Scary Monsters & Super Creeps ~ THREE: Blood & Shadows

1. Passing Judgment

In the 1980's, you could easily say that DC went through a sort of explosion of creative talent and experimentation. During the decade the foundation of Vertigo was lain with Alan Moore's Swamp Thing and Karen Berger's continued advancement of writer-driven material, the entire DC Universe underwent a Crisis, Batman and Superman were both revitalised in Year One and Man of Steel, new and old ideas were cropping up in a multitude of limited and ongoing series, while watershed moments like Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns hit the shelves. It was also the time when DC actively pushed into licensing, bringing some very old pulp and radio characters to comics once again, in the form of Doc Savage, The Phantom, Flash Gordon, and The Shadow.

Although DC had previously published a comics adaptation of The Shadow in the 70's, featuring the talents of Denny O'Neil and Mike Kaluta, it like many of the other incarnations was essentially treated as a period piece. In 1986, DC changed that with Howard Chaykin's revitalisation of the character. Instead of being set in the past, The Shadow was brought forward into the present, his old agents from the comics and radio shows allowed to age "normally", while he himself stayed relatively youthful through Chaykin's new origin story.

Essentially, Chaykin's take on the Shadow, the character himself, is nothing you'd exactly call original. Although the Shadow had always been a rather amoral hero, meting out justice at the end of a barrel and ordering around his agents like slaves, Chaykin's Shadow became a womaniser and more of a jerk, bringing his characterisation in line with other well-known Chaykin "heroes" like Reuben Flagg before and Harry Kraft after. Having read American Flagg! and American Century, you'd almost think Chaykin only knows how to write one dominant hero type.

Criticism of character patterns aside, "Blood & Judgment" is indeed an excellent reintroduction of The Shadow and his world, even though purists expecting a period piece may and did disagree. Someone is killing the Shadow's previous agents from before his "disappearance" in 1949 -- the ones from the old radio shows and pulps -- which necessitate his return. It's not played as a straight mystery, readers know almost from the beginning who's responsible, but on the back of this, we're introduced to the agents both new and old, a developing "sub-plot" regarding the recruitment of Harry Vincent's daughter, and a new origin -- or rather a variation on a few of them with some new elements added in -- is given for the Shadow.

In this the central conceit of the plot rests on the notion of "who is the Shadow?" In the original pulps, he was really Kent Allard, with "Lamont Cranston" being just one of his disguises, and this is partially the idea with which The Shadow mini-series runs. In some versions, Allard saved the real Cranston's life in Asia and as a "reward" was allowed to use the identity while Cranston globe-trotted as a millionaire playboy, not so here. Here, Cranston is wealthy drug-lord who employed a down-on-his-luck Allard as a pilot -- another favourite Chaykin character trait, I might add -- and is cold and ruthless in his pursuit of wealth and power. The plane goes down and they're rescued by the people of the secret Asian city of Shambala. Cranston, acting in typical villainy, poisons the Shambalan guards, steals some gold, kidnaps the "princess", and rushes off to retrieve his drugs. Suffice it to say, it doesn't go as planned for him. Allard doesn't save Cranston's life, rather the opposite, trying to kill him. Believing himself successful, Allard adopts Cranston's identity.

Cranston, however, didn't die, which sets up more than a simple revenge story. Cranston couldn't care less about The Shadow taking his identity, what's important is that after all the years and amassing new wealth as Preston Mayrock, the bastard is dying. Drawing out the Shadow was his attempt at re-attaining youthfulness -- mind transfer to a genetically enhanced clone -- through the sciences of the hidden society that helped Allard in the first place.

What's interesting here is that Allard and Cranston are essentially the same person, not literally, but in their approach and attitudes toward life. Both are concerned about power and longevity, both are stuck in dreadful moral archaism, they do whatever is necessary to achieve their goals regardless of the consequences, have little regard for human life, and could both be considered quite insane. The only difference is that The Shadow himself kills criminals, and so is seen as the "good guy".

I'll not belabour the arguments of vigilantism or the progression of the anti-hero, but it's interesting to note that The Shadow is ultimately facing himself when he finally confronts Cranston/Mayrock.

2. Into the Light

A year after Chaykin's Shadow limited series, an ongoing series began publication with Andy Helfer and Bill Sienkiewicz at the reins. There are a couple of ways you can view this initial story-arc, "Shadows & Light". The first is that it's an unfocussed mess with Helfer throwing ideas and villains at the wall to see what stuck. The second is a sort of planned chaos, constantly hitting the reader with characters and events in a literary equivalent to Sienkiewicz' artistic style.

Unlike "Blood & Judgment" or what would come in later stories, "Shadows & Light" almost isn't a story-arc but rather somewhere in between an arc and episodic storytelling. It starts as a continuation of the mini-series, following the moments after Mayrock's clone was thrown off a building. There's a brief confusion over whether or not the Shadow is injured, since he and Mayrock's clone look alike, that allows the appearance of many of the Shadow's agents new to Helfer's run on the title. This sparks off a final battle with the Mayrock clone, but this itself leads nowhere aside from the clash with Joe Cardona that seems like an odd attempt at comic relief that never ends up being very funny. The first two issues, essentially, are merely tying up the loose end of the clone from the original mini-series, and even then, it's just kind of there.

The book then divides into three different threads that seem like they're vying for attention. The first is the return of Shiwan Khan, the Shadow's greatest nemesis from the old pulps and radio shows. Today, he's given up his life of crime and become a wealthy and powerful businessman and philanthropist, which, of course, he's willing to throw out the window for the sake of a little mind control satellite. This satellite is what sets off the second string, tying up another loose end over the spa murders in the original mini-series with "The King is Dead. Long Live the Prince" written on the wall in blood. Turns out it wasn't Mayrock who did that one but Benedict Stark, another previous Shadow villain.

If that weren't enough, though, there's the undercurrent during the first two-thirds of the story-arc of the Holy Radiance Mission that leads into the Light, a new villain created by Helfer and Sienkiewicz. It's incredibly fractured, jumping from one focus to another, bringing in a new obstacle to replace an old one, setting a rather frenetic pace for the book, apt to leave some people scratching their heads. Just wait until you throw in the Shadownet, a group of hackers dedicated to the Shadow, yet ultimately end up helping the enemy.

Surprisingly, though, fractured as it might be, it's not confusing. Helfer keeps throwing things at you with the story, new people, new twists, and a new villain, but the overall action of the story doesn't suffer. The plot does, there's no central theme or flow to the story-arc, such that it's less a story-arc and more a collection of tangentially related tales -- as I said previously, but I don't necessarily see that as a bad thing.

--. We Now Interrupt Your Regular Broadcast for a Paid Announcement from the Holy Radiance

Toward the tail end of the "Shadows & Light" story-arc, the first Shadow annual was published presenting a prologue of sorts. "Fragment of the Sun" was a period piece, chronicling the origin of The Light, the new villain featured in Helfer's Shadow series.

The highlight of the annual is, of course, Joe Orlando's artwork, and as such the story is written with him in mind. Instead of being a straight crime tale, the story veers off into bizarre science fiction and atomic monsters, bringing forth an irradiated child in the form of the Light. The logistics aside of a "nuclear child" -- was every writer in the 80's obsessed with the nuclear threat of the cold war? -- the heart of the story centres on the idea of faith and manipulation.

There are two fronts that the story operates on, the first is of an underground German party that still supports the Nazis and is attempting to extricate the prisoners held after World War II. This is the main plot that the Shadow and his operatives are working to solve in the first part of the story, set in 1046. The second, and the one that we follow into the second half of the story set in 1949, is of an evangelical group purporting to bring about a new messiah for the atomic age. It starts with a soldier irradiated in a nuclear blast, and tracks to his wife trying to bear his child in some misguided sense of loyalty to the evangelical group. His wife, of course, is clearly insane, and bears the "nuclear child" who will become The Light in the present day storyline of "Shadows & Light".
To me, the most interesting part of the story has nothing to do with the main plot whatsoever, but the "story within a story" that comes in the second half of the book. The original leader of the evangelical group, Julius Strait, ahs been usurped by the ex-Nazi scientist who has successfully given him a lobotomy. Strait has, however, gone back to following a modicum of the life he led before founding his own religion, writing terrible science fiction stories -- a rather overt analogue to L. Ron Hubbard. In continuing to write his terrible science fiction stories; he does try to communicate in his jumbled, lobotomised way what happened with the birth of "nuclear messiah". One of these stories winds up at a comics publisher, and it gets adapted into "Coming of the Atomic Man" and as an EC style weird science tale that we're presented in three pages of the annual.
We Now Return You to Your Regular Scheduled Programme, Already in Progress. --

Many today would probably argue that a linear story-arc focussing on one objective -- such as just Shiwan Khan or just The Light -- is the better from a storytelling standpoint. It allows for greater exploration -- but not necessarily contains, I might add -- for a single track, like an expansion of the plot of the hackers, or greater explanation of The Light's rise to power, and what he did to the previous ministries. Yet, that doesn't seem to be the goal of the story-arc-that-isn't, it's episodic comics told in a collection of three two-issue arcs with a little bit of spill-over of each into the other. It's just a different type of crafting a larger story and gives the impression of chaos.

I admit there should be greater focus on the character of the Light, it started as an interesting subplot of a serial killer crucifying people to "see the light", as well as little bits of seeding the mission here and there, but given the focus on making him out to be a huge villain and time taken to show his origin in The Shadow Annual #1, it's all really over and done with before anything large amounts from it. The Light, in other words, doesn't live up to the hype. All flash and no substance.

What adds greatly and makes everything come together just a little bit more is Bill Sienkiewicz, with his incendiary style of art bouncing off Helfer's fractured script and making it feel stronger in the long run. Despite sharing some similarities, Sienkiewicz' dark and scratchy artwork adds a layer of grit to the book that isn't present in Chaykin. His cover paintings themselves add so much to the book.

It should also be noted that it looks as though Sienkiewicz' illustrations of the Shadow agents, DeWitt and Twitch, may very well be the basis for Todd McFarlane's detectives, Sam and Twitch, even more than say, Laurel and Hardy, the resemblance of the characters is uncanny.

3. A Little Death

To set up more of the dissonance that would be felt between the Shadow and his agents, without his knowledge the agents went on a little field trip in "Harold Goes to Washington". As the introduction says, "This is the story of a bad boy. His name was Harold.", and so we follow a sadistic child without time to grow up to be a serial killer.

It's a bizarre self-contained story that Helfer tells here, largely veering away from anything but tangential appearances from the Shadow and his agents, about a misguided child out to assassinate the president. The reasoning, of course, makes perfect sense in kid logic. His father came back from the war a hero after killing many German soldiers. He also believes that it's the president who single-handedly keeps the whole world in peace. If he killed the president, a war would start, and in that war he could kill a lot of bad people, and thus become a hero himself. Twisted logic, sure, but this is a kid who burns bugs and kills dogs. He's not exactly the sanest doughnut in the box.

Although guest-illustrated by Marshall Rogers, I always get the impression that Rogers has a slight style of his own which is overshadowed by the inker over him. Here, his style veers closer to Baker's, in his work on Detective Comics his lines were cleaned and streamlined by Terry Austin, while more recently in Batman: Legend of the Dark Knight, John Cebolerro gave his work a more rounded, animated style, similar to Richard Corben. His work always looks different depending on who's inking him.

What is gorgeous, though, is the pen and ink cover. Even with Sienkiewicz' incendiary cover paintings on the first issues and many of Baker's pastels later on, the cover to Shadow #7 is the most visually striking.

4. Among the Deadly and Dying

For those who may complain about the lack of focus in "Shadows & Light", their complaints are answered in "Seven Deadly Finns". Instead of being a loose collection like the former story-arc, this takes you head-on against one group of villains, the seven Finn brothers.

It starts simply enough with a serial killer, something that seems to be a favourite of Helfer's, and in what is almost a standalone issue, we're introduced to the Finns and to the growing dissonance between the Shadow and his agents that will become vital at the end of the arc.

Although there is one overarching plot here, the Shadow trying to bring down the Finns, it's interesting how the arc is handled, throwing in a few different flavours just to keep things flowing. Instead of a large central strike on the Finns organisation, -- which we learn the Shadow has known that they meet on the floor below his own organisation, without telling his agents -- each Finn is systematically removed, through largely indirect action. The Shadow, of course, manipulates people, and does indeed take out a number of the Finns himself, but he doesn't just walk into a Finn meeting and blow them all away after opening the door.

As such, there are various nuances to the story-arc, including Harry and Margo's magic act, Twitch and his wrestler-nurse, Gwen, Ma Finn and her gorillas, Galen Finn's hot dogs, Dick Magnet's -- a character introduced in "Harold goes..." -- private investigation practice that gets dragged into Shadow business, Artie Finn's squad of madmen, and Rastafarians attacking Harry Vincent and his van. It's the last one, of course, that comes completely out of left field and makes utterly no sense until about the fourth part of the story-arc, you see, the Rastafarians are just trying to get repaid for the cab that the Shadow agents demolished in Shadow #6. It's not a bad twist, per se, but it is handled poorly in the beginning, treating them as though we should know why they're doing the things to Vincent beyond the assumption that they're an ill-conceived gang based on racial stereotypes. Otherwise, the various threads are well executed and add a greater sense to the whole.

You could also say that this is the story-arc where Helfer's bizarre and twisted sense of humour really came to the forefront, in the hot dogs, Ma Finn, the Rastafarians, and the insane people. The dark humour added something to the book, similar to what Ennis instilled in The Punisher, taking the horrors that the anti-heroes do not necessarily with a wink or with utmost sincerity, indirectly alerting the readers that "hey, it's okay to be a cold-blooded killer as long as you mow down criminals", but rather that these are sick individuals in a twisted world. It goes from being a portrayal of reality into being a reminder of surreality.

That's reinforced by the introduction of Kyle Baker as the series regular artist. If all you've seen is his artwork on The Truth: Red, White, and Black, then you're missing out. Among some of his first work for DC, his style here had yet to develop into the clean and crisp sheen that you'll see in his more animated style today. Back on The Shadow, his artwork shared more with the approach taken by Danijel Zezelj, with minimalist features layered under a charcoal shading system.

Then, of course, the unthinkable happened and the Shadow was dead because one of his operatives attempted to save the life of an insane man, hammering home the surreal nature of the work. It's gripping, forward-thinking storytelling.

5. A Brief Reprieve

Quite possibly the best issue of Helfer's run on The Shadow is also the most derivative. Although the story technically takes place around the second and third parts of the "Body & Soul" story-arc, referencing to certain things going on at that time, the second Shadow annual works better thematically as a bridge between the two arcs, certainly as an epilogue to "Seven Deadly Finns".

"Agents", the story being told in the annual, is, put simply, a pastiche of Citizen Kane. At the end of "Seven Deadly Finns", the Shadow's last word before dying was "Lenore" and so intrepid reporter and Shadow biographer, Rupert Tome, goes on a quest to track down its meaning in order to get a position on network television. In order to find out what the word meant, Tome interviews the Shadow agents, and, of course, instead of receiving any information about the word, he gets historical recounts of their time spent with the Shadow.

Despite being derivative, it's still a good character-driven story, illuminating the lives and experiences of the agents who aided the Shadow before the 80's series, as well as how the new agents were found and brought together before Chaykin's "Blood & Judgment". The MacGuffin is naturally never discovered by the character's themselves, but like "Rosebud", the audience is let in on the secret at the end of the piece.

6. Soul Cages

...and then the wheels fell off.

It didn't happen immediately. For the most part, "Body & Soul" was an incredible continuation of what had gone before: the Shadow was dead and his agents were trying to pick up the pieces while his sons took him back to Shambala. There were people outraged by the Shadow's death, but we all realised that of course he'd be coming back. No one really stays dead in comic books for very long, but this is before the "death of Superman" and it was happening on a monthly basis, but we knew that the Shadow would be back, in the mean time, there was a crime spree happening due to the Shadow's death.

In terms of how it was written, this story-arc was a bit of a cross between "Shadows & Light" and "Seven Deadly Finns", slightly more akin to what we're used to in present story-arcs. The arc starts out at a single point, the death of the Shadow and trying to figure out what to do next, and then breaks into two disparate threads. One story track follows the Shadow's agents in New York City dealing with the loss of their "Master", while the other follows the Shadow's sons as they attempt to return their father to Shambala.

Overall, up until the last issue, it's handled incredibly well. There's an even greater amount of dark humour present, along with the ridiculousness of Twitch dying himself green in order to become The Inoculator and carrying on the Shadow's legacy. It takes the surreality of "Seven Deadly Finns" and cranks it up a few notches, about to the same level we'd eventually see on Helfer's Judge Dredd series. You didn't even really mind that the Shadow was dead when you could follow what was happening in New York and the Shadow's sons' misadventures in Asia.

The stories were funnier than previous issues, sure, but they still held a certain amount of bite and were as enjoyable, if not more so, as the previous issues in Helfer's run. It featured two ingenious serial killing robbers, the Hi-Rise Killers, who would break into an apartment, rob it blind, and then toss its occupant off a balcony to see which one of the robbers got to keep the take depending on whether the victim landed heads or tails. It was sick and twisted, sure, but it was funny as hell, and honestly, the humour wasn't the problem with the book.

The problem came in The Shadow #19 and Conde Nast pulled the plug.

As you can tell from the cover, it was just a teensy bit of a departure. The Shadow's head had arrived safely in Shambala -- just his head, mind you, his body itself was kind of...well, indisposed -- and they were growing him a new one. ...but it didn't quite work out, a band of outlaws from a village that was essentially the antithesis to Shambala, appropriately called Malice, had followed the Shadow's sons and invaded Shambala. Unable to just sit around and wait as a reanimated, severed head while the invaders destroyed the city, the Shadow allowed his head to be attached to a robot body.

I know that this was more or less a parody of Robocop, after a fashion, but it took the ridiculousness too far, and turned what was a scathing dark humour book into the realm of cheesy, superhero camp. It just seemed a travesty to do this to the character, and I suppose other people believed so as well, given the series' quick cancellation following.

Honestly, given the progression of the character and the series since the first issue, the fact that it really seemed like Helfer and Baker really were managing to break some new ground with The Shadow, it was a shame to see the book end. What was even worse was the limp Shadow Strikes! series that DC launched afterwards to fill the hole, from Gerard Jones and Ed Barreto.

Next Week: Something shorter. I promise.

Scary Monsters & Super Creeps ~ TWO: Conflicted Identities

Preamble - Affliction

I have a stockpile of columns ready in the pipeline for Scary Monsters.

I wrote something like six of them before posting the first one, and have continued working on, starting, and completing at least two of them a week, with a few more ideas percolating and working out on paper. It's basically how my brains works, I have to be juggling at least four balls at a time, otherwise I'm useless. Anyway, it was basically my idea to have a head start in case something like pesky exams or something as trivial as completing an honour's thesis cropped up and I couldn't just sit down and crank one of these suckers out on a Sunday with Monday fast approaching.

As they say, "Even the best laid plans..."

Since I decided that I was going to run this column, back last Tuesday, or something like that, I think I've successfully rewritten it about four or five times, often razing complete sections and rewriting them from scratch. In essence, I may have well have just written it on the Sunday beforehand with the amount of time I've spent putting it together for publication. I mean, when I'm writing on the fly, having to get it in under the crunch, I second guess myself a lot less, and what appears may be more raw, but it'll be as concise as I can be due to time constraints, and won't suffer from the "elephantitis" that usually occurs when I have time to rewrite myself.

I mean, this should be a case in point -- I've added a bloody preamble to the entire thing.

1. Diagnosis
a. Obsession

It runs rampant in the comics industry.

I don't know if it's part of the "collector" mentality instilled in a lot of people buying comics, or if it's the blurry lines and close contact between fan and creator, but there's often this hubris amongst fans that due to the fact that they read, follow, or actively like a given character or title, it automatically enables them to more accurately chart the course of a character than the writer of the book. ...and no matter what, they'll get you coming or going. If you change a character just a little bit or deviate from what they see as the "norm", they'll be screaming bloody murder that, "Damn you! That's not Batman!" On the other hand, if you "play it safe" and continue on continuing on, you'll also be accused of doing nothing new and often a rip-off of whomever's "vision" of the character that the fans seem to think you're ripping-off. It's really rather ridiculous.

Comic fanatics are a cowardly and superstitious lot.

b. Devotion

The flip side of the coin with less negative connotations.

They love and care about the characters and titles like they're their own children. They grew up with Peter Parker, followed him through high school, fell in love with Gwen Stacy with him, and were utterly heart-broken when she died at the hands of the Green Goblin. Through thick and thin, Ditko and Romita, Buscema and Bagley, jackals and clones, they were there at the side of the web-head. I'm just using Spider-Man as an example, but the same could be said to be true of any comics property -- Savage Dragon, X-Statix, Youngblood, or Pogo -- it really doesn't matter. As long time followers of a character, to the point where the reader could practically consider them family, who better to judge whether something deviates from the character's "path" and deliver swift and harsh "justice" to any creator who dares walk a different route?

Comic fans are brave and noble flag bearers.

c. Reconciliation

There isn't any.

That much should be clear. Maybe both sides of the coin are correct, maybe both are wrong, it's all really a matter of perspective and context. Sometimes one may be the correct path, sometimes the other. What may seem like a tyrannical abuse of power in imposing your will on something, in imprinting your "reality" of a character, is in fact the right thing to do...or perhaps speaking out against a true misuse of character is the best thing you can possibly do, staying true and loyal to the ideals underlying everything. Who knows?

Maybe I'm not even talking about comics.

2. Metastasis

It's kind of superfluous to say, it's really one of the givens of the industry, but "mainstream" comics are based on wish-fulfillment, or some variation on it. All of the capes and tights, supervillains, and having to save the world on a weekly basis, it all emanates from basic escapist dreams and power fantasies -- the wish to be something other than yourself for a fifteen minutes or an hour, or however long it takes you to read a stack of words and pictures. It's one of the truths of a lot of entertainment, actually, whether the audience admits it to itself or not.

It's come to a point in comics where writers have begun deconstructing the stages of wish-fulfillment beyond even the simple moral of "Be careful what you wish for..." It has become partially a comment on the critics, on the fans, on the readers, on the dreamers, bizarre wish-fulfillment in its own right of "deconstructing" idols and symbols, obscure metafiction, and intentional and unintentional irony, where you've gotten to a point where you're not even sure anymore what you're being ironic about. It's a large conflicted morass of obsession and devotion. You're not sure where one ends and the other begins.

One of the unwritten themes that have become a staple of DC comics, and of Marvel of late, is revisionism. Sometimes it's as simple as just bringing out a new book with an old character whose title failed, but somehow still garners a certain amount of fan interest, like say Aquaman or Firestorm. Essentially the same, still destined for failure, and as they say, "the definition of insanity is someone who keeps doing the same thing over and over and expects different results."

The more common kind of revisionism, -- more than just simple reintroduction -- is what many call "Vertigo-isation". Basically, you take an old or outdated concept or even just a name, maybe something that most of the comics community has forgotten about completely, and give it a fresh spin. Sometimes it's a complete overhaul like Neil Gaiman's Sandman at other times it may just be an update to the concept, shoehorning it into contemporary storytelling techniques like Will Pfeiffer and Kano's recent update of HERO.

At its most basic, the original Dial H for Hero, was the epitome of wish-fulfillment comics of the time. Every month, you'd have a new person transform into a new hero at the behest of the H-Dial. There were infinite, new and different brightly coloured characters to magically become at the push of a button. Ordinary people could become a Superman-analogue and fight crime. In the modern HERO series, though, that concept has kind of been turned on its ear. The principles are still the same, you've got an updated H-Dial transforming people into heroes, but it has become darker, a new kind of "Be careful what you wish for..." scenario in which everyone is miserable, all the time.

This is, of course, a grand generalisation based on only the first two issues that form the first half of a story-arc, but so far the deconstructionist almost pathological hatred of spandex, is in full swing. Where Pfeiffer is going with it, I couldn't say. It's interesting, but depressing at the same time. In its strive to make things more realistic, to try and ground some of the more fantastical elements, a certain sense of wonder to the comics industry has disappeared. You're no longer awed by four-colour fantasies, the innocence lost.

HERO is but one example of the phenomenon, it abounds across the medium creating dark reflections of its icons.

Hopes and dreams are rarely what they seem to be anymore. They're categorised as pipe dreams, not worth living, or are seen as being superimposed over the harsh light of reality, such as recent issues of Mystic and Stormwatch: Team Achilles have portrayed them as. Mystic taking the idea of a fanboy, ridiculing it, and shoving it into a magical world in which the delusions of what "should be" is made manifest, the fanboy rewriting the plot.

In Stormwatch: Team Achilles, though, the nihilism runs deeper. The core concept presents itself as a military group sanctioned by the UN to take out superpowered beings -- regardless almost of which side of the battle, "good or evil", they happen to fall on -- due to distrust and fear, and a pre-emptive strike against the "gods" who might one day decided to rule us instead of protect us. That's just the concept, in a recent issue, imposition of will, living out fantasies, and the fact that "everything is wrong" comes crashing down around the head of the story's antagonist -- a man who has the power to transfigure reality within his town to his whims.

A writer even, taken down by a militaristic group.

There's an irony to the whole thing that verges on being pathetic. Pop will eat itself, indeed. I think I just lost my point.

3. Remission

...and for my next trick I will make world debt, human suffering, and Richard Simmons disappear.

When you're a child, you often gravitate to certain ideologies whether consciously or not. You focus on specific memes that interest you, and get passed on through your behaviour, and the types of things you play with. Often times, it will be an iconic character such as Spider-Man, Batman, or Superman, despite children these days not reading many comics, if reading comics at all. Batman himself is such a huge cultural image that regardless of the source, -- the comics, the television show, the animated series, or the films --, he is often considered comics' "most popular character. His influence, design, and stature just lend themselves to the iconography of Western culture. Very few people in North America would fail to recognise the Bat symbol (or the S-shield for that matter).

It seems only fitting and inevitable that such an iconic character would be adapted and integrated into other means of storytelling: comics, film, novels, and now manga. Kia Asamiya's Batman: Child of Dreams isn't the first time a manga artist has taken on Batman -- Katsuhiro Otomo of Akira fame had a short story in Batman: Black & White -- but it certainly is the longest, clocking in over three hundred pages. Also, strangely enough, it's not a work that shows us the excesses of manga, although it does incorporate many of the sparse backgrounds during action sequences, and is told in a fairly measured "decompressed" manner. Honestly, it's not a work that's too far removed from something like Ed Brubaker's current run featuring the Charlatan systematically removing Batman's rogues gallery in Detective Comics. It's a well-crafted story, no matter which side of the Pacific you're on.

Essentially, as how it was originally produced and published, the book is told in two halves. The first half is a sort of East meets West, as a Japanese news crew comes to Gotham City in order to get an interview with Batman. In it, despite largely being set-up the book moves at a fairly frenetic pace, seeing him run through the gamut of many his major rogues -- Two-Face, the Penguin, the Riddler, and the Joker. ...but they're not his foes. That's part of what adds the intrigue and will propel the story through the second half, turning it around to be West meets East, as Batman must track down the one responsible for "creating" the villains in Tokyo.

Asamiya's artwork throughout the piece is gorgeous. As he said in the interview that accompanies this volume, he was highly influenced for the work by the artists, Frank Miller, Mike Mignola, and Todd McFarlane, which shows in the highly iconic, darkness of Gotham City. There are snippets of capes, shadows, and silhouettes filling the pages. This is not to say that you should expect to see copies of Mignola, Miller, and McFarlane on the pages, but the spirit and approach of their artwork shines through on the page. When we arrive in Tokyo, though, the pages -- and skies, I should add -- open up. Everything becomes brighter, more expansive, and in a way less space is used per page, more room left in the panels. It's a shift in the visual style of the work that instantly tells us, we're somewhere else.

Now, the story itself embodies the ultimate of fan wish-fulfillment. You get to live out your fantasy by literally becoming duplicates of the villain you choose and play out your last moments battling wits -- or just plain battling -- with Batman. There's a certain level of pathos you feel for these wannabe villains, in just how pathetic they are in comparison to the "real thing". It shows that no matter how much you want it, no matter how far you go to achieve it, you can never be the original, and you'll only be a copy that will eventually wind up destroyed.

There's an interesting undercurrent running through Batman: Child of Dreams over this that I don't think I would have noticed were it not for Jonathan Vankin's Vertigo Pop! series, Tokyo. This is the idea of the "visual kei", or the extremes of odd costumes that Japanese pop stars go to and which their fans copy to minute details. In a way, this idea of extreme emulation, extreme fanaticism, is carried over into Child of Dreams with Batman and his villains as the "pop stars". I'm not sure if Asamiya was perhaps inspired by this cult of personality, but it adds an interesting realistic flavour that alludes to the pop culture of Japan. I'm not sure if I were well versed in Japanese culture, I would have noticed more, but this seems to be the predominant one.

At the end of the work, though, Batman is faced with an insane and perverse, dark reflection of himself, one brought about by obsession and fanaticism, delving into the depths of a driven collector's psyche. The original dreamer prevails over a nightmare, showing that hope still can come. I'll leave you with the last words spoken to Batman's "#1 fan":

Careful what you wish for, they say, and take care, lest your dreams consume you.

Next Week: Who knows what lurks in the hearts of men?

Scary Monsters & Super Creep ~ ONE

1. The First Salvo

Do you remember the first comic that you ever bought?

Do you remember the circumstances surrounding it? Whether you were a kid with your friends, riding your bike up to the local 7-11, and you had an extra sixty cents to spare, so you bought that issue of Amazing Spider-Man that was sitting there with a Lizard cover that looked cool? How you sat down and pored over the pages before lending it to Jimmy, who returned it without a cover and chocolate prints all over the pages.

Well, I have an eidetic memory, basically, I remember everything. I can tell you what the first movie I saw in theatres was: ET: The Extra Terrestrial. I can tell you what the first adult novel I read was: a hardcover edition of HG Wells' stories including War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, and The Invisible Man, given to me by my grandfather when I was four and I devoured every page. The spring of that year was also the first time I kissed a girl, Margaret, as she was five and going to Kindergarten the next year, starting off a long string of affairs with older women (I've never dated anyone younger than me).

I thought it would be interesting to start off the "first" column discussing "first" things like my first comic. Yet, through all of this, I haven't got a clue what my first comic book was. This suggests to me that it was something bought for me before my second birthday -- which would mean before 1983. It's somewhat strange, because usually you can hand me anything in my vast collection of stuff and I can tell you when I got it and the circumstances surrounding it, but I can't remember that.

I know that I would have got it at the Jerseyville General Store, which had a rack of comics that changed regularly, usually carrying DC and odd small publishers, never any Marvel there. Marvel books I had to get in Ancaster at the Zehrs there. Both the Gene Colan and Ed Hannigan Batman stick in my mind, I remember having Batmans around #350, but I couldn't tell you which ones. This is my problem actually, my earliest comic books I don't have anymore. Either they were thrown out, given away, or destroyed in some, way, shape or form. It really wasn't until '84 or '85 when I got my first long box that I really paid any attention to what I had and where I kept it and even then things I "didn't like", didn't get put it the box, it was mainly reserved at first for Swamp Thing, horror books, Batman and Detective Comics from then on.

Up until Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, I wasn't exactly what you'd call a comics "collector", I was just a reader. I honestly didn't care if I got the next issue of Batman or not, it was just another form of entertainment, and often I could get better out of old sci-fi and horror novels. Swamp Thing was what changed my mind. Moore's stories, with richly textured art from the likes of Steve Bissette, John Totleben, Stan Woch, Ron Randall, and Rick Veitch, just drew me in. They were exactly what a young horror fan needed in addition to the black and white magazines, Stephen King novels, and the bad horror b-movies I used to watch on Sunday afternoons, like It Came from Outer Space and Horrors of the Black Museum.

Now, I'm not going to lie to you and tell you, "I was there from the very beginning." I wasn't. I read several of Marty Pasko's Swamp Thing issues before Moore and really didn't care for them, it made me pretty much ignore the book on the stands, even when the writer changed. The first issue of Alan Moore's Swamp Thing I bought was #38. It was illustrated by Stan Woch and John Totleben, and quite simply I bought it because it had underwater vampires. That may sound silly now, but to my four year old brain, I heard "underwater vampires" and I automatically thought "cool", or whatever it was that kid's then said when they thought something was neat.

For those of you who haven't read it, let me tell you a little bit about it. The story takes place during the American Gothic storyline, the one where Swamp Thing is state-hopping at the bidding of John Constantine. Basically, it's your "town overrun by vampires" story, but with a twist. As the years progressed, a group of vampires discovered a perfect way to exist without being bothered by pesky things like sunlight by moving underwater in the dark, living in the sunken town of Rosewood, Illinois. There's your high concept there that hooks the kids, like me. Basically, from there, it's up to Swamp Thing to stop the underwater vampires, who've started to breed, from coming back up out of the water and killing whatever they feel like. Simple, isn't it?

It continued into the next issue with "Fish Story", and that may be one of the reasons why I continued reading the book, but dressed up in an intelligently told tale, were all of the things that I loved from the horror b-movies I watched. Now that I can look back upon this with more "worldly" eyes, I can see that Moore was playing with the classics, turning them on their ear, and creating something that was true to the heritage of the "monsters" and yet completely fresh and different. He did it in these two issues with vampires, then werewolves, zombies, serial killers, and the haunted house. As a horror fan, I just ate this stuff up like candy.

Honestly, though, it does show you a method to Moore's madness that you can see is even true today. He's very good at taking something old and making it new, giving it a fresh spin. Swamp Thing has its roots in all the old horror stories, Watchmen grew out of Charlton, Tom Strong and Supreme both come from Superman and Captain Marvel, and so on and so forth.

It's amazing how he does it.

2. Welcome to the Swamp

Carrying on with the Swamp Thing thread, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the beginnings of the lovable muck monster, with Len Wein and Berni Wrightson's initial issues that are collected in Swamp Thing: Dark Genesis. Although you might expect me to start with the first collection of Alan Moore's Saga of the Swamp Thing, I thought considering that I'm talking about "first things", the beginning was as natural a place to start, as opposed to a third of the way in. Dark Genesis collects the first Swamp Thing story from House of Secrets #92 and the first ten issues of the first Swamp Thing series.

Note: I will start out with a caveat before I go into this collection. Basically, whoever decided to print this in the first place -- the book was originally published back in '91 -- they excised all of the story titles, creator credits, and indicia, and the like. Although it marginally makes this seem a bit more like one continuous work broken up into "chapters", it really is nothing of the sort. In my obsession with all things Swamp Thing, I've since gone back and purchased every single issue -- for quite a small fortune -- and I can honestly say that part of the fun of Wein and Wrightson issues were the campy horror titles for the stories. Titles like "The Man Who Wanted Forever" and "The Clockwork Horror"

If you're not above it, you can take a big, black marker and write the following titles in the book beneath the splash pages -- there's ample room for them to be put back in.

1 - "Dark Genesis" / 2 - "The Man Who Wanted Forever" / 3 - "The Patchwork Man" / 4 - "Monster on the Moors" / 5 - "The Last of the Ravenwind Witches" / 6 - "The Clockwork Horror" / 7 - "Night of the Bat" / 8 - "The Lurker in Tunnel 13" / 9 - "The Stalker from Beyond" / 10 - "The Man Who Would Not Die"

The saga of the Swamp Thing starts out simply enough in House of Secrets, in a story that was originally only supposed to be a one-off exercise. In it, we're presented with a story of jealousy and revenge, as a slighted scientist murders his partner for his wife, only to have the murdered man come back as the Swamp Thing. An easy little horror piece, that honestly isn't even about the Alec Holland we know and love, but a precursor Alex Olson. This schism will eventually be explained during Alan Moore's run, but it is interesting to see it presented as a prelude to the main body of Wein and Wrightson's work. What's somewhat funny is that this story managed to spark anything at all. Sure, it has some nice, dark, and moody artwork from Wrightson, but it's incredible overwritten. Although I could probably argue that about quite a few of Len Wein's scripts, this one really makes me wonder, with lines like:

He stands silently behind her, the needle poised to strike -- to end the life of the only thing in this world that makes my existence bearable -- the only reason I live -- fury fills the spaces behind my eyes -- and I walk into the room...

...and, of course, all of that is in a panel with the murderer standing behind Olson's wife with a needle, while Swamp Thing crashes through a window. You know, something can be said for a certain amount of brevity in comics storytelling.

There are some techniques, though, that Wein will employ in the writing in later issues of Swamp Thing, like multiple narration. Here, it's used to differentiate between the thoughts of Swamp Thing and those of Damian Ridge, the jealous scientist, and it's a nice way to flip back and forth between different settings rather than using an omniscient narrator.

The first issue of the actual Swamp Thing series, after which this entire volume is named, retells and reinterprets the origin of the muck monster. Although the basics are the same -- scientist murdered, runs into the swamp, comes back as giant muck monster. You know, the usual -- the story is transposed into a modern setting, and our cast of characters changes and expands. Here we've no jealous suitor, but a criminal organisation known as the Conclave, vying for Alec and Linda Holland's bio-restorative formula, one that "could make forests out of deserts." Added to the cast is Lt. Matt Cable, who is hired to guard the Hollands for the government. Which, you have to admit, he does a really bloody terrible job at, not only allowing Alec to get murdered, but later after rebuilding the laboratory in the exact same spot, he lets Linda get killed too. Matt Cable's idiocy will speak volumes as to some of the contrivances Wein has us believe in the course of the book.

We have to remember that this book was created and written in the early seventies and wouldn't get to the "sophisticated suspense" of the 80's for almost a decade. Wein borrows heavily from classic and not-so-classic horror movies in creating his serial storytelling. That's another thing you should always note when reading this volume, it was creating at a time when the "story-arc" was an issue, one single issue. Although it continued serially it was written episodically, each issue was essentially a single-issue story with continued subplots, like Matt Cable's futile and somewhat stupid trek to capture Swamp Thing. Keep in mind, this isn't meant to excuse bad writing, or shoddy storytelling, just to place the story in a certain context to better understand it.

The second issue introduces the man who will become the Swamp Thing's arch-nemesis, but when he first appears he's little more than a stock horror b-movie character, the mad scientist who creates "abominations of nature", who lives in a giant castle on a cliff overlooking a small rustic village, and enjoys going off in long, involved tirades about taking over the world and all that. I am, of course, talking about Anton Arcane. His plan here, though, is to capture Swamp Thing, switch bodies with him, and then use the power of the Swamp Thing body to crush the people who made fun of him and criticised his work, you know the usual. The logistics of Arcane's magic are best left forgotten, due to the fact that Arcane grows to Swamp Thing stature -- and can talk, I might add, something that the Wein Swamp Thing generally doesn't do aside from the occasional "No!" or "Arcane!" -- yet, Swamp Thing is somehow transformed back into Alec Holland, instead of actually switching into Arcane's old and disease-riddled body. It's played off as the effects of a "Soul Jar", but who really cares about these little details when reading a comic about a giant muck-encrusted monster?

Wein and Wrightson's Swamp Thing is a b-movie in comic form, something that should be readily apparent to anyone reading this, fraught with all the usual clichés and conventions of the horror genre: mad scientists, evil shadowy corporations, misunderstood monsters born in matters of chance and circumstance, a trigger happy "hero" attempting to bring the monster in, and a beautiful woman that stands between the "hero" and the "monster". In a somewhat odd turn, that somewhat defies the common convention of the heroine being held captive by her oppressive and insane relative, the beautiful woman, Abigail Arcane, is introduced in the third issue, along with Swamp Things's Frankenstein Monster analogue, the Patchwork Man.

What's interesting about this isn't the fact that the Patchwork Man is Gregori Arcane, Abby's father experimented upon by good old Anton, or that his battle with the Swamp Thing derives from a misunderstanding between the two of them, both trying to protect Abby from each other, that's all old hat. What is interesting is that without captions and thought balloons, often narrating from both Swamp Thing and the Patchwork Man at the same time, it would largely be a silent issue. This is true of a large percentage of Wein's issues, aside from visuals, a large portion of each issue is told almost entirely through Swamp Thing's thoughts. Without them, the book would indeed be a largely different animal, and Swamp Thing himself probably wouldn't be as likeable as he appears, looking more to us like a silent, hulking monster.

That's an important distinction when you think of how he'd be perceived by the characters around him. Even in a world filled with Batman and Superman, with all their colourful rogues, you'd still probably be frightened of a large green thing that doesn't talk and probably smells like a swamp. Yet, none of this quite gets at Matt Cable's determination to follow Swamp Thing to the ends of the Earth, intent on destroying him. I'll just put in Cable's explanation for his quest from issue four, which is pretty much the same as all other times he curses Swamp Thing:

Gratitude is only for the innocent, Abigail. Something that monster is not!

He killed my friends -- Linda and Alec Holland -- and someday -- somehow -- I'm going to make him pay!

That's his hatred in a nutshell. He believes that Swamp Thing murdered Alec and Linda, and this is from a government agent who does detective work at that. I just don’t get it. There's not even circumstantial evidence that Swamp Thing murdered the two, and how many times did he save Matt and/or Abby even by this issue? I mean, take it at this, how does a green monster who killed two known criminals, -- known criminals, I might add, who were also known to be harassing the Hollands before any death -- with his hands, blow up a lab? ...or better yet, when he can just crush the criminals, why would he bother with a pesky gun to shoot Linda? It may seem silly nitpicking something like this in a book ostensibly about a hulking green swamp monster, but there are certain stretches to character motivation that come off as simply bad writing. Wein's characterisation of Matt Cable, no matter how driven, is one of those examples. It turns a character, who could possibly have been multi-faceted, into a caricature that takes you out of the story by his presence.

It may also sound like I'm harping on certain points, belittling the story here and there, perhaps being over critical of a work that may not deserve it. Wein and Wrightson's Swamp Thing has its faults. Many of them, from the overblown dialogue where virtually every sentence sees the characters screaming -- a funny aside, some reprints of Swamp Thing, had many of the punctuation marks removed, with sentences ending on no demarcation, just blank space in place of the exclamation points -- to the clichéd characterisation and story points, but it is still fun camp, b-movie horror material. You like it, maybe not in spite of being horrible, but because it's so horrible. The Plan 9 from Outer Space effect.

This is camp at its basest, presenting the material honestly, as though it were the first time you were seeing it, even though it borrows heavily from film and stock plots. Like the Scottish werewolf in #4, or the witch-hunts of #5, the Lovecraftian village appropriately outside of Gotham in #8, or the old civil war ghost woman in the swamp -- Auntie Bellum, Wein isn't exactly honing razor-sharp wit here -- in #10. They're stock plots, yes, something every horror aficionado has come across many times previously, it's just that this time they have a giant green monster shoehorned into them.

What's kind of funny is that Alan Moore will play with these same conventions, same clichés, same tricks of the genre, and come out with something a little bit greater. Understatement, sure, but it's interesting to see the same approach done by two different people on the same title that achieve to entirely different effects. Take for instance, Wein's ninth issue, "The Stalker from Beyond", vs. Moore's Walt Kelly tribute issue with Shawn McManus, "Pog". Both featuring a different take on mankind's, or even nature's as is the case with the latter, reaction to the alien, literally and figuratively in this case. Granted, Moore's is more of a humour piece in Kelly's style, but they both get to the heart of being different and being persecuted, a theme that runs through virtually every issue of Swamp Thing actually, a central theme that helps draw an audience.

I should also note that it's Berni Wrightson, for a very large part, which makes the issues as enjoyable as they are. I know I've gone on and on about story elements and what Wein did, but that's largely because being a writer, the story, the writing, is more easily critiqued than the art. It's something that you'll see in a lot of reviews, with the emphasis being placed heavily on story rather than art, aside from some rudimentary, "I like it."

Berni Wrightson was one of the rising stars of the seventies, in the same camp as Mike Kaluta, who grew up with EC Comics and developed a style that spoke of influences from Al Williamson, Frank Frazetta, B. Krigstein, and Joe Orlando -- who also, it should be noted, edited Swamp Thing, with Paul Levitz his assistant. Wrightson brought about an almost visual style to DC's horror pantheon. It's his lines you see being adapted for Sandman by Sam Kieth, or even the style being perpetuated in Swamp Thing by Steve Bissette or Rick Veitch. The older artists' influence is apparent, but so is Wrightson's own. There's a beauty and fluidity to Wrightson's work similar to Neal Adams, but it's darker, more informed by the EC horror.

Finally, there's a tease in the final panel of #10 for the next issue, "The Conqueror Worms", which I don't remember a hell of a lot about, but I think it actually had giant wormy thingies battling Swamp Thing, and an artist other than Berni Wrightson. Nestor Redondo, who honestly wasn't a bad follow-up, even though Wein's scripts continued to get a little campier, then we saw a few fill-ins from David Michelinie and Gerry Conway, before Wein himself returned to close out the first series. Who knows if DC is going to collect those remaining fourteen issues, let alone complete Alan Moore's run.

Next Week: Yes, I said "Next Week". Maybe we'll discuss something about it being a bad idea to eat drugs that happen to just be lying around on the floor. Oh, and driving people nuts with split infinitives. To boldly go where no comics column has gone before, and all that. Oh, okay, where several have gone before, but did they have rubber duckies?