The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1519: Vanguard Illustrated #3, March 1984

The opening editorial in issue #1 calls this series a try-out book. What this means is that it's a place where the publisher would give emerging writers and artists a chance to get some work published. DC did this with their New Talent Showcase, as have others, and the result is often a mixed bag, which really is the case with any anthology title. What I find a bit odd about it is that one of the emerging writers is David Campiti, but he has a story in every issue thus far. I'm not sure that's really in the spirit of a try-out book, but I wasn't there and don't know the circumstances.

Regardless, Campiti's story in today's issue is phenomenal. It's called "Be It What It Will, I'll Go To It Laughing," and tells the story of an alternate history in which human beings make it to Mars, and about the way Ray Bradbury inspired one young boy to get there. It has an excellent ending that actually gave me chills. That doesn't happen very often.

A bit of research on Mr. Campiti tells me that he's a prolific writer, or was, and is not working internationally with artists trying to establish themselves in various markets. He story today goes pretty close to the top of my list of comic book science fiction stories, and really just comic book stories in general. Beautifully illustrated by Tom Yeates, it's worth your while if you can find the comic.

"Stubbs from Moby-Dick. You'll want to read it someday."

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1518: Vanguard Illustrated #2, January 1984

I've said it before, I do love me some Dave Stevens artwork. I mean, he appears to exist in a world where every woman is a pin-up model, which seems to me a bit boring, but he's really good at showing us scenes from that world. That cover up there is amazing.

One thing I neglected to mention yesterday is that there's a serial in here called "Freakwave" and it's written by Peter Milligan, whose work I've been tracking down over the last little while. I had no idea he was in this series. To make matters even better, "Freakwave" is illustrated by Brendan McCarthy, whose Zaucer of Zilk I read a few weeks back. It's not quite the psychedelic festival that McCarthy's later work becomes, but you can definitely see flashes. What's also interesting about this serial is that it really, really resembles the film Waterworld. In fact, it resembles the film so much that when that film was released in 1995, 10 years after "Freakwave," the creators made some attempt at taking legal action. It doesn't seem to have amounted to much, but I will say that when I started reading this serial, I was really shocked at the similarities.

But what's the old saw? There's only 2 or 3 stories to tell, really. Everything else is just variations.

"Before the cumbersome Mickey Death can launch another attack, Tia and Drifter race across the cabin and..."

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1517: Vanguard Illustrated #1, November 1983

I've had this series completed and ready to read for about a year now, I think. I've noted before in my reviews of anthology titles that the problem with them is that the quality between stories is often quite variable. This title, a self-proclaimed "new talent book," runs that risk of variable quality not only because it's an anthology, but because it's new writers. Regardless of how talented a creator is, their first few forays are not going to be stellar, with a few exceptions of course. Even Alan Moore's Maxwell the Magic Cat is good, but it's no Watchmen.

That said, I quite enjoyed this issue. It's definitely pulling on the old pulp science fiction traditions of the pre-comic book days. Nowhere is this more clear than the covers, most presenting a scantily-clad (or unclad, in today's case) woman in a strange science fiction setting. When I was reading old pre-code horror stuff, I came across comics published by Avon, a paperback publisher. Rather than using comic artists, the covers were apparently (this according to Tales Too Terrible To Tell) done by paperback artists, and you can tell. There's a different design aesthetic to them. The reason I bring this up is that Vanguard Illustrated does a nice job of taking the elements of old sci-fi covers and rather than simply giving up a paperback cover, uses those elements in the mold of a comic cover.

It's a subtle thing, and probably one of those things that only someone like me notices. Comics, cover-wise, have to ride that fine line between magazine copy and book copy, and it's a line that is not always successfully walked.

"You done made a bad choice, bro! Tha's cannibal country for sure!"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1491: The Zaucer of Zilk #2, November 2012

Seriously. Look at that cover. That's got to be one of the best comics covers I've ever seen. And I want a pair of "fancy pants."

The Zaucer travels "behind the scenes" in his pants, exposing himself to ravenous consumers of content who float on clouds. I'm not sure there's a lot of social commentary in the story, but this part definitely is. The Zaucer must escape these creatures, who transform into a giant mouth, before they devour him.

And then he enters Dankendreer, Errol Raine's domain, and the McCarthy colours disappear. Pages and panels are streaked across with rain, bleeding from the panel borders right across our field of view. It's a lovely touch, to give us the impression that literally everything in this dimension is sodden and miserable. Such wonderful contrast to the psychedelic swirliness (that's the technical term) of the rest of the comic.

A nice thing that we see, and I like to these days call it The Squirrel (or Zquirrel?) Girl Effect, is that the Zaucer attempts to help the bad guy (who isn't who you might think), rather than simply defeating them. So much violence is born of fear and feeling powerless - if we can help people to not feel that way, we reduce the amount of violence in the world. I'm not trained in these sorts of things, but that seems pretty straightforward to me. Help people, don't hurt them = better world.

If only that were a majority sentiment.

"A thousand billion aeons of time burst from Charognae's every cell, to seep into the infinite mansion of Darkendreer --"

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1490: The Zaucer of Zilk #1, October 2012

I don't know how it is for other comics fans, but I have a hard time walking past a Brendan McCarthy comic without at the very least having a flip through. He is, bar none, the most colourful and psychedelic artist working in mainstream comics, and everything he does looks amazing.

Today's comic could really be set in Pepperland (from the Beatles' Yellow Submarine). Both the tone of the series and the look of the series hearken back to that crazed wonderland. The Zaucer's realm is populated by bizarre and colourful characters, as you can see from the cover, and their adventures are, for the most part, exercises in randomness and chaos. At least, that's what it looks like to us. The Zaucer's realm is a very different place from ours, and all that randomness actually seems to work for the characters in the story, almost as if, from their perspective, it's not random at all.

My favourite scene in this issue is when the Zaucer has to get himself some "fancy pants" in order to walk between dimensions. He had to actually trap these free-roaming pants himself, jumping into them both legs at once, after luring a pair with a tasty piece of pocket lint.

And that right there tells you everything you need to know about the story. Its silly and weird and beautiful, and very much work a read.

"Merely a facilitator for those cosmic intelligences who've paid to watch your intrepid struggles."