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!