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 1870: Awesome Holiday Special, December 1997

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In much the same way I wrote a series on the minor works of Steve Gerber, I think it would be worthwhile to do the same for Alan Moore. He's had so many series that just never went anywhere, and for the most part they were going to be amazing. There was a recent interview with Leah Moore in which she described her father's deep love for superheroes and the damage that was done to this love by his time in the comics industry. It's actually quite sad that someone who so obviously loves superheroes so much got treated the way he did by virtually every major superhero publisher in North America. No wonder he's so bitter.

The reason I bring this up is that there's a Youngblood story in today's issue that is the prelude to the 2.5 issues we end up getting of his reboot of the team. As I was reading the story, told in the voice of team leader Jeff Terrel, Shaft, I was amazed at how Moore's voice in the story was so different from his voice in any of his other stories. I know this seems like an obvious thing to point out, but a lot of writers have one voice when they write - their own - and they simply layer it over whatever character they're writing. But one of Moore's great gifts is to give each character their own distinctive voice, to the extent that I'd be hard-pressed to point to a comic that is actually written in Moore's own voice. Like Foucault said, the author isn't a person, it's a function, and at the best of times that function includes an erasure, or subsumption, of the author's own voice.

But there's more than just Moore in this issue. I have to say, at the end of the comic, I was left smiling and feeling pretty good, which is exactly what one wants from a holiday comic. I'm actually surprised that I haven't read this one already, but I'm glad that I was able to leave it until I was reading Fighting American. The FA story in this issue is about S.P.I.C.E., written and drawn (almost exclusively in full page panels) by Mr. Liefeld. It's not bad, but not great, but also takes place after the Rules of the Game series I just finished, as FA is in the process of putting the Allies back together.

What else? Both the Coven and Kaboom stories were good enough to make me want to track down their respective series. Honestly, I'm not that far off from having everything that Awesome produced, and, as I've said before, I just love the hell out of this universe. Back to FA's final Awesome outing tomorrow. Then maybe Youngblood?

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

Though I missed it this year, I'm usually pretty good about reading holiday-themed comics (though apparently I have two different tags for them?)

And if I'm going to dive into Youngblood, you can find what I've previously said about them here and here.