Superior

It's easy to pigeonhole Mark Millar as a guy who just does action comics. Because, well, he does just do action comics. But he does them very well and there's more variety than you'd expect from someone who sticks so firmly to one genre. There's always action but he takes some pretty wild routes to get to it.

Superior is the perfect example of this. Not content with the premise of a young boy being transformed into his favourite superhero, looking like the actor that plays him in films (literally movie star good looks), Millar also chucks in demonic deals and astronaut monkeys. There's a closing action sequence that wouldn't feel out if place on the big screen.

It would be unfair and untrue to say there's no emotion in Superior. At times it feels a little forced and out of place but it's there. The protagonist Simon Pooni starts the book with multiple sclerosis and later on in the story he meets several other children with similar afflictions. It's written and handled well, and integral to the plot.

Elsewhere Millar is more ham-fisted. Mid-way through the book Simon reveals his ordeal to a Lois Lane-alike reporter, who listens to his entire tale before suddenly remembering she suffered from leukaemia as a child, prompting her to form a bond with him. I appreciate the need for dramatic reveals and plot developments but it's written as though she'd forgotten her experience until Simon mentioned his multiple sclerosis. Which, y'know, isn't terribly realistic.

On a similar note Simon's parents seem fairly unphased when he returns home having been missing for a week. They also seem a little too accepting of his story about magically turning into a superhero. Simon does at least get believable relationships with schoolchum Chris and bully Sharpie. Millar writes adolescent boys well his. That seems apt.

The action is where the book shines. Whether it's the second issue's scenes of Simon (now Superior) testing his powers by pulling trains and accidentally setting forests on fire or the final battle pitting Superior against not one but two of his adversaries from the silver screen the book's at its best when people aren't talking much. Leinil Francis Yu is particularly good at these sorts of scenes, his art style being dynamic and pacey. He's not bad at slower moments though. I like his art but I always think it's probably an acquired taste.

As a standalone series Superior is very hard to fault. It tells its story well, neither rushing it nor dragging it out too long and wrapping up in an entertaining (if maybe slightly predictable) manner. It revolves around a neat little premise and features some memorable visual moments. If you like the movie offerings of Marvel and DC there's plenty to enjoy and not much to dislike.

 

The Ten Doctors

Let me set the scene. The Ten Doctors is a Doctor Who fan fiction comic written and drawn by Rich Morris. He posted the pages on his website between March 2007 and May 2009. As the name suggests it’s a story featuring the first ten Doctors from Doctor Who and, as with all multi-Doctor entries in the show’s history, it’s very heavy on continuity references. It’s even worse the the heady heights of the JNT Era.

If none of the above made any sense to you this isn’t something you’re going to enjoy. It’s well written with some pretty decent artwork but it’s definitely aimed at fans. If you don’t know your War Chief from your Metebelis III you’re not going to be able to make heads or tails of anything that happens in The Ten Doctors.

The plot is a tricky one to summarise. The general gist is that something has gone wrong with the Doctor’s time stream so all of his incarnations barring the Eighth get together with a selection of companions to investigate the problem. Doctors and companions are then split off into numerous teams, each following their own little plots that contribute to the larger one. Eventually members of the rogues gallery start showing up, as do the races you’d expect to see. The Master, the Rani, the Ice Warriors, the Moxx, the Celestial Toymaker… they’re all here.

Some teams work better than others. The pairing of the Second and Seventh Doctors works particularly well while the lumping of Doctors Four, Six and Nine together feels odd. Given his standing within the show, as well as Tom Baker’s eternal disinterest in sharing the spotlight, it feels odd to see the Fourth Doctor teamed up as part of a group. It feels equally strange for the First Doctor to be off by himself, considering the show was had a fairly large cast during his televised era.

It can be pretty tough to keep track of what’s going on but the approach works for the most part. Morris is just as focused as making sure the plot progresses on every page as he is on dropping in fan-pleasing references. It takes a meandering route but the story’s always got something going on.

Morris also deserves praise for his artwork. There are dozens of characters on display and the important ones (the Doctors and the enemy races) are always instantly recognisable. Some likenesses are stronger than others, but that’s to be expected. Morris does a very good job with Pertwee, Troughton, McCoy and Davison but both Bakers and Eccleston leave a little to be desired. But even when he doesn’t get the faces quite right the guy still does a good job on the outfits: we’re never in any doubt as to which Doctor is meant to be which.

The book’s only real area of weakness is its dialogue. For the most part it’s fine. Morris does a good job of slipping exposition in naturally, not something you’d expect from fan fiction. It’s his use of British idioms and writing of certain characters that lets him down. Ace and Rose’s council estate twangs come off worst. Ace is not a well-written character at the best of times, what with her love of playground level insults and all, but hearing her refer to Rose as Barbie and princess just feels wrong.

This is likely a result of the author being Canadian. His exposure to this sort of slang is likely to be shows like Doctor Who and Eastenders. He’s far more adept at the RP leanings of Pertwee and the old school gang.

What will immediately strike most Doctor Who fans about this comic is how well Morris knows his subject matter. He manages to weave in references to practically every major race, planet and strange piece of Time Lord lore that’s ever appeared in the show and its spin-off media. At one point he even manages a coherent summary of the plot of Trial of a Time Lord. If anything shows an understanding of Doctor Who it’s got to be that.

The Ten Doctors is obviously going to be more accessible to some people than others but if you like the show it’s definitely worth a look. This will make a nice alternative to the inevitably underwhelming fiftieth anniversary episode Steven Moffat has planned for November.

You can read The Ten Doctors at this link.  

Nemesis the Warlock

In the grim darkness of the far future one man wages a war on the oppressive Termite Empire (humanity). That man is Nemesis the Warlock, and he's not actually a man. He's an alien. That's actually the reason he's waging his war. Humanity, you see, is going to become a rather xenophobic bunch once we start encountering alien species. They're going to be outlawed and humans are going to have a rather bad reputation.

Well that's the story here at any rate, as told in the grim darkness of the pages of 2000 AD. The premise may suggest a serious tone that looks at the nature of segregation and oppression. To an extent that's true. This is one of the more political characters from the anthology magazines back catalogue, and those themes are explored.

It's not the sole focus of Nemesis though. That would have made for a dull, one note read with little chance of anything particularly interesting happening. There's a sense of grotesque humour present throughout Nemesis the Warlock and while the focus of it and the way it manifests shifts over the course of the books it never goes away. Whether it's backwater yokels being fearful of alien scum without comprehending how far they've drifted from the human gene pool or the stream of failures suffered by Torquemada, the head of the Inquisition, there's always something to stop things getting too serious.

This isn’t to imply that Nemesis is pure comedy. It has a sense of humour but it was written in part to give author Pat Mills a vehicle to express his displeasure and concern at the choices Margaret Thatcher was making as Prime Minister. The majority of storylines are influenced in some way by her premiership and Mills’ opposition to it.

The plot is simple enough. The idea started out as a handful of one-shots scripted by Mills and drawn by Kevin O'Neil (with later artistic contributions coming from a variety of other names, including a young Bryan Talbot). In these we didn't see Nemesis and only got a glimpse of his mission (the aforementioned war of attrition with the oppressive portion of humanity). They had a much smaller scale, with Nemesis seemingly only concerned with transport systems on Earth. When those proved popular lengthier storylines were planned, Nemesis had his backstory fleshed out, and we were introduced to the galaxy at large. It grew quickly into a book that allowed its creators to target religious zealots, dictatorships, Thatcherism, and the previously mentioned segregation and opression.

That's where Torquemada came in. In many ways Torquemada is a far more interesting character than Nemesis. I often find that to be the case with bad guys, although it’s usually due to the hero being poorly written and having no clear reason for being good beyond it being necessary for the plot. That's not true with Nemesis, we're shown that he has a family that he's fighting for and beyond that his motivations are kept blurred and vague. Which helps his appeal and believability a great deal. He clearly has something he believes in but it can’t be encapsulated in a handful of speech bubbles.

Torquemada is the driving force of the comic, the personification of what's wrong with the society we're presented with (and the one in which Nemesis was written by Mills and O’Neill). His manipulation of an entire race is an important tool in letting us know what the horrors of the world are, and he becomes more powerful once he's a ghost. Sounds a spoiler? It is, but not a huge one: Torquemada doesn’t stay alive for long.

Like much of the 2000 AD of its time Nemesis the Warlock can be hard to get into. It can help to take a break after the completion of a storyline. It's a pretty dense series to try ploughing through in a day but it can be done. As long as you read it at your own pace I think you'll enjoy it. It's well written and has something to say. Not enough comics (or books, TV shows or films for that matter) can make that boast.

Supreme Power

Supreme Power is an eighteen issue series that tells a confined story. That doesn’t necessarily set the book apart as anything special. There are plenty of series that have a self-contained story across a similar number of issues. The story that’s told is not a particularly memorable one. It has its moments and benefits from some thoroughly inoffensive art courtesy of Gary Frank but there’s nothing in the plot that makes this anything noteworthy.

Yet it is noteworthy. This is Marvel giving us an origin story for DC’s top characters, albeit disguised a bit to keep everyone’s legal departments happy. The original DC creations cropped up gradually over the course of several years, all from the minds of different creative teams. That’s always put them at odds with Marvel’s top names, a large portion of whom were created or reinvented by Stan Lee, Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby.

The stories of who should be credited for creating what are well known, but no matter where the truth lies it’s generally acknowledged that those three men all contributed to sixties Marvel’s popularity surge to a greater or lesser extent. The small team at ‘The House of Ideas’ meant there was a familiar feel to all of the books. The titles didn’t all immediately begin referencing one another but the fact that the same artists were used helped to create a feeling of a single coherent fictional universe, as did the general approach taken: normal people with super powers. That so many new creations debuted around the same time helped too.

Marvel has always felt like it’s designed to be a shared universe. DC often comes across as a collection of characters with nothing in common beyond their names being owned by the same company. The DC Universe often feels like it’s been retrofitted to function as the setting for shared stories. It all stems from those different creative teams.

Obviously the benefit of hindsight plays an important role in Supreme Power. Marvel can jettison what they know won’t work and introduce new elements to the characters. Most of the changes make the familiar cast darker and edgier. It’s the old Marvel trick of making superheroes real people with relatable, or at least understandable, problems. Superman and the gang traditionally have very little to worry about beyond the latest supervillain threat while Marvel has usually gone out of its way to give its heroes things to worry about in their day-to-day lives.

Supreme Power sees Superman become Hyperion, a man raised by government agents posing as a loving married couple. Batman is recast as a night-prowling psychopath who has no problems with killing. Wonder Woman is Zarda the Power Princess, a far less benevolent figure that Double W. Doctor Spectrum replaces Green Lantern and is immediately set up as someone who can rival Hyperion’s power, and as someone who proves far more loyal to the United States to boot.

The only character who isn’t obviously burdened by an overabundance of problems is Blur, the Flash analogue. He’s a rarity in the book, someone who’s mostly happy to have the powers he does.

The idea of Marvel creating their own DC universe is not an original one. Supreme Power has its roots in 70s adversaries to the Avengers, the Squadron Supreme. They were a group of villains based on DC’s Justice League. Marvel had originally wanted to produce a crossover but legal complications meant they had to resort to blatant analogues instead. Later on a second gang using the same name crossed over from an alternate universe, battling the Avengers before they realised they were all good guys and made friends. So Marvel aren’t just borrowing from DC with this book, they’re borrowing from themselves too.

Various mentions of these former teams crop up throughout the Supreme Power series. The various names of the characters, for example. SP also features several touches that had proven popular on Marvel’s Ultimate line. George Bush appears as the President of the United States, and the world we’re shown is presented as contemporary and adult. Childish fripperies are a no-no in Supreme Power.

As I say, the story that unfolds is not the best. It’s engaging enough but it’s not the most interesting thing the series has to offer. That is very much Marvel’s take on DC’s characters, a bizarre updating of analogues they first introduced three decades earlier. Anyone interested in comic book alternate universes or seeing a more coherent and contemporary origin for DC’s prime players will find plenty to enjoy here.

Heroes

In 2006 a TV show called Heroes debuted on NBC. It became a massive success for the channel incredibly quickly, gaining rave reviews for its first season. Why is this relevant to a blog about comic books? Because the show was about ordinary people finding they have superpowers. The clue’s in the name.

Superheroes are not exclusively found in comic books, but that is the medium in which the stereotypical image of the superhero first rose to prominence. They are strongly linked to comic books thanks to the success and history of both DC and Marvel. It’s where they have found their greatest success. In the last decade or so (starting several years before Heroes appeared on our screens) movie adaptions of the big two’s characters have become popular. A handful of original superhero flicks have even sprung up, such as The Incredibles and the Will Smith vehicle Hancock.

TV shows about superheroes were not a new thing in 2006. There had been numerous adaptions of the Marvel and DC gangs for decades. There was the Adam West Batman show for starters. Everyone from the Green Hornet to the Incredible Hulk got a TV show. 1993 saw Superman get Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman which was followed up eight years later by Smallville, the same year the whilly original creation Mutant X launched.

Kids TV had proven a particularly good place to establish original superhero creations. The Powerpuff Girls, Freakazoid, Captain Planet, and the Power Rangers are just a handful of examples of characters that fit under the broad title of superhero.

While Superheroes weren’t new to television in 2006 the approach Heroes took was. The majority of adaptions and original properties that had come before showed us a world where people with powers were commonplace and working on both sides of the good-evil spectrum. Characters had previously been happy to strut around in ridiculous outfits and displayed ease with regards to power control.

Heroes kept things simple, with the majority of the show’s characters discovering their powers for the first time and ignoring the existence of spandex at all costs. It was a drama show produced for adults, not a cheap, throwaway kids show made to fill air time on a Saturday morning. Cues were taken from the world of comics but Heroes was its own beast, the emphasis firmly on real characters with real problems. The powers were what helped set the show apart, not the focus.

Season one succeeded mostly because it was different and well written but also because of luck. The show came along at just the right time and featured just enough quirky touches to work. Giving a Wolverine-like healing factor to a teenage cheerleader was one such touch. It was familiar enough to be instantly understandable and yet completely alien because the person with the power wasn’t a grizzled, cigar-chomping mercenary from the nineteenth century.

Of course Claire, the cheerleader, spawned another of the show’s great hits: the line “Save the cheerleader, save the world!” Not  only was it esoteric enough to stick but it made sense within the show, a succinct summary of one of the central goals of the plot, to stop Claire’s healing factor falling into the hands of a psychotic killer.

The reappearing motifs of the DNA swirl and the eclipse proved far more popular than seemed reasonable too. People enjoyed tracking their appearances and conjecturing as to what they could mean. There were the mystery of The Man in the Horned Rimmed Glasses, the ongoing threat of Sylar, and the charming story of Hiro Nakamura to entertain too. The show built up a mythos but didn’t revel in it. Not during its first season anyway.

The cast of characters of that first season was tremendous. Thought was put into how a character’s traits would reflect in their power, if they had one. Everyone had a distinct voice and a reason for behaving the way they did. The show embraced its comic book heritage by dropping in little nods for fans, such as hiring artist Tim Sale to provide artwork. It even emulated famous stories: the X Men tale Days of Future Past famously provided the inspiration for Five Years Gone. Heroes also featured time travel as an important plot device. That may seem irrelevant (and it is in regard to comics) but Steven Moffat proved that audiences have an appetite for that sort of thing when he took over Doctor Who in 2010 (arguably earlier if you want to look at Blink, although the popularity of a one off episode isn’t really an indication of a trend).

Sadly the show’s success could not be sustained beyond the opening series. Season two featured a naff plot about a virus being unleashed. Then the writers’ strike hit. In a way that was a mercy. It forced Heroes to wrap things up and get ready for the third season.

Sadly things didn’t improve there, they only got worse. New characters that were introduced failed to be as engaging as their predecessors, and numerous bit part players from the show’s opening years had their parts beefed up, in most cases unnecessarily. In another, unplanned, nod to comics characters proved tough to kill for very long which quickly served to nullify what had been a dramatic and meaningful programme. That was one aspect of comicdom Heroes should have stayed away from.

By the end of the third series it was clear the concept was played out. Bryan Fuller, credited as one of the show’s driving forces during the opening season, had left to make his own show and had been replaced by Jeph Loeb. Yes, the same Jeph Loeb who loves to fetishize Marvel and DC characters and has an unhealthy love of continuity. His arrival coincided with the minor characters playing a more substantial role and a greater interest being taken in the mythos and canon of the programme.

Heroes was cancelled after its fourth season. Spiritually it died much earlier than that. Anything after season one is a disappoint to view. But if you’re interested in seeing a show that inspired and paved the way for programmes such as Misfits, No Ordinary Family and Alphas, or you’re a fan of comics that construct realistic characters, season one of Heroes, and only season one, is definitely worth watching.

2000 AD prog 1824

It’s become all the rage for comics to provide jumping on points for new readers. Every couple of years DC produces a summer crossover rejigging their fictional universe(s), pushing one character to the fore and shunting others out of the spotlight. Marvel has taken to printing issues with point one attached to their number to denote that it’s a particularly new reader friendly issue, not just the beginning of a new story but a story that explains the cast and their relations with one another to ease in the uninitiated.

Outside of the big two guys like Mark Millar and Mike Mignola tend to write in miniseries. They pipe out an above average number of issues with a number one printed on the front, ideal places for casual or new readers to start out.

This sort of approach is not unfamiliar to 2000 AD. Being an anthology book new tales have always started regularly, providing a good place for new or lapsed readers to get stuck in. They’re rarely marketed as such though. They’re just part of the way the book’s always worked.

Until recently that is. By accident or design (probably the latter) prog 1824 is an ideal buy for anyone who’s never picked up an issue or not read one in a while. It’s been touted as such by the company too. This, coupled with the title’s recent inaugural foray into inter-strip crossovers, could indicate that 2000 AD is changing tacks with regard to how it’s perceived alongside comic producers who put out numerous titles each week instead of just one.

Prog 1824 is comprised of four strips. It opens with a Judge Dredd tale. This is a logical choice as the character is easily 2000 AD’s most famous creation. I’ve never been a huge fan of Dredd so I was never going to be wildly into this story. It did what it needed to do and seemed to be a fine example of what Dredd’s known for.

The plot? Someone tries to assassinate a high ranking Judge but Dredd saves them in the nick of time. There’s a bike chase which ends with the would-be-assassin escaping and Dredd barking that he (or she or it) must be brought in at any cost.

That’s followed with the return of Dandridge, a character first introduced in 2009. We don’t see him until the final panel, but the build-up to his appearance makes it clear that he’s a playboy adventurer type in the vein of James Bond and various British TV spies from the 70s. That’s backed up by him clearly being patterned after Jason King. The tone of the title is very much in the spirit of King’s show, as well as The Avengers.

The world of Dandridge (another character I’m not overly familiar with but one I have more time for than Dredd) is interesting, based on these five pages. Ghosts seem to be a standard part of life while the secret service has access to cyborgs with golden cannons in place of stomachs. There’s a golem too. And some pub patrons that look like they’ve just stepped out of the 1970s.

There’s no real plot to speak of. It’s essentially one long setup for Dandridge’s intro. It was still enjoyable though, a testament to the writing ability of Alec Worley and Warren Pleece’s artwork. Pleece’s work in particular is excellent. His panels are detailed but never overly busy, and he does a fine job of nudging the story along without rushing things.

Tucked away before the final entry in the prog is Tharg’s 3rillers: Survival Geeks. This opening instalment is a pleasing read, despite its Americanised (by which I mean overly produced, I think) art style it’s a very British strip. References to the BBC, bus stops and Topshop are all well and good, but what really makes it clear that this is proud to be British is a reference to Paul McGann being in Doctor Who. Yeah it’s a bit Russell T Davies and Queer as Folk, but it’s a joke a creative team from outside the UK would be unlikely to make, even if they were fans.

A girl wakes from a one night stand to find that she’s spent the evening with one of three members of a household that jumps between realities. It’s a delightful (if somewhat unoriginal) premise that could easily run for years. It’s currently got three issues to prove itself and the mettle of its creators. Sadly the ending, which sees a Dark Lord turn up riding a cross between a xenomorph and a dragon, didn’t quite match the tone of the preceding pages.

The issue closes with the return of Stickleback. I’ve reviewed the first collected volume of this character’s exploits before (read that here). In short I enjoyed it. While D’Israeli’s artwork is as rich as ever the writing is not as welcoming and inclusive as the jumping on point hype would suggest. With no prior knowledge of the character I imagine the opening part of Number of the Beast is an alienating mystery. Even being familiar with the character didn’t help me to fathom what was going on.

Hopefully things will become clear as the story unfolds. Assuming that’s the case Number of the Beast part one seems to work well enough as the opening part of an ongoing tale. It certainly ends on a high note: a single page splash that sees three giant mechanoids towering over a backstreet with sees dinosaurs and lizardmen weaving between to Victorian gentlemen and a billboard advertisement for the London Overground. It’s the future mixed with the past, a fitting image for an introductory issue of 2000 AD to end on.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

 

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen famously came about after Alan Moore had asked himself, over a morning snake-spell, what a Victorian Era Justice League would have been like. Superman, Batman and the Green Lantern were emphatically not the characters he had in mind when asking this. Moore was more interested in how fictional creations of the time would have interacted had they all existed within one metafictional universe (or story) and come together to form a group.

Plucked from the 19^th century are Wilhelmina Murray (of Dracula fame), aged explorer Allan Quatermain, the Invisible Man Hawley Griffin, scientist Dr Jekyll (along with the other fella you get one using him), and isolationist submariner Captain Nemo. Murray fashions them into an ill-functioning team to combat two threats to Britain, and the world, across two six issue series. The first series details a plot by Fu Manchu to attack Britain from the skies. The second sees an invasion by the Martians from HG Wells’ War of the Worlds.

Going off of these first paragraphs League of Extraordinary Gentlemen could sound like a simple reworking of various plots and characters. It’s not. Moore remains true to the spirit of the original material he calls upon and blends the characters seamlessly into a story that is wholly his own. League (as it is routinely shortened to) is an original work inspired by literature.

One crucial thing to note about the series is that it’s not necessary to have read or even be familiar with any of the characters Moore uses. To this day I’ve not read Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde but it didn’t spoil my enjoyment of their comic book appearance here. I wasn’t even aware of the heroine’s name in Dracula. That didn’t spoil my enjoyment either.

Yet there’s enough substance in Moore’s writing to be able to tell that the characters are being portrayed in a true fashion. Occasionally a sentence will crop up that seems incongruous, such as a reference to Dr Jekyll’s transformations originally making him smaller (included because that’s what happened in Stevenson’s novel). There are plenty of references of this kind, and there’s always a deal of satisfaction in understanding on, a knack I have more with later volumes set in periods I’m more familiar with. But as I say, it doesn’t spoil things for the rest of us.

The books are famed for being populated with bit part characters plucked from works of the period. Not knowing their origins doesn’t detract from the read. You’ll feel proud at spotting something but if you don’t notice a particular reference the book still stands up and makes sense in its own right.

Artist Kevin O’Neill is just as responsible for the series’ success as Moore. His artistic style is not something that lends itself to lengthy action sequences or broad shouldered heroes but is a perfect fit for a series that demands dozens of hidden details crammed onto each page. The almost sketch-like quality of O’Neill’s work (harsh, jagged lines are the order of the day) coupled with the subject matter gives the book a feel that no other comic has ever had.

It should also be noted that it’s Sullivan who includes most of the fictional figures who appear in crowd scenes. This is something that grows more prevalent in later volumes as the creators find their feet with the series. This is understandable. Moore is known for many things but an intimate knowledge of pop culture isn’t among them.

The first and second volumes are also notable for the extra material included in them. The first book includes a newly spun tale of Quatermain and paintings based on The Picture of Dorian Gray. The second volume features my favourite extra of the series: detailed accounts of Moore’s metafictional world, continent by continent. The amount of research, planning and thought that must have gone into these pages alone is staggering. It’s written in the style of a guide and is one of the series’ greatest triumphs.

The world of the League is such a simple idea it’s surprising nobody else had really done it before. It’s good that they didn’t though: Moore packs so much into his books, undertaking hefty amounts of research in order to make his work as accurate and authentic as possible, that it’s likely nobody else could have done the series justice in quite the same way. The level of detail speaks to the author’s love and enjoyment of literature. He is astonishingly well read, and it’s allowed him to construct what I believe is his greatest work.