The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2113: Next Men #7, September 1992

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Well, almost made it. I'll finish off my look at Next Men with today's issue, which really is kicking off the next section of the storyline, but is also the last consecutive issue I have. I may hold off from reading the rest of them, as I'm intrigued enough to track down what I'm missing. I recently read that Byrne has had the whole story planned out ahead of time, so I'm curious to see the end.

That said, my wrists have been bad this week. Briefly, this series is totally worth tracking down and reading. Excellent take on super-powered beings and how they work in "the real world."

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2110: Next Men #4, May 1992

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Okay, I'm in. This is a very cool story, and there's some really dark shit going on. A few days ago I noted that this series appears around the same time as the Image revolution, one that used the trappings of darkness to make their products seem cool without having, really, much substance. Byrne is going the other direction here, offering us a series that, because he drew it, hearkens back to the Copper Age stories, with some drama and some darkness, but that, substantially, seems to have a very grim back story. The discovery by Jazz and Bethany of a cave full of skeletons gives us a taste of the two aesthetics coming together, but there's a twist when the weird alien that we assume is responsible for the skeletons starts speaking and recognized the women.

As I say, I'm in. Byrne obviously has this story plotted in his head, and it shows in the consistency of not only the art but also the story. The beats are arranged very well, giving just the right combinations of intrigue, action, and relaxation. I'm excited to see what happens tomorrow.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2109: Next Men #3, April 1992

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 The chaos surrounding the Next Men has an outcome at the end of today's comic that I think I would have liked to see play out in our reality some time in the last four years. The final page of the issue has the Vice President of the US on a plane heading...somewhere...when all of a sudden, with no explanation, the plane blows up and he dies. If only Mike Pence had suffered a similar fate. I try not to wish death on people. I think that's a pretty karmically dodgy thing to do. But the current, and outgoing, American administration was, in my opinion, simply evil, demonstrating everything that is bad about the US, Capitalism, and organized religion, all useful ideas if deployed with kindness and generosity. The people in charge now don't know what those words mean

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2108: Next Men #2, March 1992

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I'm having to rethink my relationship with John Byrne. I've often found the arrogance I've perceived in interviews as very off-putting, a case of an artist buying their own hype, as I've noted before. And I do think that there's some of that there. On the other hand, again as I've noted, Byrne is a fantastic artist, and given the space that a creator-owned book allows, his writing's not too shabby either. I'm definitely on my way to being sucked into this story.

One thing I'm really appreciating is the Next Mens' inability to accept that the world they find themselves in is, in fact, the more real one. And this isn't communicated in exposition, but rather in the characters attempting something odd that, from their reactions, you can tell worked during their time in The Greenery.

There's also a much larger story going on, which is kind of cool. Often you'll have origin stories like this and then the characters just fuck off and become superheroes. This story is starting to read a lot less like superhero fiction and more like science fiction, so we'll see where things go as we progress. I've been surprised to this point. Hopefully that will continue.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2107: Next Men #1, February 1992

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Okay. Today's comic actually came from the recent collection I bought. There's not a lot more information revealed in today's comic. It's more a continuation of the escape that ends the previous issue. We're still somewhat in the dark about who the Next Men are and what and how they can do things. Having lived in a virtual reality all their lives, there are moments where the differences between the real world and the virtual world are pointed out. At one point Danny, the speedster, has to stop because he has blisters on his feet that he's never had there before. And Jack tries to "make" a weapon like the guns being used against the group out of thin air, perhaps suggesting that there was an aspect of wish fulfillment in The Greenery, their virtual prison.

Once again, brilliant layout work, and, given the era, a very different take on superheroes. It's worth remembering that this is the time of Liefeld and McFarlane over at Marvel and then Image, so Byrne's work here is not only reacting to that, but demonstrating, at least to me, a different way superheroes went during a traditionally pretty silly era.

I have the first 8 issues consecutively, so I'll probably make my way through those this week. More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2106: Next Men #0, February 1992.

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 I don't know if I mentioned it a few weeks back, but I bought a small collection from a seller on Kijiji. I allowed myself half of it and divided the rest up into three chunks that I'm "gifting" myself over the next few months. Today was the first chunk, and it contains a nice run of this comic. Except the issue I'm reading today is from my collection, and has been awhile. It reprints the preludes to the Next Men ongoing series from Dark Horse Presents.

I didn't know this when I sat down to read issue number one this afternoon. I was very confused by the events of the comic. Thank goodness the dark recesses of my brain managed to recall that I had a zero issue of the series, or I thought I did, and lo and behold, it appeared.

I've not been kind to John Byrne on this blog, but I have to give credit where credit is due. He's a really, really good comics artist. I just think he's one of those people, and you have them in every industry, who thinks he's more important than he actually is. He did some spectacular runs on some of the biggest superheroes, but that doesn't mean that his voice ought to be counted for more than newer, or less famous, voices. This is always the sense I get from him when I've read interviews. I really should just avoid reading interview.

The end of Byrne's Fantastic Four was one of the first Marvel comics I collected. Before I read Jonathan Hickman's run on the team, I always thought that Byrne got the super-family dynamic just right, though I'll admit it's been a while since I've read it. I'm curious to see how this particular team of Next Men (and Women) evolves. Given the artist's huge successes with team books prior to writing this one, I wonder if we'll see things that are familiar from Byrne's earlier team books, but refined through the lens of experience.

More to follow.