I like is delayed. I understand that drawing, inking, coloring and lettering hundreds of little panels takes time, and I'd much rather creators focus on making their pages as great as possible, rather than rush to meet some corporate-imposed artificial deadline. However, there is a limit to this philosophy. When an artist leaves a title unfinished to work on other projects, this seems unfair and disrespectful to the fans who supported the series. The reality is that this book is so delayed (issue #26 came out nearly three years ago), that I have little to no recollection of what was going on in the story, and to really get back into it would require going back and re-reading the series, which is a time commitment I'm not willing to make right now.

The whole issue is basically a rescue mission to save Ambrose from some kind of time vortex he sealed himself in right after being shot. Unfortunately, I remember very little about who Ambrose is, what happened to him, or why it's so important that the others rescue him. Although there was undoubtedly a lot of context I'm forgetting in those earlier issues, the opening pages of this final chapter do little to recap what went before. One would have thought, given the delay, that it would have been common sense to add a "Previously in Planetary..." style recap before launching into this final chapter, but unfortunately, there is nothing. The script also suffer from an overwhelming amount of pseudo-science, the kind of made-up techno-jargon that sounds like it could almost be real, except that it's actual meaning lies just beyond your grasp. It's like your typical Grant Morrison comic, strung together with ideas that almost make sense, but never quite coalescing into a coherent, believable concept. What is "quantum foam?" "Chernekov radiation?" "Super-massive frame dragging?" These are just a few examples of the physics-based techno-babble that weigh-down the first half of the book. In that sense, the story is alienating and confusing.


All that being said, John Cassaday delivers in a big way. Cassaday is the best artist Ellis has ever worked with, and he's worked with some pretty good ones. The artwork in this final issue is superb! In fact, it's THE highlight, and for fans of Cassaday's work, it was worth the long wait. The amount of attention paid to every tiny detail, and the architectural precision throughout is impressive. There's also some exceptional coloring in this issue. I find most digital coloring in mainstream comics to be overwrought and eye-numbing, washing out the linework rather than enhancing it, but Ellis's script calls for bright, popping colors, crackling off the page like raw energy, and to that end, Laura Martin delivers in spades. Her electric, neon colors jump off the page in places and go far beyond just filling in the spaces demarked by the linework.

Overall, I didn't think this final issue was anything amazing, though the artwork was certainly worth the price. I suppose it was good enough to make me want to go back and re-read the series again (though I doubt I will anytime soon), and that's perhaps the best compliment I can pay it.

The rest of the issue features a 6-page "sneak peek" of Victorian Undead, and the generic title tells you pretty much all you need to know about this creatively bankrupt concept. It's yet another zombie book, this time set in Victorian England and from the preview, it looks like a hideously-colored atrocity, regurgitating the same old cliched zombie crap as if a new setting could somehow magically reinvigorate this exhausted genre. I hope it's better than it looks in this preview, but I kinda doubt it.