The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 635: Backlash #12, October 1995

Oooo....curiouser and curiouser...Backlash has a daughter? Taboo's a former prostitute? We'll have to accept that these are mysteries we may never get answers to. At least, I probably won't - though I've enjoyed Backlash, I can't see myself picking up the rest of the series, unless it's conveniently located in a quarter bin. We'll see.

Relatively predictable superhero fisticuffs today - Marc and Amanda take on some dudes protecting the person who can clear both of their names, only to be attacked by a third party, which necessitates the former enemies teaming up - until Backlash collapses after having coughed up a great deal of blood. Could be all those cigarettes, I suppose.

Speaking of, my absolute favourite part of this comic is Backlash's first appearance in it, in which he lights up a smoke through his mask. Those of you who aren't smokers won't get it, but cigarette smoke, especially at points of direct contact, leaves quite a powerful odour - so not only does Marc attempt to smoke through his mask, but he'll be stuck with old cigarette smell on that face covering for days (seriously, how often do you think he washes that supersuit?).

On to something else tomorrow - I may well dig into that Gerber Cybernary stuff. It'll give me a chance to do a bit more work on my Weird Worlds project for Sequart. Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 634: Backlash #9, June 1995

One more issue of Backlash tomorrow, and then I'll be leaving the next bit until I read the "Fire from Heaven" crossover, which I have most of. And it's a good thing, I think. This issue was a bit lackluster - Taboo's prison break came very quickly, and I honestly expected some Oz-style escapades on the inside first. Instead we get the kind of annoying Dingo, who was mysteriously introduced a couple of issues back, stumbling into Backlash's escape attempt, and basically rescuing Taboo while Marc is beaten to a pulp.

Meh.

Which is fine - I'd be lying if I said that Backlash is the best comic I've ever read. It's B or C-level superhero stuff, for sure, but it's a comic that doesn't pretend to be something other than that, and in that honesty, it's quite good. I'm curious about the characters, but I don't think I've come to care for them, and maybe that's what keeps it from being a top-level superhero title. It privileges the "super" over the "human" in the equation.

Regardless, I'll finish up tomorrow happily. I've had Backlash kicking about in the collection since I bought my first batch of stock comics for my store, well back in 2001. I always remember the title because it was one of the few Image series that I actually had an extensive run of, so it always had its own section in my comic boxes, rather than being a part of the B Miscellaneous section. In the intervening years I've come to know the Wildstorm Universe relatively well, enough to understand the circumstances surrounding events in Backlash, so it was a cool little expansion of my internal map of that continuity.

Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 633: Backlash #8, May 1995

Two covers for the price of one today! I quite like this idea - the primary cover has the "Wildstorm Rising" trade dress, for symmetry's sake, but there's a secondary cover on the back, so that the comic fits nicely into one's Backlash collection.

We get dropped in medias res in today's issue, which works out kind of nicely for a comic that's part 8 of a line-wide crossover. The exposition is a bit clunky, but gives all the information one needs, and Backlash gets his tail handed to him by a giant, fiery-mouthed alien. There's actually not much more to this comic, aside from an unsurprisingly great Barry Windsor-Smith cover (just FYI, the scene in the comic that the BWS cover is from does not involve a naked woman, though if Chabon's contentions about supersuits are anything to go by, even though she's clothed in the comic, she's not really).

I don't know if it's my tastes shifting, or if the current state of the world leaves me in an angst-ridden state at all times, but the grimness of the Image U, and specifically the Wildstorm section of it, seems to be growing on me. Recall all those other times I've read extended runs of titles, I've become very bored with them very quickly - Backlash is having an opposite effect. Each comic I read is making me want to know more, not only about 'lash, but about the universe he inhabits. Steve Gerber wrote a weird little corner of this universe in his Cybernary stuff. Maybe that'll be my next read...

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 632: Backlash #7, April 1995

So, Backlash has done it. It's sucked me in. It was inevitable, I suppose, though this issue did it for a couple of reasons.

The story, though I feel it's more prologue than story, was pretty good, and made nice use of different artists to tell different parts of the comic. It's interesting that the section with Backlash and Diane was by far the least impressive, both from a story and art perspective. Brett Booth's Taboo section was better, but basically came down to a giant fight scene. Good, but kind of typical. But the last bit, illustrated by Dan Norton, was excellent. I feel it's a set-up for the "Wildstorm Rising" crossover, of which Backlash is a part in the next issue. I checked my collection to see how much of that crossover is in it, but it's not nearly enough to warrant pulling them out and reading that as a part of my Backlash experience.

The final section of the comic follows an unnamed protagonist, a were-person of some sort by the looks of things, as he travels through the Australian outback and visits the grave of his adoptive father, an Aboriginal man who rescued him as a young man. Considering I've never read this character before, it was surprisingly touching, and most definitely did that thing that serialized fiction does when it sucks you in and makes you REALLY WANT to know what's going to happen next. Good think I have the next issue, I suppose.

But the most interesting part of this comic was the survey in the back. For those familiar with the era, you know exactly what this comic is like. Grim'n'Gritty (TM). Lots of boobs bouncing about in barely believable costumes (alliteration!). Comics aimed at adolescent hetero males, really. Today's issue has a survey in the back in which the company is trying to get a sense of its demographic. It makes me feel old, as one of the systems listed under the question of video games you play is the Atari Jaguar. As I was chuckling to myself over this, I came to question 10, which is the one that asks about gender. It was surprising.
 

"10. I am predominantly known as: male__ female__."

It was that "predominantly" that caught my attention. An attempt at some kind of recognition of the non-binary nature of gender from a comics company notorious for reinforcing horrendous stereotypes, both of men and women? Just after eight in the morning, and already the world has surprised me. This bodes well!

Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 631: Backlash #6, March 1995

Backlash's quest to restore his lady-love and defeat the Daemonite S'yrn comes to a conclusion in today's issue. With the help of his pals in Wetworks and WildC.A.T.s, Slayton corrals the warlord, gets the technology he needs, and wakes Diane from her coma. Much, of course, to the smitten Taboo's chagrin.

I am glad to see the end of this story, as it means that perhaps we'll get some more interesting, or less-canonically motivated, stories in future issues. Backlash seems to me to be one of those characters who is just dying to break away from the grittiness of his world and origins, and I would love to see the creators take a chance with him. That said, it's a comic from the early 90s, so I'm not holding out too much hope. Comics from that era surprise me only seldom.

This issue does have one of the more brutal depictions of a Daemonite execution. I know they're evil lizard-y things, and we're supposed to dislike them, but Backlash mists his way inside S'ryn, and then bursts out of him like an Alien (ironic, given what happens to Stormwatch a few years hence), ending the creature's threat. Image comics are brutal, occasionally.

I'll keep on with Backlash, at least for a few more issues. I'm curious to see where these characters go. Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 630: Backlash #5, February 1995

A bit of a blip in the ongoing story of Backlash's vendetta against the Daemonite warlord S'ryn. We get a glimpse inside Slayton's mind, courtesy of a character that really reminds me of that demon that gets trapped inside a robotic shell in the first season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Also, there's a character named "Virtual Bob" in this issue, and I really hope he turns up again, because that's just amongst the most ridiculous names ever. I love it.

It is nice to see a bit of a departure, though. As I noted in yesteray's post, Backlash's story so far has been very deeply mired in the overall mythology of the Wildstorm Universe, which is not a bad thing by any means. What it means, however, is that the comic has a propensity to not offer us anything outside of that mythology, including guest appearances, both heroic and villainous. What this accomplishes for the Image U is to make it seem like it's really all about one particular story, rather than embracing the propensity of stories that can be told in a superhero universe. This is, of course, not to say that every comic Image publishes is about the same thing. I think Larsen's Savage Dragon really manages to avoid being pulled too far into the Wildstorm machinations, and thus gives us another perspective on this world. This issue of Backlash does something similar in offering a random bad guy with a sinister plan who gets completely shut down by a couple of badasses. In retrospect, maybe this insertion of another villain is simply proving to the reader how difficult the Daemonites really are to deal with if Backlash can take this guy out in a single issue.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 629: Backlash #4, February 1995

I'm trying to sort out whether it says something bad about the main characters in this comic that they've had more famous supporting guest stars in every issue so far. I noted in an earlier post that the integration of the Image (though really, it's the Wildstorm part) universe is pretty fantastic, but now I'm noticing the preponderance of it in Backlash,and I'm wondering if it's simply lazy. That said, the guest appearance do seem to do their job in bringing in readers - the series ran for 32 issues, which is actually pretty impressive for an early Image title. The strategy in those early years really seemed to be throw anything at the wall and see what sticks.

I'm enjoying Backlash for what it is - a superhero comic that takes itself waaayyyyy too seriously. But I think it needs to come out from under its Team 7/Stormwatch origins, and give the character some room to develop on his own. Slayton's an interesting character, and has what seems to me to be a really awkward power (those whips coming out of the tops of his hands just look weird), and a grim 'n' gritty past. Rather than the series being a reaction to past events, I wonder what it would be like if he started having new and novel things affect his life. Perhaps we'll find out.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 628: Backlash #3, January 1995

Backlash continues with exactly the sort of shenanigans you'd expect from an Image/Wildstorm comic at the end of the 20th century. Guest star Savage Dragon is joined by Zealot, Emp, and Void of the WildC.A.T.s. As I was mentioning yesterday, this is a remarkably well-integrated superhero universe, and I feel like the guest spot of the WildC.A.T.s is a bit like how Superman ends up guest-starring in most new DC titles, or Spider-Man in Marvel titles.

Anyway, this whole issue is pretty much a fight sequence. The fact of this betrays one of the primary problems with early Image comics as far as I'm concerned. Having an entire comic be a fight sequence is just bad storytelling. Since one is limited to a single issue per month, a well-constructed story is going to offer not only action, but also plot development, characterization, and, most importantly, variety. This comic doesn't really do that. Yes, the fight is exciting, though there are some strange notions in Brett Booth's art of how the human, or semi-human, body actually works, but we get very little characterization of our focal character - he spends about half the comic being unconscious while Dragon takes on the villain, and then half the comic fighting Dragon when he tries to arrest him. Maybe that shows that he's kind of a badass, but I think we already got that from the rippling muscles and constantly gritted teeth.

So I guess we'll see tomorrow where things go. And that's actually another of the problems I have with these Image comics - they're entirely predictable. This comic is going to continue to be about a character (or characters) that are grim 'n' gritty, and there'll be espionage and action, but they never quite ask those same kind of questions that the superhero comics of the other publishers do. It's like every character in the universe is Wolverine.

*sigh* Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 627: Backlash #2, December 1994

I had a quick look just before starting this post, and of the 626 previous comics I've read, only 12 are from Image.

I missed the Image renaissance in the early 90s. I'd discovered sex, drugs, and rock and roll (I'm being quite literal here), and comics had fallen by the wayside. I'd become bored of them by that point anyway, though I think if I'd concentrated more on Animal Man, and less on Uncanny X-Men, if I'd given that weird new series Sandman a go, I might have stuck with it. It took until about 1995, and a friend handing me Sandman: Season of Mists, for me to realize what I'd missed out on. Of course, not long after, I also found out about the Image controversy, and about the rest of what I'd missed out on.

Now, I do, every now and again, try to give the early 90s Image titles a go. They had so many talented creators working for them, I can't help but think that somewhere in that collection of zeppelin-sized breasts and muscles made out of airplane cable, there must be something good. Gerber and Manabat's work on Cybernary is pretty sweet. And early Jim Lee stuff is pretty good, though he really doesn't seem to have evolved as an artist, at all, over the last 20 years. The guest-written issues of Spawn are excellent for the most part. But, by and large, and this is becoming an increasingly unpopular opinion in our 90s nostalgia-fuelled days, the comics are just bad. The fact that Image comics have featured twice in my "Horror from the Dollar Bin" posts does say something.

I've had a pretty nice-sized run of Backlash for a long while now. I think they were amongst the comics I picked up when trying to get stock for my store way back when. I've got numbers 2 -9 consecutively, which I may give a go over the next few days. It's grim, it's gritty, it's got that stylized/realistic aesthetic that early Image loves. But what it has done for me is consider the Image Universe and its composition. Erik Larsen's Savage Dragon guests in this issue, and the major villains are the Daemonites, a group of alien beings that permeate all of the Image superhero titles. This universe is very much a series of interwoven stories, much more so than their more famous predecessors, and despite the art and stories being slightly sub-par, there's something very, very cool going on with the shared narrative of this universe. Perhaps this will give me a better vantage from which to consider Backlash as we continue with his story over the next little while.

Onward.