Flex Mentallo

Flex Mentallo first appeared during Grant Morrison’s time writing Doom Patrol. He was a throwaway addition designed to act as a parody of a Charles Atlas advertising character as well as golden age comic tropes in general. His power of flexing muscles, which sorted out seemingly any problem, seemed designed to draw attention to how simple, which is to say wholesome and free of worry as opposed to foolish or stupid, comic books of the past were.

The character was well-suited to a minor appearance in a book like Doom Patrol. It was a title that thrived on being quirky and strange and Mentallo’s oddball power and eccentric look (he wears a pair of leopard print strongman trunks and a gabardine mac) were a natural fit. That was never going to be enough for Grant Morrison. He had to pluck this one dimensional character from relative obscurity and award him his own four issue series.

In principle that’s a decision that could have worked. Had Morrison used the title as a tool to frame his feelings and thoughts on the golden age of comics it could have been an interesting read. Mentallo would have been the perfect creation for such a comic, being a modern creation designed to ape the standards of a previous era he would have had a different relationship to the source material than other characters. What’s more this is a comic I can imagine Morrison having an interest in writing. He’s penned an entire book on the history of superheroes and comic books in general. Imaging that he’d like to write something in the golden age style is an easy leap to make.

But that’s not we’ve got. Part of the book’s trouble is that it’s very difficult to say what we have instead.

It starts out well enough. We’re introduced to Mentallo at an airport, where he stumbles across a case that needs to be solved and, well, sets about solving it. His investigations quickly reveal that the man he’s looking for is an old accomplice of his, The Fact, who Mentallo believes to be a fictional creation. It’s at this point that we learn Mentallo is aware that he used to be fictional too, but was drawn out of pages he was scribbled on by his creator, Wally Sage.

It’s an intriguing premise that Morrison mostly ignores, instead deciding that what his four issue miniseries needs is more ideas. He revisits the idea of comic book characters being real at the end of the book and we again get a glimpse of how good a concept it is. It’s revealed that the world the book’s set in used to have thousands of superheroes in it, loving and protecting the peoples of the world, but they ran into some bother and only managed to save themselves by turning themselves into pure ideas that survived in reality as comic book characters.

These revelations come out over just a few pages in the fourth issue, rendering an idea stuffed with potential for greatness wasted. It’s the standard problem with Morrison’s work: he tends to have pretty good ideas but crams too many into a title, leaving them all frustratingly underdeveloped.

Even by his kaleidoscope standards Morrison seems unfocused with Flex Mentallo. He makes a big deal about how much raw creativity goes into the comics kids draw for themselves but never really pays the thread off or fully explains what his point is. He mentions parallel universes and timelines continuously but they never feature in any meaningful sense. He creates an incredible number of superheroes and –villains, with many of them ironically seemingly inspired by the silver age of comics, that feel wasted.

Reading the series it feels as though Morrison is desperate for it to be about something. But he’s so desperate to achieve this that he tosses in too much and the half-formed and unfocused results end up nothing but a disappointment. It’s possible that someone could drag some sense out of Flex Mentallo with some rereading but that person’s not me.

It’s ironic that a book with a central character based on the most simplistic age of comic books is such a tangled, convoluted mess. It’s also a shame. Frank Quitely does his usual job of transforming Morrison’s script into something that is visually engaging, inventive and fun and the book always feels as though it’s on the cusp of becoming really good. But it never does. As nice as it looks, and perhaps sounds, this is not something I can recommend.

B.P.R.D.

The Bureau for Paranormal Research and a Development began life as the employer of and base of operations for Hellboy in the startlingly named Hellboy comic. After a few miniseries it became clear to writer-artist Mild Mignola that it was a strong enough concept to support a title of its own. Just as importantly Hellboy was deemed interesting enough to separate him from his supporting cast and move him off on his own, away from a supporting cast.

So Hellboy tendered his resignation and went off adventuring alone while the BPRD were siphoned off into their own new title. That the name of the comic was chosen as BPRD was a surprise to no one.

What's strange is that after the split both the original Hellboy book and the new BPRD feel slightly like spin offs while also feeling like the original thing. Hellboy obviously feels like the original because the title had existed for a while by the time the central character headed out on his own. But doing away with the BPRD staff changes the feel of the book. It's no longer about a team, it's about Hellboy and Hellboy alone.

BPRD begins life feeling familiar because readers are already aware of most of the cast. Where it begins to feel new is in its weird war on frogs storyline. Presumably in favour of keeping the folklore and fairy tales approach for Hellboy's title BPRD fights this war against frogs that live under the Earth for its first several volumes. They’d shown up in Hellboy before, but not to the extent they were used in early BPRD.

It's a bold and understandable change. The war on frogs idea is the sort of thing that could easily have been elaborated on in Hellboy. The trouble is that it goes on too long in BPRD. It's the central focus of too many early arcs and provides the series with a far less flexible style than it had enjoyed when a part of the original book. It becomes boring very quickly, largely because not enough effort is made to do new things with the idea. Basically each volume sees the man-sized frogs appear and the BPRD dispatched to best them. It's like a kids' TV show, the same bad guys turning up with a wacky new plan every week and being beaten handily by the end of the episode.

But to read all of this makes BPRD sound bad. And it's not. Nothing bad would have had the success and double figure volume count that BPRD had enjoyed. It’s an engaging book that keeps that, once it’s found its feet, presents new ideas without comprising the spirit of the title it originated from.

I think the reason the title’s enjoyed the success it had is its cast. A lot of time has clearly gone into fleshing out the characters we were familiar with and making the new ones layered and interesting. Amongst the BPRD’s numbers are a werecat, a ghost, a pyromancer, a mummy and a psychic. They all fit with the feel of the world they feature in but aren’t simple caricatures. They’re given distinct personalities, which makes reading all the more enjoyable.

Mignola stayed on writing duties for the first volume or two but has always left the art of the spin-off book to a trusted cabal of artists, originally led by Guy Davis. He seemed content to provide nothing more than a general overview of proposed storylines. Aside from bringing us the war on frogs the arrangement's worked well. BPRD is a consistently written book with engaging characters and a steady stream of nice ideas. You can’t go far wrong with it.

Hellboy

The first thing I'd like to say about the Hellboy comics is that I like the way they're published. Rather than keeping the title going as a monthly series with no end in sight, an approach that would inevitably bring about dips in quality, creator and lead writer Mike Mignola has instead taken the decision to publish each Hellboy arc as a series in its own right. While that can mean waiting a long time for a new issue to come out it generally ensures a pretty high level of quality.

Another chief reason for the approach is that Mignola started out to writing and drawing each issue himself. This is not a preference that lends itself to fast production, as Mignola would have to write five or six scripts before embarking on the artwork. Over time other artists and writers have contributed to the series, but Mignola has remained heavily involved.

Which is fine, because he's a very good artist with a very clear idea for how he wants to present his characters and world. By his own admission he has limitations (modern technology and cars for example) but what he does produce always has personality. Mignola is one of the best in the world when it comes to bringing a shadowy cavern or a mysterious forest or a dilapidated castle to life.

In the world that Hellboy inhabits these things are important. Hellboy (real name Anung un Rama, it’s decided early within the series that Hellboy is a more convenient name) is a demon summoned by Nazi occultists in 1944 is a part of a ritual designed to help turn the tide of the war. Everything goes a bit wrong (as such things tend to) and the Germans end up defeated.

Hellboy is taken in by the US military and Professor Bruttenholm. Quickly maturing to an adult size he's trained to be an agent for the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Development. The first few series focus on Hellboy's work for the BPRD with Mignola hunting out obscure old folk tales to rework into plots. There’s also a pretty Lovecraftian theme to much of his work with the character, not least his origin.

It's Mignola's talent at crafting a modern tale from something old that makes Hellboy books as enjoyable as they are. His love of the supernatural, occult and strange is clear in all of his scripts and artwork. He loves his source material and wants to do it proud in his adaptions. It helps that fairy tales, myths, legends, and fables are particularly well-suited to the visual short form of comics.

Eventually Hellboy leaves the BPRD and sets out on his own adventures. The title keeps the same themes and inspirations (in fact it becomes decidedly odder for a while) but loses its supporting cast. This is because the BPRD was deemed an interesting enough idea to support its own series (an idea that appears to have been correct considering the fact that the BPRD books are still on shelves). The in-universe reason is that Hellboy no longer wishes to work for the bureau. It’s basic but it suffices.

The Hellboy character is a likeable one. He's written to be kind and caring with a playfully gruff exterior. It's a cliche now but it probably wasn't so bad when the character first appeared in the mid-90s. He's basically very similar to Wolverine only more immediately likeable. And with a giant fist.

Locke & Key: Clockworks

If Keys to the Kingdom was where Joe Hill started playing around with the potential of the Locke & Key world then Clockworks is where he begins to look at what makes that world work. Clockworks is the most revealing volume of the series. It delves into the mythology of the title, the history of the Locke family and the nature and origins of the titular keys. These are the six issues where we start getting answers to the big questions.

The volume begins with a story set in 1775. This sets the revelatory tone. In just one issue we discover how the keys are made, gets hints as to why, teases of where the series could end up, and some interesting information about the Locke family of the time. It’s a wonderfully written opening instalment, all the more impressive for the fact that we’ve never come across any of the characters in it before.

Issue two is the only one of the six to have a primarily contemporary setting. It exists partly to introduce the key that is central to this volume, the timeshift key. As you can probably guess this key allows those using it to travel through time. There are some limitations placed on it, introduced in a nifty way, and the key instantly becomes one of the most intriguing of the series.

The rest of issue two has the tough job of cramming in the lion’s share of the character development for the volume. The cliffhanger volume four ended on is acknowledged and looked at but surprisingly not resolved, a clever decision that allows Hill to carry it over into the concluding sixth volume. That’s what the second issue is largely about, nudging things into place for the series’ final stretch and conclusion.

Which leaves issues three to six. Those four issues see the timeshift key put to use allowing Tyler and Kinsey to see the lives of their father and his childhood chums play out. The four issues are written just as impressively as anything else in the Locke & Key series, with Hill doing a wonderful job of making his almost entirely new cast likeable and interesting. The story of these issues plays out like a conclusion in its own right, just one we’ve not seen the build up to and don’t fully understand. It’s perfectly accessible and any questions we’re left asking are clearly ones that will be addressed when the series wraps up.

Clockworks is all about expanding the Locke & Key mythology at the same time as explaining certain aspects of it. It’s a peculiar volume in that respect as it doesn’t really have a story of its own to tell as previous volumes have. The things that hold it together are the timeshift key, the various revelations, and the sense that the story is heading towards a satisfying, mythic conclusion.

It should be noted that this volume ends on a powerful cliffhanger in its own right, involving the much sought after omega key and the character who was involved in the conclusion of volume four. Sounds vague and irritatingly non-informative? I apologise. Locke & Key is one of those rare comics that urge you not to spoil them. To get the most out of it you have to read it without knowing too many of the specifics in advance. I urge anyone reading this to read the entire series, in order. It’s one of the greatest books, comic or otherwise, of the century.