The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1271: Zombie #4, February 2007

I have a soft spot for Simon Garth, the character most often associated with Marvel's Zombie. Well, until those Marvel Zombies comics, I guess.

My history with Mr. Garth stems from his having been chronicled by Steve Gerber for a significant chunk of his existence. I tracked down the comics in a Marvel Essentials collection (which, btw, are not great for the colour comics, but are excellent reprint editions for the old magazines - for Tales of the Zombie, they reprinted the whole mag, not just the comics), and they were cool, creepy tales of zombies and voodoo, and are probably not terribly politically correct these days.

But Simon Garth was this very interesting character in that he was an absence of character. There's a strange similarity between Garth and Gerber's other non-character, Man-Thing. Both seem to wander through their stories as agents of the universe, rather than having any agency themselves.

Which is why I was kind of disappointed in what I read today. Now, I've only read the last of this four issue series, so that's all I can base this on, but it really seems they simply put a character named Simon Garth into a pretty normal-sounding zombie story. Now, perhaps it was the intention of the writers to include the tropes of the genre (the unlikely hero, the troubled woman, the criminal, the shady military) as a tribute, rather than as a crutch. The original Simon Garth stories traded heavily on the kind of zombie lore that was in the public consciousness at the time, as does this update. But I think it's that use of Garth as a cipher, or as a force of nature, that, for me, was often the lynch pin to the story. And that doesn't seem to be how they've deployed Garth here.

As I say, I have a soft spot for the character, and should I happen across the rest of the series for a reasonable price, I'm sure I'll get it. Unfortunately, from what I saw of the end of the story, it seems pretty run of the mill.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 123: The Agency Preview, 2001

I feel a little bad offering this as my comic for the day, as it has, I think 8 pages of story and the rest is sketchbook material. But these have to be read and appreciated too. I've always enjoyed Paul Jenkins' work. I think what really did it for me with him was his work on The Sentry, which I still maintain is one of the best Marvel comics to have been published. At least, the first series. His work on Spider-Man was pretty fantastic too. This preview comic for The Agency doesn't really give us too much to go on. Lots of black and white art and explosions. It really makes the case for the colourist, as much of the comic is difficult to make out clearly. One of the characters calls another "Agent Funbags," and as you can see from that cover, those certainly are something that are prominent and distinguishable from the rest of the action of the comic. If the sketches and previews of the next 5 issues' covers is anything to go by, said agent's breasts are a focal point of the story. Or focal points, I suppose.

The preview gives us very little to go on for background or story. The characters seem to be part of a private security firm, and also seem to be either cybernetically or psychically enhanced. That's about all I can tell you. Oh, and "Agent Funbags," whose actual name I'm  not totally sure of, has a cybernetic eye.

I suppose the mark of a good preview issue is that it makes either a reader or a retailer decide to pursue the series. I can say that this one did not do any such thing for me, either as retailer or reader. I received the preview while running my store, and, if my collection is anything to go by, I ordered issue 2, but strangely not issue 1. It being an Image/Top Cow title, that might have been all that was published in the 10 months my store existed.

Okay, a bit of a cop-out today. I know I said I'd get back to some of the series we were looking at, but I'm tired and the sun is very hot here in Calgary. Preview issues, I've decided, are good for days on this project where I feel lazy. Hopefully I'll be back to fighting strength tomorrow. See you then!