Never Meet Your Heroes

The Boys by Garth Ennis and co-created, designed, and illustrated by Darick Robertson.
Comic Book Review by Kerey McKenna.

So many superheroes these days. In comic books and theaters, on broadcast TV and now the streaming services. There are standalone heroes and hero team-ups and movies where heroes team up with other versions of themselves from parallel universes. Seemingly even some notable bombs can’t stop some superhero franchises from chugging along. You could wipe half of them from existence but they’d come roaring back the next year, in even greater numbers. Does every other movie or TV show have to be an adaptation of some sci-fi pulp fiction rag starring some model-perfect celebrity who packed on the muscle (or donned a padded suit) to get in on the craze some of you may ask? Who will save us from this legion of costumed clowns?

That’s where “The Boys” come in.

The Boys comic book series, running from 2006 to 2012, is a brutal deconstruction of comic book superheroes. With Amazon Prime’s new streaming adaptation coming this week I wanted to briefly revisit the original comics.

They are set in a world where Corporate America mass produces a glut of irresponsible and dangerous real life super-powered people in a profane combination of celebrity culture and defense spending. Very few of the “Superheroes” in the story (most of whom are clear parodies of DC and Marvel Characters) have any redeeming qualities. They are a result of the mega corporation, Vault American (think OCP from the RoboCop trilogy) either attempting to create human weapons, or covering up when they cause industrial accidents that result in some poor schmuck getting doused in chemicals and coming out the other end with superpowers. Whether grown in a vat or coming into contact with hazardous chemicals, Vaught slaps garish costumes on them, creates back stories, and makes them rich with a share of the merchandising and comic book rights. Comics are bowdlerized or outright fictionalized accounts of their “adventures.” Vaught American has the marketing down to a science, with a legion of super IP for all tastes: Teams of young “Social Justice Warrior” heroes checking off every demographic box for progressives. Jingoistic “God, Family, Country” heroes for Middle America. Vaught American doesn’t really care about either value set, just about casting the widest net possible in pursuit of profit. Many of the supers themselves are assigned their heroic identities and accompanying politics much in the way that pro wrestlers are—the costume and persona are assigned by management and it is the performers’ responsibility never to break character in public.

Meanwhile, as there is little need for actual day-to-day superheroics (battles in this world are rare but tend to be brutal, vicious, short and likely to result in collateral damage), many of the “heroes” partake in the usual vices of celebrity: sex, drugs, and all manner of irresponsibility with the assurance that their corporate masters will grease the palms to keep them out of the papers and jail. As if any jail could hold them…

Not happy about super-powered menaces with an excellent PR department running around, the US government activates “The Boys,” a small goon squad of individuals given superpowers to keep the garishly dressed supers and their corporate masters in check through blackmail, intimidation, and brutal application of lethal force:

Billy Butcher: Leader of the The Boys, this rough and tumble British bruiser has brains to match his considerable brawn. Always accompanied by his bulldog Terror, Butcher has a veneer of gallows and profane humor covering a very personal vendetta against the world’s most powerful super, The Homelander, a blond ubermensch in a star-spangled costume. Clearly a riff on Superman.

Mother’s Milk: Billy’s lancer. His mother worked in a Vaught industrial facility and exposure to chemicals passed along extra superpower imbuing nutrients when she nursed him.

The Frenchman: What’s his nationality? He’s French. Why do you think he has this outrageous accent?!

The Female (of the Species): a stoic (mostly silent) teenage waif who is ready for any excuse to fold men into pretzels and punt them into the stratosphere.

Wee Hughie: The newest member of the team and the primary audience POV character to learn about this world. Hailing from bonny Scotland, he is recruited to the team and granted superpowers after his girlfriend is brutally killed as collateral damage by a reckless super. Brought into the fold by Billy, he is our viewpoint to the ridiculous, profane, and deadly excesses of the supers and the many sins of Vaught America.

The Boys fits in with other works that violently deconstruct a superhero genre that has become inexorably entwined with the comics medium, such as 1980’s classics Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, or millennial fair like Kick-Ass and Super. This was a series that launched two years before the MCU takeover of the international box office and wrapped up the same year as Avengers delivered on the promise of a shared cinematic universe. What would it feel like to revisit this harsh take down of superheroes as they’ve started taking over the culture?

After a quick reread I’d say my feelings are still very mixed but curious about what Amazon is going to do with the material.

First, the book revels in over the top graphic depictions of sex and violence (as do many works by co-creator Garth Ennis). Beyond the gut-churning imagery itself, what I find most disconcerting is that the series veers wildly between extreme imagery in service of realism and pathos on one page, and then in the next page pulls a 180 with the violence and sex a punchline for dark humor. The only through line connecting the extremes is a consistent drum beat of cynicism: about politics, about the genre, and about the human (and superhuman) experience.

The anger and cynicism that drips off the page (with all the blood and gore) makes the most sense if you take into account that Garth Ennis is ambivalent or even outright hostile to the superhero genre that dominates comic books. In laying out a narrative in which honest blue-collar goons can take down celebrity ubermenschen, it seems like Ennis often isn’t writing to make a grand statement about the nature of corruption of power, but rather an exercise in catharsis to violently banish the costumed clones that take up so much of his work schedule when he’d rather be writing about spies, soldiers and gunmen.

I felt the series was strongest in its earliest installments in which the two most naive members of the cast, Wee Hughie the rookie member of The Boys, and Star Light, a heroine who has just graduated to “The Seven” (A dark parody of the Justice League, led by the Homelander) still have all their preconceptions about superheroes—and themselves. As the story unfolds, they see these preconceptions cruelly undermined at every turn as they come to realize just how dark and twisted the world really is.

A lot of what the pair discover isn’t so much the dark secrets of the fictional world, but indictments of the superhero genre and comic book industry itself. Rereading this years later (very much after the superhero takeover of the mainstream) many of the most important critiques still ring true (treatment of female creators and female characters in the industry, shallow virtue/value signaling by mega corporations, and how much corporate lobbying protects big business from actual market forces). Other parts of the story (9/11, The Avengers being relatively unknown by the public when compared to The Justice League, its Stan Lee Parody) feel very much like products of their time and have not aged well at all.

As I said I’m interested in what Amazon is going to do with this so in my next installment I will binge the new show and report back whether the transition to TV and some new creators in the mix have smoothed out the rough edges.

Kerey McKenna is a contributing reviewer to Nerds who Read and SMOF for the annual Watch City Steampunk Festival. Check it out at www.watchcityfestival.com.

Pulp Fiction on Pulp Paper

The Jack & Maggie Starr Series: A Killing in Comics, Strip for Murder, and Seduction of the Innocent by Max Allan Collins. Illustrations by Terry Beatty.
Book Review by Kerey McKenna.

I am talking about funny books, kids. The most popular entertainment medium of all here in 1954. My city boasts twenty comics publishers putting out 600-some titles every month, selling eighty to one hundred million copies a week, reaching an audience larger than movies, TV, radio and magazines combined (they figure a comic book gets passed around or traded to six or more readers). It’s an industry employing a thousand-plus writers, artists, editors, letterers and assorted spear carriers...It’s a form of story-telling that arrays newsstands with superhero fantasy and talking ducks, through those are outnumbered of late by monsters both supernatural and humans, as well as cowboys and Indians, romance and war, and science fiction...The chief audience is kids but grown-ups indulge too, especially veterans who learned to read portable funny books, bought at the PX, in the Second World War and more recently in Korea…. What’s important for you to keep in mind is how big, how popular the comic book industry is right now. And how everybody and your Uncle Charlie wants to kill it. What the hell...every murder mystery needs a victim…” –Jack Starr

In this entry for Noir November let’s take a look at the Jack & Maggie Starr Series, historical fiction novels, written in the pulp mystery tradition that explore the formative years of the American Comic Book industry. Who better to tell a Noir style story in that time than Max Allan Collins, who twice won the Shamus Award for excellent writing in the P.I. mystery sub-genre, and has written prose novels, graphic novels, and comic books. His historical fiction gangster comic series Road to Perdition later adapted into the beloved Tom Hanks movie of the same name.

Today much of comics IP is held by the monolithic “Big Two Publishers” who are themselves divisions of two rival large multimedia empires. On the whole comic books are now sold to “the collector’s market” of invested (adult) fans buying directly online or at specialty comic book stores. This is in stark contrast to the so called Golden Age, a wild and woolly time for the nascent comics publishing industry. Focused primarily in New York City, with a mob of small publishers fighting for space on the newsstands for an audience of primarily children, teenagers, and the emerging counterculture. The men and women of the early comic book industry managed to make a place for themselves at the end of the Dirty 30’s, fight through the war years, and arrive in the 1950’s to get their shot at post-war American prosperity. Assuming that they didn’t find themselves censored, swindled out of their royalties...or dead.

In a New York City filled with colorful characters, both in and out of the funny pages, is Jack Starr, a tall, handsome and square jawed former Army MP and very specialized detective. He only investigates one type of crime and works for only one client: Jack investigates crimes related to comic books and the funny pages. His only client is his late father’s company, the Starr Syndicate, one of the outfits that licenses characters from comic books to newspapers to be published as comic strips. Jack is a “troubleshooter” for the syndicate. Attached as they are to the august institution of newspapers, the syndicate wants to avoid or manage scandals that would damage the wholesome image of the superheroes and cartoon animals that they sell to newspapers around the country. In addition to fearing loss in sales, the Starr Syndicate has good reason to avoid close public scrutiny. The basis of their empire of family friendly characters used to be printing race forms and “art books” (wink wink nudge nudge, know what I mean). Despite a shift to more wholesome fare in the 20’s, Mafia families bought shares of competing publishing syndicates and later comic book publishers. In addition to getting a piece of the action of sales, during Prohibition they insisted that the lumber used to print material in dry NYC be shipped on big trucks and imported from wet Canada.

Usually Jack’s job is fairly simple: running background checks on new employees, leaning on artists who fall behind on their deadlines, and trying not to get distracted by his knockout of a boss Maggie Starr, his stepmother and father’s widow. Only five years Jack’s senior, Maggie is a former striptease artist who inherited the majority of her late husband’s comic strip empire. Not ashamed of her past, and having a keen mind for business, Maggie even became a restaurateur, opening the “Strip Joint,” an upscale Manhattan Steakhouse where patrons dine on strip steak, surrounded by wall art from famous comic strips and waited on staff that are clearly part time or former...well you get the idea.

When their industry threatens to get ink in the crime blotter instead of the funny pages, like the murders of a publishing magnate or of a doctor who claims comic books create juvenile delinquents, Maggie puts Jack to work quickly to find the party responsible and bring them to justice to get the story out of the papers as fast as possible.

The Jack and Maggie Starr mysteries are, in the pulp noir tradition, fun if formulaic mysteries with just enough brawling and sex to keep you going to the next chapter. Jack Starr’s witty internal narration, and illustrations at the beginning of each chapter by Terry Beatty done in a classic pop art style, add a nice touch to the homage to classic pulps. Aside from the eccentric Jack and Maggie, most of the characters of the 1950’s comic and cartoon world are clearly based on real personalities of the time but with the names barely changed in ways that would make Law & Order claims of “ripped from the headlines” blush. For example the colorful ubermensch hero “Wonderguy” was created by two naive young men, “Harry Spiegel” & “Moe Sholman” who would not get the full share of the fortune their character makes in merchandising. Other popular superheroes are “Batwing,” created by “Rod Krane,” and “Amazonia” created by a Harvard professor a bit on the kinky side. Wanting to put the kibosh on all these characters is noted child psychologist Dr. Werner Frederk who publishes a sensational book “Ravish the Lambs” and testifies before congress accusing comic books of being the key factor in post war juvenile delinquency.

The historical fiction here is not as divergent from real life as say The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Those familiar with the history of American comics will readily catch the “Brand X” references. But if you’re less familiar with the history of the industry, don’t worry. The “Brand X” names aren’t too distracting and might even encourage you to learn more about the real movers and shakers, heroes and villains of the period, especially apropos in the wake of the passing of one of the last great living links to that time, Stan Lee.

Whether you are either an old hand at P.I. style noir mysteries or a fan of comic books I would certainly recommend giving any of these books a read.

Kerey McKenna is a contributing reviewer to Nerds who Read and SMOF for the annual Watch City Steampunk Festival. Check it out at www.watchcityfestival.com.

Cannonball Kessel Run

Marvel Comics Han Solo (2016 Volume 1).
Written by Marjorie Liu with Art by Mark Brooks and Olivier Coipel.
Graphic Novel Review by Kerey McKenna.

Han Solo is always defensive of his beloved spacecraft the Millennium Falcon. Unlike Luke’s streamlined X-Wing fighter, designed to invoke the essence of an earth fighter jet, the Falcon’s size, asymmetry, and cobbled-together look do not suggest speed. But Han assures the skeptical Luke, Obi-Wan (and the audience watching) that this is a fast ship. In his capable hands this ship made the Kessel Run in an impressive 12 Parsecs (and nerds being nerds, there has been decades of discussion and retcons about Han’s famous boast). Over the course of the saga we see the Falcon tear through space, swerving around asteroids, running imperial blockades, and leaving Death Stars 1, 2, and the Starkiller base as refuse in its wake.

But maybe it’s about time Han put his money where his mouth is and prove just how fast the Falcon really is and whether he is as great a pilot as he claims. What if, instead of getting mixed up with a blood feud between warring sects of space wizards (which doesn’t end too well for him in episode VII), Han and Chewie found themselves in a classic madcap racing movie like Burt Reynolds's Cannonball Run?

Yes, in this story from Marvel Comics, Han, Chewie, and their iconic Millenium Falcon are up against the galaxy’s most esteemed racing pilots in the glamourous Dragon Void Space Race, a harrowing three-stage ordeal. Each stage consists of a jump to hyperspace, an obstacle course, and a mandatory refueling period at a nearby planet. For the pilot with the first ship across the finish line waits a Hutt’s Ransom of a winner’s purse, for the losers, the agony of defeat at best, or death in the cold vacuum of space at worst.

Set shortly after the events of A New Hope, Han and Chewie are racing for their lives on a mission for “Her Worshipfulness” Princess Leia and her rebel alliance.

There is an intelligence leak within the rebellion and three rebellion operatives need to be retrieved from the field and brought back for debriefing. This is all the more crucial because one of the operatives is most likely an imperial mole and will need to be dealt with. As Han and Chewie are not known to be part of the established rebellion hierarchy yet, Leia enters the pair into the Dragon Void Race with each of the three refueling pit stops to serve as chance to extract one of the operatives from the field.

When Han swaggers into the opening reception of the well-heeled professional racers with their purpose-built racing ships and corporate sponsors, my mind went instantly to the film Hidalgo where the American cowboy and his mustang go up against the thoroughbreds (both equine and human) of Arabia and Europe. In short order we are introduced to a handful of other pilots in the race worth knowing who turn up their nose at the smuggler that has found himself in their midst, with the notable exception of one respected elder racer that speaks of outer space racing with mystical reverence for the spirituality underlying all things laser gun and hyper drive. This being Star Wars, wizened elders that speak with mystical reverence tend to be on to something.

To defend the honor of the Falcon against these snobs (and accomplish the mission to thwart the Empire), Han and Chewie will have to push their piloting and smuggling skills to the limit not to be left in the dust or in the hands of the Imperials.

Is this arc of Star Wars a new epic for the franchise? Does it reveal new truths about the established characters or provide crucial errata for the saga’s lore? No and no...which in many ways makes it a fun quick read. I’m surprised I hadn’t come across other stories in which Han and Chewie take their cues from classic Burt Reynolds. Fun Fact: with his cowboy swagger and smuggling ways, Reynolds was actually offered the opportunity to play Han Solo in the first Star Wars, which he turned down. So it would make sense that Reynolds's style car chase movies are deep down in the Solo DNA.

The art is sharp, conveying the kinetic action the story requires, and Han and Leia look very much like Ford and Fisher looked when they portrayed the iconic heroes. I mention that last part because over the years, the degree to which the most recognizable characters resembled their screen incarnations varied from artist to artist, and with the new Solo movie landing this week, with Alden Ehrenreich in the title role, it’s possible future pen-and-ink Han will look more like Alden than like Harrison.

So if you still aren’t sold on the new Han Solo yet this may either help get you in the mood or reassure you that there are more classic Han Solo tales to be told.

Kerey McKenna is a contributing reviewer to Nerds who Read and SMOF for the annual Watch City Steampunk Festival. Check it out at www.watchcityfestival.com.

The Annual Comic Book Massive Crossover Event

By Kerey McKenna.
Part III of a Series.

In Parts I and II of this series, I traced the rise of the Massive Crossover Event in movies and TV, coming to a climax in this weekend’s box office record for the opening of Marvel’s Avengers: Infinity War. But back in the world of comics, where superhero crossovers were born in the 1940s, things might not be going so well.

For those once mighty titans of childhood imagination that Disney and Warner Brothers keep around to keep generating more superheroes to one day adapt for TV and Movies, things are going a bit more The Mummy than Infinity War. Is it possible that fans no longer want to see big crossover events with heroes and villains duking it out? Is it possible EVENT FATIGUE is a drag on the growth of comic book purchases, deterring new readers from getting into comics, and sending once loyal readers elsewhere?

I had my own episode of event fatigue as a young reader due to the Onslaught event. I call it my “Be sure to drink your Ovaltine” moment.

Fans of the annual holiday classic, A Christmas Story, should immediately get the reference: in one scene in the movie the now adult narrator takes us through the childhood anticipation of collecting Ovaltine labels, sending away for a special prize, a Little Orphan Annie Decoder Ring, initiating him into the “secret circle” that helps his favorite classic radio character in her adventures. Receiving the ring weeks later by mail (forever in “kid time”), he carefully decodes the special “secret circle” radio broadcast, only to discover that this “very important message” from the characters and entertainers he loves is… “Be Sure to Drink Your Ovaltine.” All this time, effort, and money spent on Ovaltine labels just for a commercial for more Ovaltine.

In 1996, the culmination of Marvel Comics’ event Onslaught left me with the same feelings of betrayal and cynicism. My childhood attention span and petty cash had been traded in on something that would just string me along with no satisfying end, just the next pitch to consume more product.

The Onslaught event started as part of the popular X-men series of books. Onslaught was a new villain, the corporeal gestalt of Magneto’s hatred and distrust of regular humanity combined with the darker urges and raw psychic power of Professor X. As this new creature gained power, he started causing problems all around Marvel’s shared world and came to challenge other Marvel icons like the Incredible Hulk, Spider-man, the Fantastic Four, and the Avengers. To follow the story you not only had to be reading the X-men books, but also the books of those other characters, many of which I usually didn’t buy. But this event seemed so BIG, I had to run around buying as many of those other comics as I could to follow the story.

Over the course of the event the different narrative threads where woven together leading the Marvel heroes to battle the monstrous Onslaught in New York City. With their combined might the heroes win the day, but at the cost of the lives of the Fantastic Four, the Incredible Hulk, and the heavy hitters of the Avengers. To me it felt like the proper ending to a story, that nothing could ever really be the same for a world that lost so many of its iconic heroes. But on the very last page there was a last minute reprieve from the editors. Fear not true believers, this is not the end of your beloved heroes, they will be REBORN.

Yes, much to my dismay at the time, I learned that on the heels of this event, a new series of books would launch called Heroes Reborn, a mini-series to create new, more contemporary origin stories for characters like the Fantastic Four and Iron Man. And while I read some of these books (mostly borrowed from friends), I felt let down that this big epic story wouldn’t have lasting consequences.

These events are becoming a pain for the artists and writers as well. Creative teams tasked with writing a monthly serial about one set of heroes now find that one or more issues have been hijacked by the story of another creative team. For example, the original Infinity Gauntlet mini-series from 1991, on which the new the Marvel movie is based, used one creative team (Jim Starlin, George Perez, and Ron Lim) to tell a grand story in sequence over 6 issues. In contrast last year’s Secret Empire Event (see my commentary on that controversial story here) ran from April to August of 2017 and by my reckoning played across over 50 issues, (eleven of those by a team tasked with the event and then the other issues parts of their regular runs tying in with the new storyline).

So now you have creative teams that had or were working to develop their own narrative style, voice, and ongoing story lines getting an editorial mandate that everything would be placed on the back burner as the fallout of Captain America seemingly handing over America to the crypto-fascist Hydra organization played out.

And this was an annoyance to both those readers who wanted to see Secret Empire play out, and those who would rather not follow the storyline of Captain America Sentinel of Liberty turning out to be a fascist sleeper agent. Those who wanted to see the story played out had to get all of the main books in the mini-series plus the tie-in and crossover books that might contain vital information. Those who were repulsed by the story had little choice but to simply not buy their regular issues until the whole thing blew over.

Even if those events left bad tastes in the readers’ mouths, they were admittedly trying to tell big grand stories. But other yearly events were more like company-wide pranks, DC being more fond of this thing sort of thing for a while. It ran the event JLApe: Gorilla Warfare in which the Justice League and other DC Characters where transformed into talking gorillas for the duration of the event.

It was a storyline so silly that years later the crew over at DC animation would look back on it and go out of their way to comment on the inanity.

As much as a shared universe of heroes and villains means to comic book fans, it’s possible that the big sprawling crossover event needs to be reined back in. As monthly comic book shop stand sales stagnate or decline, while digital readership and trade paperback collections increase, perhaps it is a time to return to a more self-contained mini-series style for large stories. One of my favorite big epic crossover stories was Kingdom Come by Mark Waid and Alex Ross which told a grand sprawling story across the DC universe but did it as a four issue mini-series managed by one creative team (and as a result holds up excellently as a graphic novel when published as a trade collection).

Similarly Marvel’s 2008 mini-series Old Man Logan by Mark Millar and Steve McNiven used the expansive Marvel lore to present a bleak future and a worn down world-weary Wolverine being pulled out of retirement for one last adventure.

If that premise sounds familiar it’s because it is the loose inspiration for Hugh Jackman’s farewell to the cinematic Wolverine in the film Logan. And that adaptation shrunk the scope of the bleak possible future too, from what happened to the entire Marvel universe, to what happened to the X-men and other mutants. Similarly the film Captain America: Civil War distilled some of the best parts of the premise of the Civil War Comics event, and smoothed out the rough edges by having the crossover aspects contained in one work. Yes, events from civil war are alluded to in other Marvel movies and TV series, but when Civil War: the Movie was playing in the theater the action didn’t have to be annotated with pop ups telling people to tune into Agents of SHIELD on ABC to get more of the story.

So although a shared universe is a device that works well for superhero comics, perhaps publishers should show a bit more care in how they expect their readership to explore these massive universes. Otherwise, they may find more and more readers dropping out to wait for clever Hollywood writers to make a better version of the story later.

Kerey McKenna is a contributing reviewer to Nerds who Read and SMOF for the annual Watch City Steampunk Festival, coming to Waltham, Massachusetts on May 12, 2018. Check it out at www.watchcityfestival.com.

Be True to Your School

The Woods.
Written by James Tynion IV, Art by Michael Dialynas and Jason Gonzalez.
Comic Series Review by Kerey McKenna.

Although the young adult survival horror comic, The Woods, has been on my radar since its premiere, I had never gotten around to reading it. But with March’s release of the last installment, I finally downloaded and read the first volume, then the next, and the next, eventually binge reading all 9 of graphic novel trade editions in one weekend. Despite its sometimes disturbing imagery and emotional gut punches, I felt it was a journey that I—like the protagonists—had to complete.

The Woods is the story of Bay Point Preparatory High School in modern day Wisconsin. Unexpectedly, the school building, faculty, staff, and over 400 students are mysteriously teleported to a dense primordial jungle under an alien sky.

The series follows a band of six seniors as they rise to meet the challenge while wrestling with the same internal and interpersonal struggles that defined their lives back on Earth. But now they have to do it while running from lime green alien bears and other monstrosities lurking in the alien jungle.

The six seniors are:

Maria Ramirez: The ambitious (many would say overly ambitions) student body president that saw her position as the first step on the long path to the White House someday. It’s her duty (at least in her own mind) to step up to this new challenge as her fellow students (and some of the adults) are paralyzed with shock and fear. But will her headstrong nature turn off more potential allies and supporters than she can afford?

Sanami Ota: Captain of the field hockey team and daughter of a troubled home. Fortunately her parents are celebrities in the survivalist/doomsday prepper community, so even if they didn’t provide her a stable home life, she is well-instructed in wilderness survival skills.

Karen Jacobs: Sanami’s field hockey teammate and best friend. With her athleticism, grades, good looks and interpersonal skills she could probably do whatever she wants with her life. If only she could figure out what she wants to do.

Calder McCreedy: The school reprobate that was one more grand prank or one more confiscated pocket knife away from expulsion. His devil may care attitude and familiarity with knives could be keys to surviving in the forest, and an A+ paper on the tactics of Hannibal sacking Rome hint that there are hidden depths to this juvenile delinquent.

Benjamin Stone: Speaking of hidden depths, still waters run deep in linebacker Benjamin. The literal big man on campus, this well-liked gentle giant could probably get whatever he wanted in High School life. If only he had the courage to speak up about what his heart’s desire is.

Isaac Andrews: The exuberant, empathetic, and twee Isaac is the heart of the group that will try to make the best out of a rough situation. He adopts an ugly-cute monkey/bat creature from the forest, dubs him “Doctor Robot,” and in turn this strange alien creature becomes the team mascot. Isaac wants to see the good in others, like his best friend and crush...

Adrian Roth: Bespectacled, thin as a rail, book smart, and misanthropic he’s the walking personification of teenagers everywhere who went through a Nietzsche phase. Upon arriving on the mysterious world he feels an uncanny kinship with the place and gathers the others in an audacious plan to strike into the wilderness on their own and find answers to the event and maybe even a way home. But is his daring initiative his own or is this strange place getting into his head?

The Woods is a wonderful campfire tale of survival horror and the trials and travails of children forced to grow up in a harsh world. When I was a young reader, wilderness survival tales like Hatchet, Lord of the Flies, and Island of the Blue Dolphin were the reading of empowered children before teenage rebels against dystopia started a revolution in the genre.

The artwork is excellent. From the expressive faces and body language, the use of color to contrast the earth with the strange neon alien jungle, and the creative creature designs and cohesive action scenes, the art team more than does its job selling this story.

On the writing front the dialogue carries the day with no extraneous narration. The story reminds me of the early seasons of the TV series Lost, and I mean that in the best way possible. It’s about a group forced to band together to survive, a supernatural/possibly sentient setting, frequent flashbacks to slow feed new information about the protagonists’ back stories, and a lot of conflict based around what these people need to change about themselves—and need to retain—in order to survive.

However unlike Lost or The Walking Dead (show and comic) the creators here clearly had a plan in place and never felt the need to pad out the series with filler or repetitive story arcs. Over the course of the series there are new revelations about the nature of the woods, characters join or leave the main group, and there is drastic character growth all around. Each installment is organically built upon the last, advancing the greater plot towards a satisfying conclusion. The creators knew when to wrap things up, end the story, and walk away.

Kerey McKenna is a contributing reviewer to Nerds who Read and SMOF for the annual Watch City Steampunk Festival, coming to Waltham, Massachusetts on May 12, 2018. Check it out at www.watchcityfestival.com.

Eulogy for Darwyn Cooke

Justice League: The New Frontier
Review by Kerey McKenna

In May 2016 animator and comic book artist Darwyn Cooke passed away, succumbing to terminal cancer. Like many comic fans, I knew Mr. Cooke’s work from the comic book miniseries Justice League: The New Frontier and its 2008 direct to video animated adaptation of the same name (for which Cooke also served as a writer). While Mr. Cooke worked on many projects in the realm of comic book heroes, it is safe to say that New Frontier will stand as his magnum opus; his signature art style, reminiscent of 1950-1960’s commercial art, serves as a complex yet ultimately optimistic tribute to the Silver Age DC heroes and the events of the 20th Century from which they emerged.

Justice League: The New Frontier is an ambitious project. A period piece set mid-century, it seeks to bridge the gap between DC Comics’ Golden Age (characterized by the late 1930’s-WWII: the first generation of mystery men, pulp heroes, and war stories) and the Silver Age (chiefly the 50’s and 60’s characterized by the Baby Boom and the Space Race) and show how the most iconic heroes of that time might have experienced it as participants in history and not simply pop culture artifacts of it.

Indeed, the scope alone is ambitious (especially for a 1 ¼ hour video!). It plays out the highlights of two decades of our nation’s history: WWII, the Korean War, The Red Scare, Women’s Liberation, the Civil Rights movement, the Space Race, and of course, the New Frontier, with Vietnam looming in the distance. It weaves in the narratives of six superheroes: the Golden Age Trinity of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, and the Silver Age heroes Martian Man-hunter, Flash, and Green Lantern. The heroic leads are supported by a large cast of non-super powered adventurers touched by war and now seeking adventure in peace: Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen, P.I. Slam Bradley, the Challengers of the Unknown, and the Suicide Squad, to name a few.

There is a lot going on narratively and historically but I will try to do it justice: The heroes of the Golden Age are forced into early retirement during the post-WWII Red Scare, save for Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman (not coincidentally, the ones with the most staying power throughout the 20th Century and into the 21st). Despite their power, they struggle to find their places in Eisenhower’s America. Batman returns to form as a vigilante striking out at crime from the shadows but begins to wonder if he is striking fear not just into criminals but onto the weak and vulnerable he wants to shield. Superman tries to toe the line as the public face of Truth, Justice, and the American Way, but is troubled by problems that can’t be solved by bending steel or out-racing trains. Chief among them: Wonder Woman’s campaigns in Indochina (i.e. the Vietnamese Civil War in which the US is not yet involved, at least not officially) may be leading her down the path of Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. In a scene that could have come right out of that Vietnam epic, Wonder Woman (played by former Xena actress Lucy Lawless in a spot-on piece of voice casting) explains to a dismayed Superman what she believes are appropriate rules for engagement amidst a bloody insurgency:

Meanwhile, troubled by the bloodshed of the last war in Korea, fighter pilot Hal Jordan seeks peace and purpose as a test pilot in the space program. But perhaps he won’t reach the skies with a rocket but rather a mysterious ring from beyond our world.

And speaking of mysteries from beyond, we have J’onn J’onzz, the Martian Manhunter, a red planet native brought to Earth by cosmic mishap. Deciding to do his part for his adopted home as a police detective, his outsider’s perspective (and telepathy) do not allow him to overlook the failings and inequities of the strange society in which he is immersed.

Finally Barry “The Flash” Alan, the second crimson speedster to bear that name, has to race to thwart the crimes of his rogues gallery and stay one step ahead of a government that seeks to put a stop to “subversive” unregulated vigilantes.

And just in case the tumults of history aren’t enough, the atomic age has spurred “The Center” into action, an eldritch entity from Earth’s primordial past which seeks to cleanse the planet of the humans that now “infect” it. Can our heroes set aside their differences to defeat this prehistoric menace and reach for the stars in a new Space Age?

Cooke’s art style serves as a pitch-perfect tribute to the 1950’s Silver Age of comics while building upon some of the better developments of the last 20 years in both writing and artistic craft. His rich pop-art colors and bold lines would look right at home in the magazines of the 1950’s, save that today’s coloring and printing techniques have gone far beyond the three-color dot mosaics of days gone by. While ultimately an uplifting take on the period, a fair amount of modern cynicism acknowledges the shadows cast by America’s halcyon days.

Whether to start with the graphic novel or with the film adaptation I suppose would come down to which you come across first. The film follows the same overall story as the graphic novel but cuts or rearranges material for the purposes of time and pacing. For example the book features some of the retired (or semi-retired) heroes of the Golden Age and multiple groups of non-costumed heroes like the Challengers of the Unknown and John Henry, arch nemesis of the KKK. In the film the retired heroes make a cameo in the opening credits sequence, the men of action like the Suicide Squad are pushed back to the supporting cast, and John Henry’s struggle against racism is essentially relegated to a footnote. However many of the key scenes of the book survive the jump to the screen, including the aforementioned tense confrontation between Superman and Wonder-Woman, the Flash thwarting a robbery in vintage Las Vegas, and the final battle in which the heroes and the military attempt to fend off a monster attack on Cape Canaveral.

The animated adaptation also brought with it a mighty league of actors to bring these iconic characters to life. I already mentioned Lucy Lawless. Neil Patrick Harris voices the Flash; Kyra Sedgwick, Lois Lane; and Brooke Shields, Carol Ferris.

But the highest recommendation and summation I can give New Frontier is to show you its epilogue, a montage of DC’s Silver Age contrasted with the titular JFK New Frontier speech--a call to action to meet the challenges of the days ahead with American optimism and know how:

It still rings true today.

Kerey McKenna is a contributing reviewer to Nerds who Read and SMOF for the annual Watch City Steampunk Festival. Learn more at www.watchcityfestival.com.