The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Bi-Weekly Graphic Novel Number 67 - Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye v.2: Every Me, Every You, 2017

This series is just so great. What the eye was doing, who made it do that, and what happened after are all amazing, and given that I'd seen, as I said last time, a single panel of Cave Carson prior to reading this, I'm so deeply involved with these characters now. There were some quite emotional moments in the comic, and I'm quite impressed by the creative team that they've managed to make me care that much about these characters in less than 12 issues. I can't wait to see where the follow-up series, Cave Carson has an Interstellar Eye, is going to go.

One thing I will say about the series that I'm slightly averse to is the level of violence. Mr. Oeming has a pretty extremely iconic style. His people look like people, but not any kind of people we can imagine in reality. But his violence is very real. Or, it's visceral, and therefore real in the reality of the characters upon whom the violence is being perpetrated.

More briefly, the violence is a bit gory for my tastes.

I'm going to have to go back and read the "Milk Wars" special of Cave and Swamp Thing, knowing, as I now do, who the heck all of these characters are anyway. And then as soon as I've a bit of money in my pocket, off to the comic store for more of the crew's wacky adventures.

Stay tuned.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Bi-Weekly Graphic Novel Number 63 - Cave Carson Has a Cybernetic Eye v.1: Going Underground, 2017

I think I've read exactly one panel from one comic that featured Cave Carson. It was in one of the issues of Crisis on Infinite Earths. Unless he was a member of the Forgotten Heroes. I forget.

But that's neither here nor there. I knew what he was about, even if I didn't know his story, but now I'm so glad that I have joined this character on his weird, weird adventure. I'm a fan of Mr. Oeming's style. I read Powers for a little while, but then somehow lost track of it. I think what I love about his art is that it manages to achieve a really dark take on the DC Animated style made famous in The Batman Adventures. As with the Morrison/Truog Animal Man, there's something deceptive in reading a dark story through a very iconic lens like this one. The characters look like cartoons in a lot of ways. They're at the same time innocent and corrupted, I think.

Another thing I'm quite appreciating about these Young Animal revivals is that they're acknowledging the histories of the characters involved, and they're carving out a generational aspect for the older characters who really have never had that opportunity. The DCU seems to thrive on superhero legacies, so what happens to a character or a team that never has the opportunity to do that? The Doom Patrol sort of did, but we've always had Cliff there as the link to the foundation. The first generation, in different iterations, has always been present. In the aftermath of The Milk Wars, we'll see how that progresses. In the case of Cave Carson, Cave's daughter Chloe is a main character, every bit as capable as her old man, though not quite as jaded to the wonders of the underground world.

Weird, wacky sci-fi adventures with a good deal of heart. Does that sound corny? Yeah, it's a bit corny. That doesn't mean it's not amazing.

Onward.