The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1897: Awesome Adventures, 1999

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With a whimper and a bang. This is how Moore and Skroce's ends.

We get about half a story by Skroce and half by Dietrich Smith and Marat Mychaels. And, actually, half a story. This is the first part of a two-parter, the end of which has the team trapped by old Professor Night villain in a seemingly inescapable situation. They do escape, though, as Joe Casey's excellent run attests - but really, the team never escapes.

And unfortunately, there only being 2.5 issues, there's not a lot more to say. The first two issues are amazing, the last bit slightly less so. We get a little look at the world that surrounds Moore's Supreme, and at some of the characters that were shown in the flashbacks from that series. And then just about all of that disappears. There are a couple of callbacks in Prophet, and in Glory, and then it's done. Though we also get the alternate, remixed version of the universe in America's Best Comics.

Hmmmm.

Been awhile since I read those.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1896: Youngblood #2, August 1998

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Issue number two is everything issue one was and so much more. The return of Sentinel! The introduction of some new old villains. And the team splits into smaller teams and fends off their nemeses.

I honestly think that this is one of the best team superhero books that I've read. Every character is defined and utilized in just about equal amount, though it never feels forced. And the team functions believably - both in their superheroic and social aspects. One of the great things about Roger Stern and Sal Buscema's run on The Avengers is that they understood, perhaps better than any other Avengers creative team, how a team of superhuman heroes would interact. The egos and the romances and the cameraderie, etc., etc. Moore's Youngblood is probably the closest other team book that aspires to that - but, alas, cut short.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1895: Youngblood #1, February 1998

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It's always bittersweet for me when I pick up this comic. I think, given the opportunity, it could have become a favourite (it already is, really), and it could have become one of the best superhero team books out there. If Liefeld's claims are correct, and a huge amount of what would have been the Awesome Universe went into Moore's America's Best Comics, I'm actually not sure where the Youngblood-inspired stuff went. Top 10 is the only team book in the ABC Universe, and it's very, very different from Youngblood. I do think some of the storylines were recycled. There's some similarities between the story in Awesome Adventures and one of Tom Strong's storylines, but aside from that, I don't see that many reminders in the latter of the former.

As I noted yesterday, Joe Casey picks this team up, with a slightly modified line-up about a decade later, and it's very good, but once again cut short by Mr. Liefeld. For now, however, we have the three short stories and 3(ish) issues of the team from Awesome, and they are, honestly, awesome.

A cool first issue adventure - there's a special that came out just after what's referred to as "The Awesome Implosion," which I take to mean that Awesome lost a lot of money and lot of creators, called Alan Moore's Awesome Handbook - this prose publication outlines Moore's plans for the first years of both Youngblood and Glory in the wake of neither of those series having much chance of ever seeing the light of day. The Youngblood series was seen as a series of single issue adventures, with the occasional two-parter, which I'll talk about in a couple of days. The series sounds fun and interesting and, of course, really intelligent.

More to follow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1894: Youngblood #1+, 1997

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 Yes, the ladies are in "lingerie." I"m not sure why, and Doc Rocket doesn't appear to be sure either. In my head canon, this is part of a publicity photo shoot that the team agreed to, and then the photographer asked all the women to pose in something other than their costumes. Good for business in the late 90s, perhaps, but not for representation, really. Maybe put Shaft front and center in his tighty-whiteys, and then we'll be okay.

The opening to Moore's Youngblood is a short piece about Twilight, Professor Night's protege, and a reprint of the Awesome Holiday Special story. It functions nicely as an intro, actually, offering just enough background on what's happened in the Awesome Universe recently (in Supreme and Judgment Day) that a new reader would be comfortable picking up the new series. Actually, that's kind of a nice part of this revamp of the team - one doesn't really need to know anything about the previous incarnations of the team in order to enjoy it. Shaft talks briefly about the disbanding of the old team, but their existence and adventures don't seem to have too much bearing on the direction of the new series. I'm sure this was by design. Liefeld's Youngblood comes up for a good deal of criticism - separating the new team from the old seems a good idea, especially since that's basically what the stated purpose of Judgment Day actually was.

Looking forward to the 3-ish issues we get - it also occurred to me that there's the excellent Joe Casey Youngblood that follows this series a decade later, and features basically the same line-up for 8 issues until Liefeld made another horrendous decision, kicked that team off the book, and tried to do it himself. Series ended after his first issue. *sigh*

More to follow.

Further Reading and Related Posts

I really like Joe Casey's work - he's every bit as good as the Waids and Loebs of the world.

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.