Category: Miscellaneous Superhero

By Steve Ditko, Steve Englehart, Jim Shooter, Bob Hall, David Lapham & various (Valiant)
No ISBN

The 1990s were a slow period in terms of comics creativity: the industry had become infested with collector/investors and was increasingly market-led, with spin-offs, fad-chasing, shiny gimmicks and multiple-covers events replacing imagination and good story-telling in far too many places. One notable exception was a little outfit with some big names that clearly prized the merits of well-told stories illustrated by artists immune to the latest mis-proportioned, scratchy poseur styles, but one with enough business sense to play the industry at its own game.

Eschewing most of the more crass profiteering stunts Valiant revived some old characters and proved once more that the basics never go out of fashion. As Editor-in-Chief, Jim Shooter had made Marvel the most profitable and high-profile they had ever been, and after his departure he used that writing skill and business acumen to transform some almost forgotten Silver-Age characters into contemporary gold.

Western Publishing had been a major player since comics’ earliest days, blending a huge tranche of licensed titles with a few home-grown heroes like Brain Boy, Turok, Son of Stone and M.A.R.S. Patrol Total War (created by Wally Wood). The company’s most notable stars were Dr. Solar, Man of the Atom and Russ Manning’s magnificent science fiction cautionary tale Magnus, Robot Fighter. When the parent company closed its original comic division in 1984 these masterful sagas soon faded from comic fans’ memory.

As the 1990s opened and with an agreement to revive some, any or all of these four-colour veterans, Shooter and co-conspirator Bob Layton came to a bold decision and made those earlier adventures part-and-parcel of their refit: acutely aware that old fans don’t like having their childhood favourites bastardized, and that revivals need all the support they can get. Thus the old days were canonical: they “happened” and the new company was off and running with an interested, older fan-base already in place.

But the upstarts were not content to simply revive and retrofit past glories: a growing legion of new characters was gradually added to the pantheon. One such was a Voodoo-tainted, New Orleans based wild man daredevil named Jack Boniface – Shadowman.

After a truly seminal cameo in X-O Manowar #4 musician Boniface was properly introduced in 1992 his own title. Shadowman premiered with ‘Jazz’, written by Shooter and Steve Englehart, illustrated by David Lapham and Joe Rubinstein.

The credits are a lot more complex that they might appear. Shooter famously used a communal brainstorming system to create characters and stories. The full credits for the graphic novel under review – gathering issues #1-3 and 6 (the un-included chapters being part of the company’s first braided cross-over event Unity) of the first Shadowman run read Plotters: Steve Ditko, Mark Moretti Don Perlin & Shooter, Writers: Englehart, Bob Hall, Faye Perozich, Shooter, Pencillers: Ditko, Lapham, Moretti and Inkers Charles Barnett III, Gonzalo Mayo, Rubinstein & Tom Ryder.

In that eerie introduction Boniface was a struggling session saxophonist trying to strike it rich in the Big Easy when he was seduced by Lydia, a mysterious woman he picked up in a club. Her sinister, trysting assault left him unconscious, amnesiac and forever altered by a bite to his neck. Unknown to Jack, Lydia was an agent of the Spider Aliens who form a covert keystone of the Valiant Universe, preying on humanity for millennia and responsible for creating many of the paranormal humans who secretly inhabit the world.

Alone in the morning light Boniface discovered that Lydia’s home was filled with half-digested corpses. Clearly he was to be her next meal – but now has no idea how he survived or where she went. He cannot conceive of how her bite has altered him…

He flees but later as darkness falls he feels agitated, restless, aggressive: he roams the streets and finds himself drawn back to Lydia’s home and stumbles upon a voodoo sacrifice. Attacked by the priest the once docile musician dons a Mardi Gras mask found at his feet and fights back with brutal abandon. Lydia’s has somehow turned him into a violent driven maniac, hungry for conflict – but only when the sun goes down…

In ‘Spirits Within’ (Perozich, Shooter, Lapham & Ryder) Jack’s own hunger for answers takes him to both experts in medicine and Obeah magic before his Shadowman self drags him into a confrontation with a Bayou axe murderer, whilst ‘The Beast and the Children’ (Perozich, Moretti & Barnett III) finds the increasingly off the rails music-man tackling mobsters and hit-men before destroying a well-connected super-powered child abuser.

There’s a big change in the character seen in the fourth and final tale here. It begins with Shadowman’s return from the far future and a distant dimension where the combined Valiant heroes experienced “Unity”. Whilst there Boniface fell in love and learned exactly when he would die…

Written by Shooter, Ditko, Don Perlin and Moretti with art by Ditko, Moretti and Gonzalo Mayo ‘The Family That Slays Together’ pitted the Shadowman against a murderous clan of degenerate swamp-dwellers stealing women and children from local communities. Bitter, merciless and now completely reckless since he believes he cannot die – yet – Shadowman had become a relentless, remorseless, punishing force of nature. What a pity Jack Boniface was a helpless witness to everything his night-self did…

Combining the best elements of conflicted lone vigilantes and dark avengers such as Batman and Daredevil with an exotic locale and traditional horror elements, Shadowman offers a tense, dark underbelly to the super-science and shining heroism of Valiant’s other titles, and despite the committee-like nature of its creation still delivers heaping helpings of moody mystery and arcane excitement. Well worth reviving and definitely a different action hero you will love to read…
© 1994 Voyager Communications Inc. All rights reserved.

By Kevin Juaire, David Campiti, Ronald Lim & Mike Witherby (Pied Piper Press)
No ISBN:

Less a recommendation, and more a cautionary tale for would-be publishing moguls, Hero Alliance materialised in the wake of “superhero realism” as defined by Watchmen and Marvelman/Miracleman, as an increasing number of creators attempted to rationalize fights ‘n’ tights sturm und drang with our plebian world of hemorrhoids, bad breath and fallen arches. As with so many of these enthusiastic and well-meaning homage/pastiches, a surfeit of lawyers and paucity of luck and determination derailed and ended a series with a great deal of potential before it really got started – although with over 25 assorted issues from three publishers, it got a lot further than most.

The story itself concerns an immortal Superman analogue dubbed Victor who has suffered debilitating guilt pangs since his arrogance and negligence allowed an arch enemy to murder his superhero team The Guardsmen. Now years later his own mentor Golden Guardsman has been murdered and splendid isolationism doesn’t seem that great an idea…

Approached by the Golden Guardsman’s daughter Kris he discovers that her brother murdered the aged hero stealing his helmet of power and going on a brutal rampage. Victor can no longer remain aloof and decides to establish a new band of heroes, giving them the mentoring and guidance they’ll need to survive in a hostile modern world…

Very much a generic take on a generic genre, there’s still an awful lot to enjoy in this slim tome (other than the costumes and hairdos – but I’ve lived through flared trousers and poodle perms twice so anything can be endured if you just try), with some intriguing ideas and a few clever twists of all the old set pieces – as you’d expect with an editor like Marvel veteran Roger McKenzie at he helm.

The art is more than competent and Lim and Witherby are assisted by Bart Sears, Rick J. Bryant, Craig Brasfield and Mark Pacella, which gives the tale a powerful aura of tension and drama. Cursed with troubled production, the series that spun off from this book had a lot going for it too, but was swamped in an avalanche of similar product that came out of that period’s self-publishing boom. Perhaps it’s time for a comprehensive collection – if everybody concerned has finally decided who owns what…
™ & © 1986 Kevin Juaire and David Campiti. All rights reserved.

By Jim Shooter, Don Perlin, Barry Windsor-Smith, Bob Layton & Tom Ryder (Valiant)
No ISBN

During the market-led, gimmick-crazed frenzy of the 1990s amongst the interminable spin-offs, fads, shiny multiple-cover events a new comics company revived some old characters and proved once more that good story-telling never goes out of fashion. As Editor-in-Chief, Jim Shooter had made Marvel the most profitable and high-profile they had ever been, and after his departure he used that writing skill and business acumen to transform some almost forgotten Silver-Age characters into contemporary gold.

Western Publishing had been a major player since comics’ earliest days, blending a huge tranche of licensed titles such as TV and Disney titles, Tarzan, or the Lone Ranger with homegrown hits like Turok, Son of Stone and Space Family Robinson. In the 1960s during the camp/superhero boom these original adventure titles expanded to include, Brain Boy, M.A.R.S. Patrol Total War (created by Wally Wood), Magnus, Robot Fighter (by the incredible Russ Manning) and in deference to the atomic age of heroes, Nukla and the brilliant Dr. Solar, Man of the Atom. Despite supremely high quality and passionate fan-bases, they never captured the media spotlight of DC or Marvel’s costumed cut-ups. Western shut up their comics division in 1984.

With an agreement to revive some, any or all of these four-colour veterans, Shooter and co-conspirator Bob Layton came to a bold decision and made those earlier adventures part-and-parcel of their refit: acutely aware that old fans don’t like having their childhood favourites bastardized, and that revivals need all the support they can get. Thus the old days were canonical: they “happened.”

Although the company launched with a classy reinterpretation of Magnus, the key title to the new universe they were building was the only broadly super-heroic character in the bunch, and they had big plans for him. Solar, Man of the Atom was launched with an eye to all the gimmicks of the era, but was cleverly realised and realistically drawn.

Second Death collects the first four issues of the revived Solar and follows brilliant nuclear physicist Phil Seleski, designer of the new Muskogee fusion reactor in the fraught days before it finally goes online. Faced with indifferent colleagues and inept superiors, pining for a woman who doesn’t seem to know he exists, Seleski is under a lot of pressure. So when he meets a god-like version of himself he simply puts it down to stress…

Solar, the atomic god who was Seleski, is freshly arrived on Earth, and with his new sensibilities goes about meeting the kind of people and doing the kind of things his mortal self would never have dreamed of. As if godhood had made him finally appreciate humanity Solar befriends bums, saves kids and fixes disasters like the heroes in the comic-books he collected as a boy.

His energized matter and troubled soul even further divide into a hero and “villain”, but things take a truly bizarre turn when he falls foul of a genuine super-foe; discovering that the “normal” world is anything but, and that he is far from unique. The superhuman individuals of Toyo Harada’s Harbinger Foundation prove that the world has always been a fantastical place, and Solar’s belief that he has traveled back in time to prevent his own creation gives way to the realisation that something even stranger has occurred…

This is a cool and knowing revision of the so clichéd “atomic blast turns schmuck into hero” plot, brimful of sharp observation, plausible characters and frighteningly convincing pseudo-science. The understated art from the hugely under-appreciated Don Perlin is a terrifying delight and adds even more shades of veracity to the mix, as do the colours of Kathryn Bolinger and Jorge Gonzãlez.

Moreover the original comics had a special inserted component in the first ten issues (by Shooter, Barry Windsor-Smith and Layton) which revealed the epic events that made Seleski into a god – collected as Solar, Man of the Atom: Alpha and Omega – designed to be read only after the initial story arc had introduced the readers to Seleski’s new world. Together these tales combine to form one of the most impressive and cohesive superhero origin sagas ever concocted and one desperately in need of reprinting.

Until then you can still hunt these down via your usual internet and comic retailers, and trust me, you should…
© 1994 Voyager Communications Inc. and Western Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

By Jim Shooter, Barry Windsor-Smith & Bob Layton with Kathryn Bolinger (Valiant)
No ISBN

The 1990s were a slow period for comics creativity: the industry had become market-led, with spin-offs, fad-chasing, shiny gimmicks and multiple-covers events replacing innovation and good story-telling in far too many places. One notable exception was a little outfit with some big names that clearly prized the merits of well-told stories illustrated by artists immune to the latest mis-proportioned, scratchy poseur style, and one with enough business sense to play the industry at its own game…

As Editor-in-Chief, Jim Shooter had made Marvel the most profitable, high-profile comics company around, and after his departure he used that savvy to pick up the rights to a series of characters with Silver-Age appeal and turn them into contemporary gold.

Western Publishing had been an industry player since the earliest days, mixing a plethora of licensed titles such as Disney titles, Tarzan, or the Lone Ranger with the occasional homegrown hit like Turok, Son of Stone. In the 1960s during the camp/superhero boom these latter expanded to included Space Family Robinson, Brain Boy, Magnus, Robot Fighter (by the incredible Russ Manning) and in deference to the age of the nuclear hero, Dr. Solar, Man of the Atom. All of supremely high quality, they won huge fan-bases, but never captured the media spotlight of DC or Marvel’s costumed cut-ups.

With an agreement to revive some, any or all of these four-colour veterans, Shooter and co-conspirator Bob Layton came to a bold decision and decided to incorporate those earlier adventures into their refits: acutely aware that old fans don’t like having their childhood favourites bastardized, and that revivals need all the support they can get. Thus the old days were canonical: they did “happen.”

Although the company launched with a classy reinterpretation of Magnus, the key title to the new universe they were building was the only broadly super-heroic character in the bunch, and they had big plans for him. Solar, Man of the Atom was launched with an eye to all the gimmicks of the era, but was cleverly realised and realistically drawn. However, that not what this book is about.

The main text of the series followed comic fan and nuclear physicist Phil Seleski, designer of the new Muskogee fusion reactor as he dealt with its imminent activation. Inserted into the first ten issues was a short extra chapter by Shooter, Windsor-Smith and Layton that described that self-same Seleski as he came to accept the horrific nuclear meltdown he had caused and the incredible abilities it had given him. As the world went to hell Seleski – or Solar – believed he had found one chance to put it right…

That sounds pretty vague – and it should – because the compiled ten chapters that form Alpha and Omega are a prequel, an issue #0, designed to be read only after the initial story arc had introduced the readers to Seleski’s new world. That it reads so well in isolation is a testament to the skill of all the creators involved, and when I review the accompanying collection Solar, Man of the Atom: Second Death hopefully that will convince you to seek out both these outstanding epics of science-hero-super-fiction.

Conversely you could take my word for it and start hunting now: and just by way of a friendly tip – each insert culminated with a two-page spread that was a segment of “the worlds largest comic panel”, and the slipcase edition I’m reviewing includes a poster that combines those spreads into a terrifyingly detailed depiction of the end of the tale…
© 1994 Voyager Communications and Western Publishing Company, Inc. All rights reserved.

By Jim Lee, Billy Tucci and various (Image/WildStorm)
ISBN: 1-887-279-24-5

The 1990s were a time of startling changes in the American comicbook industry. Young upstarts broke away from the big companies to do all the job themselves, with admittedly mixed results, but as they lived or died on their own merits and ingenuity, it signalled a way that the other creative arenas (and of course I’m thinking the music biz here) could learn from even after all this time.

There had always been independent titles, but where the new guys differed from past do-it-yourself attempts was in the slick production values. These guys knew the product had to look and feel as sharp and cutting edge as the best of DC or Marvel – it’s just a shame so much of the new independents concentrated only on the style and so often ignored the actual creative content.

After a while however the very best of those independents, such as Jim Lee’s WildStorm titles from the Image Comics co-operative and Billy Tucci’s gradually unfolding martial arts epic Shi rose in sheer Darwinian majesty from the shiny, colour-saturated mire and carved a lasting place for themselves.

One of the biggest advantages of being an independent creator was how few people stood in the way if you wanted to do a team-up tale. The respective owners could just talk to each other…

This pretty and engaging tale is an unchallenging but generally satisfying conspiracy quest very much in the traditional manner starring the charismatic soldier-of-fortune Cole Cash (better known as Grifter) and the startlingly compelling and unconventional dancer/samurai masterminded by Jack-of-all-trades Billy Tucci.

Shi is Ana Ishikawa, whose father was a Japanese Warrior Monk and her mother an American Catholic missionary. Her father and brother were murdered by Yakuza boss Masahiro Arashi, setting her on a path of brutal, unrelenting vengeance using the Sohei Warrior skills taught by her grandfather, a master of the Yambushi Monks’ ancient secrets. She chose the mythical guise of Tora no Shi (Tiger of Death) to mask her when she began her crusade, but as she continued her battles her Catholic upbringing increasingly conflicted with her Sohei methodology…

Grifter is a veteran of many years of combat, covert and otherwise, who began his troubled life on the other side of the law. After years of black Ops he eventually went rogue, joining the WildC.A.T,’s super-team and was trained in alien combat techniques by the super-amazon Zealot. He has a unique no-nonsense approach to getting the job done, and has psionic powers he doesn’t like to use.

In this visually appetising collaboration Grifter returns to Japan hunting terrorists who killed one of his comrades, as the 50^th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima approaches. Meanwhile a highly placed Japanese government official has stolen a North Korean nuclear weapon, embroiling Ana Ishikawa and her sensei grandfather in a plot to steal a priceless artefact known as the “Final Rite of Kusunoki”, a 150 year old artwork that can exert an undeniable influence on the real ruler of Japan. This mastermind’s scheme includes long-delayed vengeance on the Americans, political power and even settling a centuries old feud with his clan’s greatest enemies, the Sohei…

With a nuclear clock counting down Grifter must first work out who he can trust, especially the enigmatic Shi, before the convoluted machinations and seemingly endless string of opponents standing between him and his own particular brand of payback drags him down to dusty death.

Sometimes a little too complex for its own good, this is nevertheless a solid piece of entertainment from an incredible cast of creators (clearly doing it yourself includes a large amount of sub-contracting) including Brandon Choi, Peter, Gutierrez, Travis Charest, Ryan Benjamin, Jamal Igle, Troy Hubbs, Richard Bennett and John Nyberg. If you need a little more style than substance occasionally, then this is certainly the fashion to follow…
© 1996 Aegis Entertainment Inc., dba WildStorm Productions and William Elliott Tucci. All rights reserved.