The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1997: Brigade #1, July 2000

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This, I think, is the last comic published by Awesome Entertainment. At least, it's got the latest cover date on it. With Awesome, though, that's not always an indicator of when the comic was actually released.

Brigade started off as an Extreme Studios team book way back in the 90s, and this reboot takes a similar tack in bringing together characters from various corners of the Awesome U and putting them in a situation in which they have to help one another. It's a bit contrived, but, honestly, would have made a really cool series had it had the chance to play out. I'm not totally familiar with Dash of the New Men, but her narration of this comic is really well done, as is her reticence at rejoining the superheroic lifestyle.

So what happens to the Awesome U after this issue? In some ways, the revision wave that began the whole thing sweeps across. Some characters are completely lost. Some find their way out of Limbo (that's a Grant Morrison Animal Man reference) and into new series, but not for many years after the dissolution of this wonderful shared narrative space. Bits and pieces of the world are carried along in these series, but none of them are as interwoven as the comics of the Awesome U were, which diminishes the series somewhat. In my humble opinion, of course.

There are a couple of other bits and pieces of the Awesome U I need to track down, most notably The Coven. Once I've got them, we'll pop back into the mystical side of the universe, but aside from that we're pretty much done. Sad, but immensely satisfying too.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1994 - 1996: Kaboom #1 - 3, Sept. - Nov. 1997

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I decided to do these three comics together for two reasons. First, I'm falling terribly behind on my blogging, and this is an easy way to get back on track. Second, it's basically a single story told over three issues, so it's easier to talk about it all at once.

Kaboom is a part of the Awesome Universe, like Fighting American and The Coven, that isn't directly controlled by Alan Moore. I'd left it for a little while to read because I was worried that it wouldn't hold up to the standard set by Moore's work in this setting, and by some of the other writers/artists who contributed characters and stories to the shared universe. It was a pretty good series, but not a great one, I'd say. Jeff Matsuda's artwork is super-kinetic, very much like reading an anime adaptation or a manga. There's a few artists whose work really nicely demonstrates the influence of Japanese comics on North American production, and Mr. Matsuda is definitely one of them.

As for the story, it's a pretty standard origin piece. Teenager gets powers, turns out there's people who want to kill him as a result. But as I say, Mr. Matsuda's art gives it a bit of a boost, including some really great, and weird, designs for The Nine, agents of Scarlett, the villain who wants to remove "the mitts" from Geof Sunrise's hands. Shenanigans ensue.

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

Mr. Matsuda's work has  shown up a couple of other times in the project.

Mr. Loeb, however, has shown up quite a lot.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1897: Awesome Adventures, 1999

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With a whimper and a bang. This is how Moore and Skroce's ends.

We get about half a story by Skroce and half by Dietrich Smith and Marat Mychaels. And, actually, half a story. This is the first part of a two-parter, the end of which has the team trapped by old Professor Night villain in a seemingly inescapable situation. They do escape, though, as Joe Casey's excellent run attests - but really, the team never escapes.

And unfortunately, there only being 2.5 issues, there's not a lot more to say. The first two issues are amazing, the last bit slightly less so. We get a little look at the world that surrounds Moore's Supreme, and at some of the characters that were shown in the flashbacks from that series. And then just about all of that disappears. There are a couple of callbacks in Prophet, and in Glory, and then it's done. Though we also get the alternate, remixed version of the universe in America's Best Comics.

Hmmmm.

Been awhile since I read those.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1896: Youngblood #2, August 1998

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Issue number two is everything issue one was and so much more. The return of Sentinel! The introduction of some new old villains. And the team splits into smaller teams and fends off their nemeses.

I honestly think that this is one of the best team superhero books that I've read. Every character is defined and utilized in just about equal amount, though it never feels forced. And the team functions believably - both in their superheroic and social aspects. One of the great things about Roger Stern and Sal Buscema's run on The Avengers is that they understood, perhaps better than any other Avengers creative team, how a team of superhuman heroes would interact. The egos and the romances and the cameraderie, etc., etc. Moore's Youngblood is probably the closest other team book that aspires to that - but, alas, cut short.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1895: Youngblood #1, February 1998

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It's always bittersweet for me when I pick up this comic. I think, given the opportunity, it could have become a favourite (it already is, really), and it could have become one of the best superhero team books out there. If Liefeld's claims are correct, and a huge amount of what would have been the Awesome Universe went into Moore's America's Best Comics, I'm actually not sure where the Youngblood-inspired stuff went. Top 10 is the only team book in the ABC Universe, and it's very, very different from Youngblood. I do think some of the storylines were recycled. There's some similarities between the story in Awesome Adventures and one of Tom Strong's storylines, but aside from that, I don't see that many reminders in the latter of the former.

As I noted yesterday, Joe Casey picks this team up, with a slightly modified line-up about a decade later, and it's very good, but once again cut short by Mr. Liefeld. For now, however, we have the three short stories and 3(ish) issues of the team from Awesome, and they are, honestly, awesome.

A cool first issue adventure - there's a special that came out just after what's referred to as "The Awesome Implosion," which I take to mean that Awesome lost a lot of money and lot of creators, called Alan Moore's Awesome Handbook - this prose publication outlines Moore's plans for the first years of both Youngblood and Glory in the wake of neither of those series having much chance of ever seeing the light of day. The Youngblood series was seen as a series of single issue adventures, with the occasional two-parter, which I'll talk about in a couple of days. The series sounds fun and interesting and, of course, really intelligent.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1894: Youngblood #1+, 1997

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 Yes, the ladies are in "lingerie." I"m not sure why, and Doc Rocket doesn't appear to be sure either. In my head canon, this is part of a publicity photo shoot that the team agreed to, and then the photographer asked all the women to pose in something other than their costumes. Good for business in the late 90s, perhaps, but not for representation, really. Maybe put Shaft front and center in his tighty-whiteys, and then we'll be okay.

The opening to Moore's Youngblood is a short piece about Twilight, Professor Night's protege, and a reprint of the Awesome Holiday Special story. It functions nicely as an intro, actually, offering just enough background on what's happened in the Awesome Universe recently (in Supreme and Judgment Day) that a new reader would be comfortable picking up the new series. Actually, that's kind of a nice part of this revamp of the team - one doesn't really need to know anything about the previous incarnations of the team in order to enjoy it. Shaft talks briefly about the disbanding of the old team, but their existence and adventures don't seem to have too much bearing on the direction of the new series. I'm sure this was by design. Liefeld's Youngblood comes up for a good deal of criticism - separating the new team from the old seems a good idea, especially since that's basically what the stated purpose of Judgment Day actually was.

Looking forward to the 3-ish issues we get - it also occurred to me that there's the excellent Joe Casey Youngblood that follows this series a decade later, and features basically the same line-up for 8 issues until Liefeld made another horrendous decision, kicked that team off the book, and tried to do it himself. Series ended after his first issue. *sigh*

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

I really like Joe Casey's work - he's every bit as good as the Waids and Loebs of the world.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1891: Awesome Preview, 1998

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This'll be one of three times that I'll be reading the story "Glory and the Gate of Tears," reprinted one more time from Awesome and then once from Avatar (plus a preview of it from Avatar). As I've noted in my posts on the various covers that this incarnation of Glory commands, it's a bittersweet tale to read because it's got so much promise. I know that much of that promise is fulfilled in Promethea, so that's nice, but I feel that Glory would have brought a very different aesthetic to the exploration of the World Tree and the Sephiroth. Where Promethea exists in a superheroic world, I'm not sure I'd class her as a superhero. But Glory definitely is - she's got the comics to prove it.

I'll talk more about this story tomorrow.

The Fighting American preview is quite cool - it's just Stephen Platt's pencils and I love seeing stuff like this. His work is super-detailed. I can't imagine being the inker for this work. That said, the Dogs of War mini was my least favourite of the Awesome Fighting American stuff. But his pencils are gorgeous.

The Re-Gex preview is Beowulf's story, but without dialogue. I think this story is reprinted in an issue of The Coven, in the Re-Gex zero issue, and potentially in one of the Re:Gex preview issues that I do not have. Maybe this one is reprinted almost as much as the Glory story. As I've said over the last couple of days, Re:Gex is interesting, but ultimately goes nowhere.

First day on a new job today.

More to follow.

And here's the flip cover:

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1890: Lionheart #2/Coven v.2 #4, December 1999

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The second, and final, piece of what was meant as a 3-issue mini-series guest-stars The Coven, whose series I really ought to get around to reading. I'm close to finishing off those series, so maybe soon. It turns out that Lionheart has shown up in The Coven, so I'm in some ways coming to the character backwards. Which doesn't appear to matter much, honestly. What I do find interesting is that Lionheart is, for all intents and purposes, a spin-off from The Coven, but since I didn't know that, I've read it as a series that stands by itself. I'm not sure what the overall effect of this is, aside from the fact that I wasn't expecting The Coven to show up, as I might have if I'd read their series, and met Lionheart there, first.

 

And speaking of The Coven, today's issue is a flip book with the final issue of Awesome's second series featuring that team. I've read bits and pieces of the series, so I wasn't completely lost, and this short tale is a story of Fantom and her experiences during the Second World War. The story is a reprint of Fantom's tale from the Coven: Black and White, which is, as far as I can tell, also reprinted in Coven: Dark Origins. The 1999 Awesome output comes at a time when the company is beginning to seriously flounder, and the reprints speak to this. It's difficult to really consider this issue as a proper part of the second volume of The Coven - it's previously released material and doesn't move what narrative might have been happening in the second volume forward at all. But I'll have more to say about that when I actually read the series.

 

At the end of this issue, Lionheart actually develops some armour from her powers, the pieces of which fit over the exposed skin her costume leaves. So at least she's not just giving everyone a free show when she's in her superpowered form, though I still don't really understand why her costume wouldn't go underneath the armour plates as well. Surely all that magical metal is stil cold.

 

I'll probably mention this when I get to their series, but I think the magical underworld of the Awesome Universe that Churchill and Loeb were crafting fits very nicely with the Silver-Age-esque superhero world of Moore and company. *sigh* What could have been...

 

More to follow.

 

Oh, and here's the flip cover:

 

 

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1889: Lionheart #1, August 1999

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Where, oh where, to begin? I have a number of feelings and thoughts about this comic.

 

One of the letters in the back of the comic asks if artist and creator Ian Churchill is a particularly religious individual, given that this comic opens with an extended sequence in the Garden of Eden, and the first pages of The Coven feature the killing of Abel by Cain. Churchill's response is that he has an interest in many religions, and sees the Bible as an important collection of really great stories. Totally my point of view too - they are great stories, in that they are both interesting and kerygmatic, they are designed to teach us something. That's why stories like the Biblical ones stick around for such a long time. There's something fundamental that they're trying to teach us. The trouble is that there's a good deal of reticence in updating those lessons for the modern era.

 

Which might be what happens when they get adapted into superhero stories like this one.

 

So that's one cool thing about the comic. I've waxed lyrical about Ian Churchill's artwork previously. I find his artwork, both the men and the women, unreasonably sexy. He's also extremely (see what I did there?) good at page construction, at action sequences, and, unlike many of his contemporaries, at facial expression. And, to add to that, this is a totally intriguing story. Pity it only gets the two issues.

 

But. And there's always a but. Why is Lionheart's costume the way it is? Her nemesis, who calls himself Blackheart, wears full on armour and a cape (that's him in the top left), and, as far as we can tell, has been empowered by the same force that gives Lionheart her powers. But it doesn't seem to have left him semi-nude. In the middle of an ice cave in the Alps. So, while I do appreciate the aesthetic quality of Churchill's women (second only to Art Adams in my book), we once again fall prey to the male gaze that demands that female heroes not only are badasses who can save us, but who are also eye candy to satiate a socially-constructed quality in some human males. I like to think that things have progressed somewhat, but I also haven't stepped foot into a comic shop in months, so I don't really know what current trends are looking like for lady superheroes.

 

So mostly a really good read, with some questionable visual representation of the female lead. And, that said, I should point out that personality-wise, Lionheart/Karen Quinn is a really nicely fleshed out character thus far. I'm curious to see what tomorrow brings.

 

More to follow. 

Further Reading and Related Posts

A bit more on Mr. Churchill. I really do love his work a lot.

And a few posts in which I consider the links between religion, mostly Christian, and comics.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1888: Re:Gex #0, December 1998

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 The only other full issue of Re:Gex is, as far as I can tell, simply a repackaging of a number of short stories previously published elsewhere. I am torn over this.

I think the main story in today's issue comes from the Wizard World convention preview, while the story of Scarab's early years was a back up feature in The Coven. Similarly, Beowulf's 4-page tale is from both the Awesome Preview, though reproduced without dialogue there, and also from The Coven #5, with dialogue, as a back-up feature.

I'm totally fine with repackaging like this. If you publish stories as back-ups in comics that readers may not have picked up, it's nice to get all these little bits and pieces under a single cover, and under the title of the series one is collecting. However, I think that's a good thing to do if you're actually producing new content to go alongside this reprint issue. That was never the case with Re:Gex, unfortunately.

As I was going through the GCD, there was a note on one of the comics I was looking at for Awesome that made reference to something called the "Awesome Implosion." Likely a reference to a well-documented event in the 70s in which DC reduced their number of published titles for a time, Awesome underwent a financial crisis in late 1998 - early 1999 that shifted their publishing schedules and art teams, and eventually led to their collapse. Brigade, published in early 2000, was Awesome's last gasp. It could be that Re:Gex was simply a casualty of this implosion, though I also wonder when you're getting 4 or 6 page stories whether or not those responsible for the comic are simply incapable of producing enough work to fill a full comic. In yesterday's issue there's even a note that the comic was shot from pencils, rather than having the series inked, and though it's passed off as a choice made by the creators, I think it may have had something to do with hitting deadlines as well, which Mr. Liefeld is notoriously bad at.

Anyway, that was Re:Gex. I don't think I like where it was taking the Awesome Universe, and I wonder how it would have stood up against Alan Moore's stories if both had had a chance to flourish.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1887: Re:Gex #1, September 1998

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I bought this comic years ago, when it came out, actually. I'll admit that I was probably drawn in by the semi-nude Genie on the cover, but I also knew virtually nothing about Mr. Liefeld and his history in comics at the time.

 

I admit that when I read this comic this morning, there were parts that I had literally no memory of. It's got an interesting, if very X-Men, vibe to it, though 3 pages devoted to Genie showering is a bit much, Rob, you horny devil. It's set in the Awesome Universe, given Avengelyne's appearance at the end, and appears to be trying to add another hidden history to the setting. As I say, intriguing, but aside from 2 or 3 little 4-page stories in preview issues, and a cobbled together zero issue, this is all the Re:Gex we get. I'm very surprised the Liefeld hasn't tried to start this series up again. His thing these days really seems to be rebooting his own series over and over and over.

Though, were that to happen, I cannot imagine I'd be picking it up. Jeph Loeb's words are good, but Liefeld's art is Liefeld's art. Genie's boots are just the worst.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1886: Scarlet Crush #2, February 1998

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 I really hate series that don't ever have a conclusion. It's a sad fact of the way that comics are published that very often (very often) we'll get a few issues of a series, with promises of more to come, and then the comic simply disappears. Such is the case with John Stinsman's Scarlet Crush.

I really quite like this setting and these characters, though, as with many comics from the late 90s, I'm not entirely certain why the main female character has to have a costume that barely covers anything. Indeed, the flight suit that Icaria wears in this issue actually has a zipper that goes at least up to the underboob section of her anatomy, but she chooses instead to leave it open almost to the point of the happy trail. While flying. And fighting. I just don't get it. I mean, I do, because it's a reason to show a woman basically undressed doing cool things. But, and I've said this before, it completely detracts from the story itself. This is a tale of someone trying to rescue her father from a brutal race of aliens. In the first issue, Icaria is in her police outfit, and the story is quite intriguing, as is the setting. But once she quits the force and strips off her uniform, she becomes yet another scantily-clad lady superhero whose anatomy seems to trump any attention given to her personality.

The only time I've ever seen anything like this where the rampant almost nudity didn't detract from the story is the insane, gorgeous, amazing anime Kill La Kill. If you've not seen it, it's perhaps the most kinetic television series I've ever seen, and for a large portion of the series, the main protagonists, male and female, are mostly naked. The thing is, the story is so intriguing, and the ironic perspective on the nudity so much in the fore, that it virtually disappears into the action and narrative. It's hard to explain how it happens, but it does. While watching it, I told my offspring that this had happened (they'd seen it already), and they said it was a common reaction to the series, the loss of viewer focus on the nudity, in response the the absolute awesomeness of the story.

I like to think that, had we had more, Scarlet Crush might have done something similar. But there's really no way to tell.

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

A couple of other really questionable looks at the female superhero form from Image comic can be found in my "Horror from the Dollar Bin" posts.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1885: Scarlet Crush #1, January 1998

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And back to the Awesome Universe for a bit, though a slightly different part of it than the superheroic bit we've been looking at lately.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this comic. I don't know John Stinsman's work, and a quick look at the GCD shows that he was involved in both the Avengelyne and Lady Pendragon series that Maximum and Image, respectively, put out. He's also the artist on Chapel, and on the single issue of Avengelyne that Awesome produced, which I'll get around to reading once I'm ready to read Avengelyne's non-continuity Avatar Press adventures. But let's focus on Scarlet Crush, shall we?

I get a heavy Star Wars vibe from this comic, likely because it involves our main character attempting to recruit a mercenary and his large companion for a mission at a seedy bar. Star Wars has reached a level in our culture in which it has become a touchstone, one that many will recognize when it's referenced, even tangentially, like it is today. The four main protagonists prepare to engage in a rescue mission when they are attacked by the evil characters in the series, the Tiamatians. For some etymology, Tiamat is an ancient Babylonian goddess associated with chaos, and is also a 5-headed dragon goddess in Dungeons & Dragons. It's probably even money as to which of these Mr. Stinsman drew inspiration from.

As I say, heavy Star Wars vibe, partially because this series is set in the future. The question I have is is this the future of the Awesome Universe, or is Scarlet Crush meant to take place in its own continuity? The reason I ask this is Prophet. I've waxed lyrical about the effect that Brandon Graham and company's amazing future superhero series has on its predecessors. In a very different way from Supreme, Prophet contextualizes the Extreme/Maximum/Awesome heroes by giving them a future. Though Lt. Icaria (the main character of Scarlet Crush) doesn't show up or get a mention (as far as I remember), her presence in what is ostensibly the future of the Awesome U means that she fits into this timeline somewhere. Given that Prophet takes place in a future so distant it's hard to imagine, the present series, at only 2 issues long, could rest comfortably in a temporal nook or cranny somewhere along the way.

Okay, last thing before this post gets too long: the costume and wings she sports on the cover? They never show in the comic. Icaria wears a police officer's uniform, albeit a mini-skirted one. I'm curious as to where this other costume comes from, when it will make its appearance, and whether it's a commentary on global warming, as it really looks like it might be a bit chilly to wear on Earth.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1880: Judgment Day Aftermath, March 1998

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It's hard to gauge when particular issues from Awesome came out, as the cover dates aren't always the dates upon which, or even near to the dates, they were published. For example, today's comic seems to have come out 8 months after the previous issue in the series, but whether either of them came out when they are purported to have is difficult to answer. The reason I'm ruminating on this is that, aside from this issue, most of the characters represented here never make any other appearances in the Awesome U. Spacehunter has this one story, as do the Allies and the new Conquerors/New Men. Youngblood and Glory get a bit more, but only 2 or 3 issues. And Maximage, whose story is very intriguing, vanishes after this. It's a pity, as this gives us, more than many of the other comic published by Awesome, a clear idea of Moore's vision for the universe. From the bare evidence here, I'd guess that the stories Moore had planned around Glory and Maximage became Promethea. There's just too much evidence otherwise. Everything else? I'd be unsurprised to find that most of those story ideas went into Tom Strong. Except maybe the Spacehunter one. That one kind of stands on its own.

Much as I like the idea of metatextual comics, this one is a bit on the nose. Artist Gil Kane actually appears as "Kane, the Imagineer" in the story, and the characters are referred to as characters by Kane in the comic. Moore establishes here a precursor to the Immateria of Promethea, though rather than that realm of dream and fantasy, this imaginary realm is manipulated to influence the material realm of the Awesome Universe. Given his final Supreme story, I wonder if Moore had plans to expand this concept had the Awesome U not imploded.

That finishes off Judgment Day. Today's Youngblood story takes place directly after the prologue story in the Awesome Holiday Special, and then we dive right into the series proper. Well, sort of. We've got one premium comic with a tiny bit more prologue in it, and then we get to the series. If one can call 2.5 issues a series. (I'll explain when we get there.)

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

I've read a bit more Gil Kane for the project. I think I like his older stuff better.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1879: Judgment Day Final Judgment, July 1997

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So we reach the end of Moore's revamp of the Extreme Universe - this series is really a look in minute detail at the process of a Revision Wave, as Moore more obscurely details in his earliest Supreme stories. The Revision Wave is, of course, the unending process of contemporization that happens to comic book superheroes over the course of their existences. The significant bits and pieces are kept from previous continuities and the rest is filled in as the universe settles into its new form. We'll see this moving forward with the short-lived Youngblood series, as well as with Supreme when I get back to reading it.

I've noted my love of the revision wave theory before, and I've even started scripting a Supreme series set after the next one - though given my disparaging comments about Mr. Liefeld on this blog, I can't imagine he'd ever let me work on Supreme - a shame really. In my version, Diana Dane is Supreme. I think it would be pretty good.

I also love about this comic how Moore uses Mercury's Book to explain exactly how the ultra-violence of the last decade had come to overwhelm the Extreme characters, and, by proxy, how that same violence influenced most major superhero publishers of the time. So not only does Moore give the Awesome U it's back story, but it also offers an explanation for the real-world descent into violence that afflicted superheroes in the early 90s. And given that Moore is a magician, and magicians use words to effect change in the world, could we perhaps see Moore's explanation of the early Image violence and grittiness as a retroactive magical spell that explains what happened to comics then?

Or am I just talking to hear my own voice, so to speak?

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1878: Judgment Day Omega, July 1997

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The history that Alan Moore sets up in this series is really quite fantastic, and the reactions of the characters watching the trial are set up to mirror the readers' reactions as well. This is a situation where it's preferable (perhaps the only situation where it's preferable ;D) to have some background knowledge of the various characters and their style of adventures. When Troll's back story is revealed, it is shocking to his teammates. Similar revelations about Diehard have the same affect. Just as when Supreme is discovering his own history, so too are the younger heroes of the Awesome Universe discovering the history that they had no idea stretched out behind them.  But then, I suppose Moore is writing the book for them at this point.

I'm intrigued by the depth of the history that Moore manages to pack into these three issues. I'm trying to suss out whether or not it's a convincing history because it's well-written (which it is), or if it's because the characters are so familiar, in that they're homages to older characters, that that history is inflecting the Awesome U's history. I'm sure it's a little bit of both, and that's the point of some of the characters, I'm sure. As I've noted before, the Awesome characters, for the most part, are pastiches of older heroes anyway. But Moore performs a bit of comic book alchemy here in much the same way that Warren Ellis does in Planetary a decade or so later. He uses familiar kinds of characters to give us a familiar kind of history. It's a lovely little fictional trick to play, and very much in keeping with the spirit of the story of the book that being told to us.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1877: Judgment Day Alpha, June 1997

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The advertising for this series claimed that Judgment Day was the greatest thing Alan Moore had written since Watchmen. That's a pretty big claim to make, and it sadly is not true. Don't get me wrong - Judgment Day is a stellar series. Over the course of 3 issues, not counting the Sourcebook or Aftermath issues, it manages to create a coherent, internally-logical superhero universe out of the tatters of Extreme Studios and Maximum Press. And, honestly, creating something even remotely logical out of that is quite the feat.

This is probably one of the few comics illustrated by Mr. Liefeld that I actually very much enjoy. It's not that I'm a fan of his art, but the whole point of the series is to transition the characters in Youngblood, and those connected to them, into a very different kind of superhero universe. The violence of the preceding decade or so of comics is in fact a major plot point to the series. Perhaps a good way to compare this series to Watchmen is that the metatextual commentary is even more at the fore this time around. Watchmen manages to comment on the superhero genre by placing them in what we might think of as realistic situations. Judgment Day, instead, takes the superhero and uses it to explore not just the genre, but the very act of writing itself, comic or otherwise. It's this aspect that I think draws me into it, and the Awesome Universe, more than anything else.

Plus they get some frickin' fantastic artists to do the flashback sequences, and I'm a sucker for a good flashback.

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

Another of the characters who undergoes a significant revamp in the Awesome U is Glory. Her eventual series also has a ridiculous amount of variant covers, which I decided to collect and talk about. 

John Prophet, another Liefeldian pastiche, also undergoes a transformation, and series, that revamps this universe again, and it's utterly brilliant.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1876: Judgment Day Sourcebook, 1997

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 Let's jump back into the Awesome Universe for a bit, shall we? I decided that I'd read Moore's take on Youngblood for the next few days, encompassing this series and the sadly unfinished eponymous series. Moore uses Judgment Day to transition the old Extreme Studios characters into the Awesome Universe, as publisher Jeph Loeb mentions in the editorial in today's comic. Indeed, the idea of the hyper-violent early years of many of these characters becomes a salient plot point in the series.

Today's issue, more than most of the Awesome U stuff, links to Moore's later work in Promethea. This "sourcebook," more a preview story really, is narrated by Mercury, a linguistic deity who plays a prominent role in Promethea's origin. My favourite lines from today's issue are his final words, "Spellbound, forget about the laughs and thrills that words may change a world...and language kills." As well as being a Youngblood story, Judgment Day is a stylized look at the way that language and words shape our world in a very real, phenomenological way. I emphasize this when I teach English and Literature, but I think only a very few of my students consider the real ramifications of this. Even the stories we tell ourselves are built of the language that we know, and it is these stories that shape the very way in which we view, and interact with, the world.

Mercury's only half right, though. Language may indeed kill, but it also births and creates. I guess the point of the series is that the two can, sadly, happen at the very same time.

 

Also, I will always, 100%, read a story written by Moore and illustrated by Sprouse and Vey. Utterly, utterly brilliant combination of creators.

More to follow.

The Faces of Glory - Awesome Preview, 1998

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Not exactly a Glory variant, but it's a Glory cover from the Awesome era of the series, and actually reprints, albeit in black and white, the entirety of the zero issue.

As I noted in my previous post on this topic, Brandon Peterson is the perfect artist for Glory. He manages to capture both the fantasy and superheroic aspects of the character in the few bits and pieces that we get from him.

This is the Awesome Comics Awesome Preview, published 1998 with a cover by Brandon Peterson. There's a flip cover of Rob Liefeld's Re: Gex, a series that just never materialized, and that has one of the dodgiest pairs of boots I've ever seen on one of the characters. Have a look. Keeps him from having to draw proper feet, I guess.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1874: Chapel #1, September 1997

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How about a comic about one of my least favourite characters in all comics? Chapel is the most one-dimensional character I've ever read, created, as far as I can tell, solely to facilitate Spawn's origin story, and then dragged along because someone thought that a dude with a skull on his face that killed people was an awesome idea.

It's not. It's derivative as fuck, and, as I've said, is barely a character. But because I've decided to read through my Awesome Comics stuff, Chapel must be read.

To be fair, it kind of nicely dovetails with the Fighting American series I've just finished, as it takes place in a much more grim, and much more violent, corner of the Awesome Universe than most of the other stories. I've no doubt that such brutality is implicit in any superhero universe, but I felt that the point of the Awesome U was that it was much more Silver Age, much less prone to violence. And then Liefeld has to bring his early Image sensibility back in and ruin everything. Wait until we get to the sadly aborted Joe Casey Youngblood, in which Liefeld literally kicked the creative team off the book mid-story, produced one extremely mediocre issue afterward, and then the series collapsed. Why does he do this?

One interesting thing about this issue is that it tells the story of Chapel's last mission before being ordered to assassinate Al Simmons. They only ever call him "Al," which is nicely ambiguous given Spawn's ownership by Todd McFarlane, but it does fill in a blank from that character's history. But that's just the problem - this probably should have been a special issue of Spawn, not an attempt to add character to something that is basically a plot device.

Ah well. As I've said before, and will undoubtedly say again, you can't love them all.

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

 

More thoughts, though not that many, on Spawn.