"Anybody Who Expects GRATITUDE From A Cat Is A REAL Asshole..." COMICS! Sometimes It Might Just Be A Beautifully Illustrated Black Joke At The Expense of Catholicism!

During 1990-91 DC Comics published one of the finest comics ever created. Its sales did not set the world afire. In December 2014 you get the chance to put things right. In December 2014 DC Comics are publishing, for the first time ever, the collected TWILIGHT by Howard Victor Chaykin, José Luis García-López, Ken (Kenneth) Bruzenak, Steve Oliff and Richard Ory. I like it and I think you will too. (Now UPDATED to include quotes and acknowledgements.) From TWILIGHT by Chaykin, Garcia-Lopez, Bruzenak, Oliff & Ory

Anyway, this… Acknowledgement: The words which follow are enormously indebted to the work of Brannon Costello whose Howard Chaykin: Conversations (2011, University of Mississippi Press) remains the go-to book for HVC reference. A house without a copy is an empty house.

TWILIGHT #1 to 3 Artist - José Luis García-López Writer - Howard Victor Chaykin Colour Artist - Steve Oliff Letterer - Ken (Kenneth) Bruzenak Backgrounds - Richard Ory DC Comics, $4.95ea (1990-91) Tommy Tomorrow created by Virgil Finlay, Howard Sherman, Bernie Breslauer, George Kashdan & Jack Schiff Star Rovers created by Sid Greene & Gardner Fox Star Hawkins created by Mike Sekowsky & John Broome Space Ranger created by Bob Brown, Gardner Fox & Edmond Hamilton Manhunter 2070 created by Mike Sekowsky Space Cabbie created by Howard Sherman & Otto Binder Knights of the Galaxy created by Carmine Infantino & Robert Kanigher

From TWILIGHT by Chaykin, Garcia-Lopez, Bruzenak, Oliff & Ory

"It takes all of DC's really stupid-ass science fiction characters in the '50s and '60s, except for Adam Strange, and coordinates them into a cohesive and self-supporting universe....These characters were very important to me as a kid." Howard Victor Chaykin in Amazing Heroes #132, January 1988. Taken from p.105 of Howard Chaykin: Conversations edited by Brannon Costello, 2011, University of  Mississippi.

TWILIGHT was a three issue series originally published by DC in the prestige format during 1990-91. TWILIGHT is the story of a bunch of people who all get what they want and it ends up doing none of them any favours whatsoever. The bunch of people in question are mainly rejigged DC sci-fi characters who had lain mostly fallow since the ‘50s and ‘60s. Tommy Tomorrow, Star Hawkins, Manhunter 2070, Space Cabbie, etc. Even Chaykin’s own Ironwolf appears briefly, and his ridiculous wooden space ship proves pivotal to events. (If Adam Strange seems conspicuous by his absence; Richard Bruning had first dibs there). There are plenty of new characters but the gist of the thing was that these were yesterday’s characters of tomorrow, today. Oh, you know what I mean.

From TWILIGHT by Chaykin, Garcia-Lopez, Bruzenak, Oliff & Ory

"Homer Glint is Ned Buntline. The tagline of the material is, "You read these stories as a boy, now you're ready for the truth!" Howard Victor Chaykin in Comics Interview, November 1989. Taken from p.143 of Howard Chaykin: Conversations edited by Brannon Costello, 2011, University of  Mississippi.

Howard Victor Chaykin’s cute conceit was that the old timeycomics were like the sci-fi version of Ned Buntline pulps; the ones which invented the sanitised Wild West we all prefer to the filthy and psychotic reality. Homer Glint narrates here as a sort of space Buntline setting the record straight in his twilight (Ho! Ho!) years. TWILIGHT, then, is what really happened as opposed to what you were told happened in fusty old code approved DC sci-fi Comics. TWILIGHT, then, is the real Wild West where Trigger bit Roy Rogers’ face off and Gabby Hayes was scalped and staked out for fire ants. But, y’know, in space. I think it would be fair to say that the audience familiar with these characters reacted badly to TWILIGHT. Which is weird, because Howard Victor Chaykin clearly loves these characters. The problem is that Howard Victor Chaykin loves these characters enough to imbue them with a lively fire more appropriate to the times he was writing in. No, that’s not the problem; the problem, and I’m just guessing here, is that comics fans think that embalming the characters they like at the point they met them is love. I sincerely hope they do not carry this attitude over to their dealings with real people. With TWILIGHT Howard Victor Chaykin sought to bring DC’s characters of the future into the present but it turned out the fans preferred them in the past. It’s a good job Howard Victor Chaykin likes irony.

From TWILIGHT by Chaykin, Garcia-Lopez, Bruzenak, Oliff & Ory

"...it's the story of the introduction of immortality into the human eco system and how it destroys stuff." Howard Victor Chaykin in Amazing Heroes #132, January 1988. Taken from p.105 of Howard Chaykin: Conversations edited by Brannon Costello, 2011, University of  Mississippi.

Like most folk who were awake during the 20th Century Howard Victor Chaykin seems to have come to the conclusion that in the end Humanity will do the right thing, but only after it has spent an impressive amount of time trying the wrong thing out first. When the book opens humanity has been playing God for so long that it has not only turned animals into an underclass but robots as well. Even in the future we’ll need someone to shit on, even if we have to build them. The next step, naturally, is to become Gods and, via a series of repellent occurrences, Godhood is attained by two characters, while everyone else gets the leftovers in the form of Immortality. TWILIGHT doesn’t shift from the tradition of short shrift accorded Immortality by fantastic fiction. Read enough of that stuff and it’s like there’s an unconscious realisation that Humanity just isn’t built for the long haul. Immortality is the gift Humanity’s always eager to receive but probably isn’t ready for; like an 8 year old with The Terminator on his Christmas list (no chance, “Gil”). TWILIGHT has an admirably simple premise: what if Humanity got everything religion promised. What if all those poetic allusions to greater truths manifested as day to day reality? Only good things! No, not really. Because no matter the level of progress, unless basic human nature changes we’re always going to struggle with it. TWILIGHT is about that struggle because, all else aside, TWILIGHT is about people.

From TWILIGHT by Chaykin, Garcia-Lopez, Bruzenak, Oliff & Ory

"Tommy Tomorrow starts out as the character Peter O'Toole played in The Ruling Class and becomes The Antichrist..." Howard Victor Chaykin in Comics Interview #5, November 1989. Taken from p.143 of Howard Chaykin: Conversations edited by Brannon Costello, 2011, University of  Mississippi.

As in life, so in TWILIGHT; people are complicated. Like many a long haul comics reader I’d been brought up to understand the hero was who the book was named after so I was a bit lost on the first pass. After all, there’s no one in the book called Terry Twilight. There is someone called Tommy Tomorrow in it, but he’s just simply awful, poppets. And so is everyone else. There are degrees of awful though. There’s a difference between being awful because you’re a prudish killjoy and being awful because you are a debauched genocidal maniac. Impressively in TWILIGHT there are actually more ways of being awful than there are characters because some of these folk are just rife with foibles . And, because of the plot, these folk can live a long ass time so their kinks work on their better natures like rain on cathedrals. Take John Starker, he starts off awful because he’s so busy trying to hump automata that he neglects his duty and people die. Now that’s awful but it’s within genre comics’ flawed-but-redeemable boundaries. But in short order he’s so consumed by his unrequited passion for a Katy Perry looking clanker (before Katy Perry was a thing, even; Howard Victor Chaykin – prescience personified!) he’s just straight up shooting people against the wall of a church. I mean, they’ve asked him to (Immortality isn’t for everyone; they get wicked bored) and, sure, he can’t look while he does it, but still and all. Shooting people against the wall of a church? Not a healthy use of one’s time, I’m thinking. Oh yeah, and he’s one of The Good Guys. You want feet of clay, sophisticated characterisation and those shades of gray (all 50, ‘mIright, ladies!)? Howard Victor Chaykin was hosing the place down with all that stuff in 1990. And ,boy, did Space Cabbie fans not want that in 1990. Apparently it’s all anyone wants in 2014 so I’m expecting big things from the comic audience this time out. It's the usual bawdy and raucous writing performance from Howard Victor Chaykin and if it leans a little heavily on synchronicity, well, he's built an out in this time; because that's how the Gods work, bubeleh!

From TWILIGHT by Chaykin, Garcia-Lopez, Bruzenak, Oliff & Ory

"The artwork is coming in like I could never have imagined; it's far and away the best thing that Garcia-Lopez has ever done. I'm flattered by the work, quite frankly." Howard Victor Chaykin in Comics Interview #75, November 1989. Taken from p.143 of Howard Chaykin: Conversations edited by Brannon Costello, 2011, University of  Mississippi.

TWILIGHT is illustrated in the main by José Luis García-López. Now, the big thing about José Luis García-López is not how many names he has but how ridiculously good he is at this comic book art lark. You know that thing you sometimes do where your eyes glaze over and you kind of stop registering the art and just take in the words? I’ve never done that with a José Luis García-López comic. Even when Elvis sang some cack handed doggerel you paid attention! Similarly, even when José Luis García-López was drawing some random issue of DC COMICS PRESENTS you were aware of a level of artistry out of all proportion to the subject matter. But he isn’t drawing DC COMICS PRESENTS here. No, José Luis García-López is drawing TWILIGHT. In TWILIGHT José Luis García-López is either working off breakdowns by Howard Victor Chaykin or is so sympatico to his taskmaster’s method that it’s as though he is channelling the Chaykin on every page. And, hoo ha, does Chaykin make José Luis García-López sing for his supper! TWILIGHT places ridiculous demands on its artist who is required to bring the same level of visual zip to a double page spread of dusty campaign insignias as he is to a double page spread of an ad-hoc satellite composed of Communistic accretions. Sing, José Luis García-López! SING! TWILIGHT takes place on a canvas as big as the universe and homes in on events as small as a cat stalking a bird. Sing José Luis García-López . SING! TWILIGHT requires José Luis García-López to trap a space armada, a rioting crowd or an explosive ascension within the same amount of space as a pipe smoking ape’s face. Sing José Luis García-López! SING! And José Luis García-López SINGS his little heart out. There’s a fucking artistic aria on every page of TWILIGHT, people. In 1990 no one bought it; no one cared! If TWILIGHT wasn’t written so damn well it’d still be worth looking at because José Luis García-López’s work is always worth looking at. I don’t want to overstate it but I feel privileged to have lived to see José Luis García-López’s art. I can’t afford those Artists Editions they do for the well-heeled comic fan but if they did an Artist’s Edition of TWILIGHT I’d find a way to afford it.

From TWILIGHT by Chaykin, Garcia-Lopez, Bruzenak, Oliff & Ory

But, fair’s fair, the magnificent visuals of TWILIGHT aren’t solely due to José Luis García-López. There’s Ken (Kenneth) Bruzenak whose lettering always elevates the pages it graces (and if the pages it graces are by José Luis García-López, well, homina, homina, homina!) He doesn’t get off easy either, Howard Victor Chaykin doesn’t play favourites; Ken Bruzenak has to sweat for his pennies too. One character who has experienced a form of ascension talks in a different language and The Bruise has to come up with a font which suggests this, while still being perfectly legible. (SPOILER: he succeeds). Then there are the bits where Tommy Tomorrow is so consumed by his own self-love that he starts bellowing his own name in the form of his old comic book logo, or certain words are transcribed in the form of hot pink neon lettering… and that’s just the pages I flicked past while refreshing my memory. Throughout TWILIGHT the speech bubbles flare with the emotional freight of the words they contain, SFX enhance the atmosphere or heighten the illusion of chaos without ever overloading or crowding even the smallest of spaces in which Ken Bruzenak’s artistry is confined.

From TWILIGHT by Chaykin, Garcia-Lopez, Bruzenak, Oliff & Ory

I am hopeless on colouring but I know for a fact that Steve Oliff worked his tuchas off on TWILIGHT too. I know that because it looks to my old eyes as though he’s used his "blue-line"(?) method; the one I recall from BLACKHAWK: BLOOD AND THUNDER (Chaykin, Bruzenak, Oliff & Ory. Uncollected) and TIME2 (ditto). And if I understood it correctly that seemed like a ridiculously time and effort intensive method of funnybook colouring. You could probably do all that with computers in a twentieth of the time now, I guess. It’s kind of staggering someone would go to those Herculean lengths back in 1990. But Steve Oliff did and TWILIGHT’s certainly worthy of his efforts. Given it was 1990 it’s possible that as lovely as they are Oliff’s colours were probably short changed by the printing methods of the time. So, I have high hopes for the collection; namely that DC haven’t just got an intern to photocopy the old comics and that Oliff’s colours will benefit from advances in production and will impress anew.

From TWILIGHT by Chaykin, Garcia-Lopez, Bruzenak, Oliff & Ory

Richard Ory’s name doesn’t appear on this comic but I understand he did the backgrounds for José Luis García-López. I got no beef with the backgrounds so high fives for Richard Ory, holding his own in such esteemed company is nothing to be sneezed at. Yeah, that’s right I even went and found out the background guy’s name; I have done my due diligence because TWILIGHT is worthy of it. Every hand involved in the pages of TWILIGHT deserves their portion of praise. For I lied earlier; it’s not an aria on every page; it’s a choir. A choir composed of Howard Victor Chaykin, José Luis García-López, Ken (Kenneth) Bruzenak and Steve Oliff.

From TWILIGHT by Chaykin, Garcia-Lopez, Bruzenak, Oliff & Ory

"I'd like to see Twilight back in print." Howard Victor Chaykin in Comic Book Artist Vol.2 #5, December 2006. Taken from p.239 of Howard Chaykin: Conversations edited by Brannon Costello, 2011, University of  Mississippi.

It’s now 2014 so all the Space Cabbie fans have probably died off and everybody else could give a rusty tin shit about Tommy Tomorrow so, hopefully, TWILIGHT’s reception will be a little warmer this time out. Twenty fours year on and I remain adamant in my belief that TWILIGHT by Howard Victor Chaykin, José Luis García-López, Ken (Kenneth) Bruzenak, Steve Oliff and Richard Ory is EXCELLENT!

Sometimes we cook 'em in the oven of our Love for twenty four years - COMICS!!!!

From TWILIGHT by Chaykin, Garcia-Lopez, Bruzenak, Oliff & Ory

Oh Good, Another Year. COMICS! 2012 The Year I Really Didn't Pay Attention!

I do so hope all across the globe had a happy holiday and got stuff and ate stuff and watched stuff and generally did stuff where stuff was involved. I did, which is why I've been AWOL so sorries and all that but here’s my wrap up for 2012. A year I paid little attention to while it was going on, made no notes and am now left floundering for stuff to write! Appetising, non? Anyway it’s Saturday night and I've places to be, people to see, y’know how it is. Yes, I am lying. This is all I have. Anyway, let’s see how this goes. My money’s on - badly.

Well, don’t look at me. I only read what I bought and I only bought what I could afford and, worse, I only bought what could afford from my LCS in England. So, no, Chris Ware isn’t here, nor is Michel Fiffe, nor LOVE & ROCKETS: NEW STORIES. And if none of them are here then this is a piss poor reflection of the worth of the year indeed. So, rather than do a list of comics I've sort of done a list of people because, amongst other things, 2012 was the year it finally sank in that people are quite important too. Oh, don’t worry they still aren't all that important or anything. Not important enough to be dealt with equitably or decently or any such pinko nonsense. But they are important because if it wasn't for people I wouldn’t get my comics! Also, some people who don’t even make comics were quite important in my enjoyment of the year and while there are no doubt umpty billion lists praising SAGA there probably are only two lists with Graeme McMilllan on (this one and The Pulitzer Council) Which seems a bit off balance. So here’s my 2012 via some people I managed to think about some words for. Just be thankful I didn't call it a sideways look at 2012. That’s always a golden invitation to run screaming in the opposite direction; a sideways look at…! Christ.

Of the comical periodical stuff I did read I’d have to say it was Richard Corben who ruled the roost for most of the year. It’s unfortunate that Richard Corben is 72 years old since there’s naturally assumed to be some degree of special pleading involved; “Y’know it may look like a pretzel in a pool of sick but, bless, he tried and, really, what can you expect at that age? It’s just sweet he’s still breathing unaided.”<pats Ricard Corben on head in patronizing fashion> But NO! I say thee nay! This year via his RAGEMOOR series, shorts in CREEPY and EERIE, his DARK HORSE PRESENTS Poe pieces and, at year’s end, his issue long masterpiece of luridly coloured puppets and profanity THE CONQUEROR WORM Richard Corben took comics by the scruff of the neck and shook it until its celluloid collar popped open and its top hat lay askew. The stronger stories may have benefited from the presence of Jan Strnad and John Arcudi lending form and shape but even when Corben scripted unaided there was no doubting the colossal talent gracing the page, talent the continuing development of which was a sight to recoil from in stunned disbelief. In 2012 Richard Corben was subsumed entirely into The Eisner Hall of Fame. It wasn't enough but it’ll have to do.

I didn’t see a lot spoken about Corben’s work this year and part of me suspects it was because he confounded expectations by keeping the hefty teats of yore largely under wraps. It was as though without the usual easy ingress to an automatically superior vantage most critics were held at bay. As a theory this was utter tosh of course and belittling to the fine critical minds which scrutinize comics on a daily basis ("All-New X-Men gave sight to the blind! And made the lame to walk!"). But yet it was utter tosh I could easily apply to the almost deafening silence which greeted Gilbert Hernandez’ FATIMA: THE BLOOD SPINNERS. This was a delightfully rough and ready thing which seemed like something scribbled in a notepad during the course of a particularly somnolent double period of Chemistry by a randy and imaginative teenager. Its excess of imagination coupled to a compulsively crude execution was one of the most refreshing things I read in 2012. It was a throwback to the days when comics weren't respectable and didn't give a shit. It was a throwback to The Golden Age and not just because if Gilbert Hernandez is producing comics then it is a Golden Age anyway.

Thankfully, female secondary sexual characteristics are not a staple of the work of Roger Langridge. This is extraordinarily fortunate as there was a bit of a creepy trend developing there wasn't there? It was all getting a bit unsettling, but you can all breathe easier as now we’re on about Roger Langridge, who is decency incarnate. Langridge was a busy little bee this year but his busyness had little impact on the quality of his work. First on my radar was his JOHN CARTER work for Marvel which was a fine (if editorially meddled with) slice of pulp pie indeed. Then he wrote and drew the SNARKED series which was a continuation/expansion of the work of Lewis Carroll with a few surprises chucked in ( A Derek and Clive cameo anyone?)  As beautifully illustrated in Langridge’s signature clear lined big foot style as ever the real surprise in SNARKED was in the writing. A funny, eventful romp brimming with incident and intelligence it may have been but at the end, at the last, it punched you right in the sternum with an ending which was at once heart rending and uplifting. A great ending for a great book because SNARKED was a great book but Langridge didn't stop there. Oh, no, no, no. No. Next up we had THE MUPPETS: FOUR SEASONS which was from Marvel so, rather classily, it didn't have Langridge’s name on the cover. This was a neat little comic and was certainly better than The Muppets movie. Admittedly I saw this movie slumped on the couch in someone else’s house on Christmas Day with sugar fuelled children interrupting my viewing at intervals that could almost have been scientifically calculated to result in maximum irritation. The highlights of The Muppets were Chris Cooper and the fact that Mickey Rooney is still alive! Holy shit! Let’s put on the show right here, Mickey Rooney! The film was okay but Langridge’s comic was better. Which is probably about right for POPEYE too. I've never seen the Altman film but Langridge’s POPEYE was a pitch-perfect resurrection of Segar’s classic creation being both loony and lovable at one and the same time. Some great art too by a bunch of fellas including Langridge himself.

It wasn't just comics though! There were also books about comics and chief amongst these was Sean Howe's MARVEL COMICS: THE UNTOLD STORY. I'm such a shitty critic that, unlike the rest of comicdom I haven’t got around to that yet. It looks fine enough but it isn’t the book I want about Marvel. I know that without cracking it open because its publication wasn't accompanied by news footage of the Marvel building webbed with yellow Crime Scene tape, long shots of people in Hazmat suits on rain misted moors next to excavated piles of dirt,  thirty-something men in sloganed T-Shirts and cargo pants with black bars over their eyes weepingly describing whizzing into milk cartons and coiling into pizza cartons while grainy phone footage of a single nightmarish toilet floated in the top right of the screen, the RSPCA triumphantly releasing the mangy chimp Brian Bendis had held captive for over a decade, Gary Friedrich eating a warm meal under a roof he owned free and clear, herky-jerky footage of a judge with screaming eyes banging a gavel in a room full of people rising as one in a blizzard of paper and the face of Jack Kirby sharing the screen only with the word  “VINDICATED!!!”. No, there wasn't any of that but there were good reviews so I’ll probably give it a go at some point.

I did read CONVERSATIONS WITH HOWARD CHAYKIN, which actually came out last year but I’m counting it because I  read it this year and, y’know, my house my rules, kids! Also, pick your clothes up or you’ll get the back of my hand! CWHC was pretty great being as it was a collection of interviews with the self proclaimed Jew from The Future spanning so many decades I didn't so much feel sad with age but glad I’d made it this far.  I’m glad HVC has as well since he is always such an enjoyable natterer. Brannon Costello does a nice job picking interviews that chronologically flow nicely through HVC’s career showing his changes in attitude (well, refinements) to his work, comics and his position therein. Unavoidably there’s some repetition but it’s the kind that just cements how fundamental some things are to the HVC world view. Since this is an entirely legitimate and productive use of repetition kudos to the author are dutifully tendered. Although I imagine the time spent with the great man himself in order to provide the career-overview-thus-far interview which rounds out the book was a reward worth more than riches. More than rubies. Costello is entirely fair to his subject who comes across as an 'umble man who tries to produce the best work he can despite the restrictions of the marketplace. Oh, and he likes ladies.

There are a couple of omissions here (or, rather, not here); the first being my personal conversation with HVC:

JK:  Your seminal work of the ‘80s, and here I’m thinking specifically of AMERICAN FLAGG! and THE SHADOW, seems to contain a strong John Severin influence amongst the customary Toth and Gil Kane elements. In particular the faces have a crispness to the definition they previously lacked. Would it be true to say that it was at this point that you began to fold Severin into your style? HVC: Bojemoi! What are you doing in my bedroom? It’s three in the goddamn morning! Who are you? Who sent you? I have a gun! Jesus, what’s wrong with your teeth?

Back in the real world, this volume does not include any of The Comics Journal interviews with HVC. Hopefully this is because TCJ are going to publish a big ass lavishly illustrated landscape format volume of them like they did with the Jack Kirby (KOIBY!!!) interviews. Even more hopefully the HVC volume has only not come out yet because they are working on a Gil Kane volume. It would be nice if TCJ did this, particularly as it would count as some small measure of recompense for their poaching of the younger Savage Critics like some journalistic pied piper of fucking Hamlin. A second reason is that TCJ interviews are always good readin’. Particularly those with Gary Groth. Younger readers (i.e. under 40) may not be familiar with the particular and recurrent joys of a mainstream creator getting Grothed. Things would usually start out all chummy with the interview containing a slow but insistent buttering up along the twin lines of “you’re much better than this genre” and “you must have lead an interesting life”. This apparently innocuous praise would lead to the creator foolishly stepping right into Groth’s Horns of The Buffalo whereupon they would snap closed behind them and the hapless chump would be battered by a tirade of variously worded interrogatives, the common gist of which would be that they were letting down themselves, their family, the medium, the children of the world, generations yet unborn, art itself, human civilisation and Bea Arthur from Golden Girls by choosing to draw Spider-Man rather than document their family’s hard scrabble immigrant struggle to survive. Good times, I miss them still. Ah, got a bot off track there. Focus, John!

There were many reasons to thank Jeff Lester this year. The nauseated awe engendered by his latest meticulously reported dietary fad (in 2013 - it's dandruff and vole tears!), the unending hilarity of hearing him justify his consumer choices to people who don't really care beyond the initial act of poking him with a stick, his grace and manners when I E-Mail him to ask a stupid question and, of course, thanks to Jeff Lester I saw a movie I enjoyed. I know Jeff Lester enjoyed this movie because he kept banging on about it like my Uncle kept banging on about God after that piano fell on his head. It was called THE RAID: REDEMPTION and it was very violent which is why I took to calling him Gentle Jeff Lester. I never said it was clever! Or funny! Anyway this was certainly the best movie I've ever seen in which a bunch of Indonesian police get out of a van, cross an Indonesian street and enter an Indonesian apartment building filled with Indonesian criminals whereupon -everyone tries to kill each other for the next 90 minutes – Indonesian style! It’s an Indonesian film, as you no doubt gathered, so we went for the dubbed version. I know, I know, purists are balking here as subtitles are the way to go with the old foreign flicks. Hey, we did try the subtitled version but, being a bit out of practice, I soon grew tired of looking down to read “Look out!” only to look up to find three characters were now dead. As you can tell there isn’t much plot but that’s okay, there’s enough plot to hang all the fighting on and this is some fighting alrighty. The main character has a pregnant wife and his brother’s involved and his Dad looks at him meaningfully so there’s no doubt at least one 20,000 word piece on Culture of Carnage: Tradition & Responsibility in The Raid: Redemption floating about on The Internet. One thing did puzzle me about the film i.e. how outlandish was it? I’m not terribly informed about Indonesia but is it in fact the case that every man Jack of them has a BA Hons in Hurtin’? I like to think so. I like to think that at any moment an Indonesian altercation could escalate from harsh words into a whirlwind of expertly choreographed brutally inventive violence. I bet chucking out time at the pubs is interesting in Indonesia.

This year it was difficult not to believe I had personally wronged Graeme McMillan and that as a consequence my mind was crumbling under the weight of my unassaugable guilt; so often did I glimpse his name in the periphery of my vision like some vengeful phantom in a wordy nerve shredder from the turn of the last Century. But, no, the man who gave up his heathy homeland for the Love of his lady was merely trying to earn a crust. I hope the crust was large and tasty because 2012 was the Year Graeme McMillan would not, could not and did not stop. Graeme McMillan worked so hard this year that I think he broke a fundamental Law of Nature. How else to explain that although no one on all the planet had the time to read everything he wrote Graeme McMillan, just one frail man, somehow had the time to write it? And like the hero of his own story he was, at last, in Time. Graeme McMillan, although with your persistent pace of production you shame all we shirkers I offer you this small reward, I offer you an answer to your question of “What if Brian Bendis wrote Star Wars comics?” Answer: Shit. But in space. No, thank you, Graeme McMillan.

Kim Thompson worked hard this year. Kim Thompson worked so hard Kim Thompson deserves recognition. Particularly so as his hard work had no concrete result. Kim Thompson was the man who tried to corral Dave Sim. After offering a sugar lump of hope to the “controversial “ creator his efforts at open negotiations were met only with finger nips and shoulder bumps as the recalcitrant creator purposefully avoided the proffered treat before, finally, dumping a big load on Kim Thompson’s metaphorical brogues and hee-hawing off with another’s saddle on his back. A fancy gold saddle he had cruelly hidden from Kim Thompson’s view all the while. Not only that but Kim Thompson had to put up with everyone chiming in (mea culpa! Mea bloody culpa!) which while entertaining for the rest of us must have tested Kim Thompson’s  patience somewhat.  Although it is to be hope that Kim Thompson found some respite in the humour afforded by the rather, er, special fan of Sim’s who dominated proceedings and that writer fellow unsubtly jockeying for work doing introductions. Well, they made me laugh and that’s what’s important. Me.

Baby-faced Brian Hibbs was of course important to me this year because, well, he’s Ballistic Brian Hibbs! Whaddya want, I should draw you a diagram?!?!

No doubt Bashful Brian Hibbs would like me to point out that

SNARKED can be purchased from HERE. POPEYE can be purchased from HERE. POPEYE CLASSIC COMICS is also aces and can be purchased from HERE.

What will 2013 hold then? Haven't the foggiest, mate. But it's sure to contain COMICS!!!

The very best to all of you and all of yours from me and all of mine!

All Steve Ditko art from THE STEVE DITKO OMNIBUS VOLUME ONE (DC Comics) Joe Kubert art from JEW GANGSTER (ibooks)

"You're Wrong. I'm Not STRONG." COMICS! Sometimes Legends Are Involved!

Merciful Minerva! It's a content-pocalypse here at The Savage Critics! Below this there's Amazing Abhay taking a comic by the throat in his talented teeth and shaking it until its neck snaps. Beneath that there's Gentle Jeff Lester using duct tape, tact and sheer pluck to bring you, via technology, not only the cheapest comics...but the best comics! Beneath that there's Bewildered Brian Hibbs vs. online journalism! Bang-on Brian Hibbs cracking the heads of several  cape comics together was also a thing that occurred! As ever, earlier in the week the best Commenters in any seven dimensions you care to mention took on the Shipping List and, of course, Gentle Jeff and Garrulous Graeme's audio bliss in Podcast form remains in geosynchronous orbit with all our ears!

And then there's me talking about a comic Howard Victor Chaykin and Russ Heath did in 2005 that no one read. The Savage Critics: For people who ain't lookin' for nothin' but a good time because it don't get better than this! (Everybody loves Poison! Except people with taste!)

LEGEND #1 to 4 Written By Howard Victor Chaykin Illustrated by Russ Heath Inked by Russ Heath & Al Vey Lettered by Rob Leigh Coloured by Darlene Royer & David Rodriguez for Wildstorm FX Wildstorm, $5.99 each (2005) Inspired by Philip Wylie’s novel GLADIATOR

One of the totally bizarre things about comics in the 21st Century is the continued expectation broad based multi media content providers and dispersal merchants (formerly known as: writers) have that they will shock the living shit out of us all with the concept of superheroes but in the real world. It’s utterly nutty because none of them seem (seem) aware that that’s how this whole crazy capes mess started up in the first place. It had to really. You start with the real world and you put your superhero in it. All the rest, all the goofiness, all the magic all the “silliness” that is popularly taken to define the Cape genre comes after and from that initial starting point. Not being in the real world isn't inherent in the capes genre. Well, no more than any other genre. Opening myself up to a cascade of corrections, but in the interests of getting somewhere before you start catching flies, I’m taking Superman as the first superhero. Stay with me here, because LEGEND is “inspired by Philip Wylie’s Novel GLADIATOR”.

And so too is Superman inspired by Philip Wylie’s novel GLADIATOR(1930), certainly to the extent that Wylie threatened to sue Jerry Siegel in 1940. There are a remarkable number of similarities between the two works but there are also a number of significant differences, that’s how “inspiration” works, I guess. If memory serves, the only really totally outlandishly fanciful element in the first published Superman story is...Superman; he is a superhero but in the real world. Similarly GLADIATOR, Superman’s inspiration, involves a super-powered individual but in the real world. You see what I’m saying here though? The very genesis of the capes genre is in actual fact superheroes but in the real world. You might think this is just a tiresomely roundabout way of telling modern comics creators to knock it the fuck off but it isn't just that. No, it’s also a tiresomely roundabout way of introducing LEGEND by Howard Victor Chaykin (HVC) and Russ Heath.

LEGEND is a comics adaptation of Wylie’s book and was published by Wildstorm Comics in 2005. It isn’t the first adaptation as the novel was made into a feature film in 1938. Since this flick starred Joe E. Hill Brown the flexibly faced funnyman familiar to fans of Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959) and apparently revolves around wrestling it’s probably less than faithful in its adaptive duties. Probably more faithful was the abortive adaptation by Rascally Roy Thomas and Tony DeZuniga titled Man-God in MARVEL PREVIEW #9 (1976). I have used 'probably' there because I've seen neither of them. Nor have I read the original novel. I have, however, read LEGEND by HVC and Russ Heath. A lot of people haven’t read LEGEND as it was published in 2005 by Wildstorm Comics which, at that point in history, was the publishing equivalent of being buried alive.

By all accounts this one’s a pretty accurate adaptation, with just a few necessary changes to update it to the 50’s thru the ‘70s. Vietnam is swapped in for WWI for example. Chaykin and Heath's’ book consequently is light on the heroics and high on the super. After all, Siegel and Shuster brought the cape but Wylie brought the super-man. Wylie’s creation at no time battles for Truth, Justice or any Way be it American or not. His book takes the case of an extremely gifted individual called Hugo Danner and examines how someone so special could ever fit into the moribund world of us normal dreary folks.

It’s the kind of book people who feel they are themselves gifted tend to write. By all accounts (i.e. Wikipedia) Wylie was quite gifted, or at least a very thoughtful individual who used his writing as a device for disseminating his thoughts rather than primarily for producing entertainments. He probably felt a greater sense of achievement in having popularized the raising of orchids than being midwife to genre informed by wonder and imagination. A genre into which his book was adapted by HVC and Gil Kane, except,that's right, it wasn't. I'm glad you are still awake. But it almost was...

Like many comics LEGEND isn’t perfect because Gil Kane didn’t draw it. But at least LEGEND had a fighting chance of being drawn by Kane. HVC developed LEGEND with Kane in mind. His hope seems to have been to nudge Kane more towards work in the hard-boiled pulp vein of Kane’s self-published HIS NAME IS…SAVAGE (1968). Kane seemed to naturally gravitate towards fantasy, a direction HVC felt worked against Kane’s desire to tell more socially relevant tales. When Kane, with Rascally Roy Thomas, took on the monumental task of adapting Wagner’s Ring Trilogy into comics HVC’s reaction was a big fat,“So?”. Unfortunately the fantasy genre was entirely simpatico to Kane’s desire to avoid research. LEGEND with its broad backdrop of several decades and visual dependence on verisimilitude would require, oh yeah, research and so Gil Kane declined. This is of course a colossal loss to comics and me personally but I try not to be too bitter. After all the project would eventually be drawn by Russ Heath. I like Russ Heath but what did HVC make of his work? If only there were a pricey collection of interviews with him I could plunder. Oh, Wait…

Costello: Was there anything you changed in the text of your adaptation to account for the difference in Kane’s and Heath’s styles?

Chaykin: No. It is what it is, and Russ just took it and ran with it. At the time Russ and I were neighbours…He would come over to the house and show me pages. I was delighted, particularly because I’d assumed for a number of years that Russ had lost it because the work he’d been doing for most of that era was shit, and it turns out he was phoning it in because he was lazy. He was capable of doing great stuff and just wasn’t bothering. Russ is really old. He dated Fred Flintstone’s sister. He’s still a very vital and incredibly talented guy, one of my heroes. And he’s got carrot coloured hair. He looks like he was molested by a carrot.

(Extract from an interview with Brannon Costello on pp.270-271 of HOWARD CHAYKIN: CONVERSATIONS Edited by Brannon Costello (University Press of Mississippi, 2011))

While I’m not as enamoured of Heath’s work here as HVC is, it is pretty good stuff that serves the material well. His grounded and reality-sourced work gives the whole thing a necessary level of detachment. A warmer, more intuitive style would risk the reader being swamped by viscera. Heath’s style may be the equivalent of a man in a lab-coat pointing at genitals while declaiming their Latin nomenclature but this is entirely necessary. The earthily robust script by HVC is so ripe with a raunchy lust for life that even Heath’s distanced work ends up crossing its legs and dabbing sweat from its top lip. If Gil “Sugar Lips” Kane had drawn this the thing would have had to be printed on asbestos and available only to blinded castrati. Yes, Chaykin’s script obviously brings to the fore things better left to the aft in Wylie’s day.

Despite the almost absurdly heated erotic activity, profane humour and offhandedly extreme violence the book seems to embody all the things Wylie initially intended. It remains the tale one gifted man’s progress through the various layers of his society in search of a place in which to fit. A fruitless search as it turns out. Chaykin remains true to the spirit of the thing even if the execution is totally Chaykin-esque. By Chaykin-esque we are of course talking the Chaykin of popular perception (the urbanely disillusioned priapic satyr with the gift for page design and filthy wit) rather than the Chaykin of reality (the respected professional, loving partner and twinkly grandfather noted for not suing people who write about him on the Internet. Cough.)

Initially, I admit, I wasted quite some time by typing several thousand words in a jocular journey through each of the four issues highlighting particularly preposterous points but then I went and binned that.  Sacrifice. In order for the books to still retain plenty of surprises  I have instead written around the work while (hopefully) letting the work speak for itself through the selection of images scattered about this dreary chuff. I think they say far more, far better than anything I could ever conjure about the very particular, very (very) melodramatic pleasures of Howard Victor Chaykin and Russ Heath’s LEGEND. It’s highly unlikely that you've ever read a comic like LEGEND but it’s highly recommended that you do. Seriously, this comic should be available on the NHS as treatment for depression. For all its sincerity and intelligence LEGEND is some pretty funny stuff and it’s never funnier than on the last page. You can probably find these comics for cheap and that’s probably worth doing because LEGEND is VERY GOOD! C'mon, when was the last time you read a comic about a man with a cock as big as a cat...but in the real world! Exactly. Have a jolly splendid weekend and remember to read some COMICS!!!