Well Worth The Price Of Admission

El Diablo 1-16 (1989-90)
DC Comics
Gerard Jones, writer
Mike Parobeck, John Nyberg and Paul Fricke, artists

I completely missed this series when it was new on the stands. I don't remember seeing it on the shelves, although I was buying similar "new format" DC books at the time and was also buying the 1990 relaunch of Green Lantern — also written by Gerard Jones — that debuted a few months into El Diablo's run. In fact, I didn't even know anything about the original El Diablo character whose adventures were serialized in All-Star Western beginning in the 1970s, or the modern New 52 version of the character from Suicide Squad.

But more than once I've heard Michael Bailey on one of the many podcasts he appears on praise this short-lived series. If memory serves, Bailey touted the strong characterization and writing Jones brought to the Rafael Sandoval version of El Diablo. I've also heard Bailey praise Mike Parobeck's clean, dynamic art style from this series as well as his short run on the phenomenal 1992 Justice Society of America (sadly, only 10 issues). So, I decided to seek out the back issues and give the series a try. I was not disappointed!

Readers never learn much about Rafael Sandoval's back story or his ties to the previous version of El Diablo, if any. In the first issue of the series, Sandoval has recently been elected to the city council of his home, Dos Rios, Texas, with the backing of the town's amiable mayor. Sandoval has accepted the position because he hopes to improve things for the Hispanic population of Dos Rios, a border town seemingly made up of mostly whites, a generous number of Hispanics and also some black residents. When issues come up that can't be handled in council chambers, Sandoval adopts the El Diablo identity for a more hands-on approach to problem solving.

There are familiar elements of superhero fare in the pages of El Diablo, but most issues of the series tackle much more "real-world" social ills, from drug peddlers to child abductions, political backstabbing to racial tensions. There wasn't a super villain in any of the issues. But there was plenty of peril, excitement and drama.

The title avoids the "preachy" problem so many relevant comics can fall into, too. Jones does an excellent job of presenting both sides of some tough issues without making either side wholly evil or genuinely pure. All of that careful scripting gives El Diablo and the members of his supporting cast multiple dimensions, fleshing them out like real people, not one-dimensional caricatures. The entire creative team makes this book a joy to read. So much so, I wish the title had been able to sustain itself for a longer run.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Obviously, I'm back trying to post on the blog. I greatly appreciate those of you who have continued to check in here even though there haven't been new posts in quite a while. I can't promise even a weekly schedule yet, but I'm going to try to post here when I can. I never did do regular reviews on the Facebook page either, but I did recently post a little something about Dark Horse's Ghost Vol. 1. If you want to check it or any of my other non-review posts out, you can visit the page here.

I Expected A Little Bit More Than Nuggets

Star Wars Vol. 1 tpb: In the Shadow of Yavin
Dark Horse
Brian Wood, writer
Carlos D'Anda, artist

No, I'm not talking about chicken; this book simply has some nuggets of goodness, but I was expecting a more filling, satisfying read than I got.

The done-in-one single-issue comic book is almost a thing of the past. They still pop up from time to time, but very rarely anymore. I've come to accept that fact of modern comics. But I still expect a pretty complete story when I purchase a trade. I'm not saying the story can't continue into a second or even third volume or beyond. That's kind of the point of the continuing stories most often told in funny books. But a trade typically is a complete story arc. Subsequent trades might build upon what happened, but you still have a satisfying chunk of story -- a beginning, middle and end -- to the specific tale the trade collects.

Not so with this book. This series is meant to take place in the Star Wars universe shortly after the events of Episode IV -- A New Hope but before Episode V -- The Empire Strikes Back. The rebel fleet has defeated the first Death Star and remained intact in the face of the Emperor's assault on their base on Yavin. But they have also been driven from that base and are looking for a new one. Unfortunately, every scouting expedition is met by Imperial forces almost immediately upon reaching whatever planet they have been sent to check out. Mon Mothma, the leader of the rebellion, and Princess Leia Organa suspect a spy in their midst. They hatch a secret plan to ferret out the spy, but things aren't going too well.

Meanwhile, the Empire, despite seemingly knowing every rebel move ahead of time, is not doing very well either. Imperial forces and coffers took quite a hit with the destruction of the Death Star. They try hard to cover with the ships and personnel they still have, but they are stretched pretty thin and still haven't managed to crush the rebellion. The Emperor is displeased with Darth Vader's failure to protect the Death Star, in particular, and takes command of the the flagship super star destroyer Devastator away from Vader. Instead, the Emperor sends Vader to Endor to oversee construction of the second Death Star and think about his failure.

We see a number of other familiar Star Wars faces in this collection, characters like Boba Fett, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Chewbacca, Wedge Antilles, R2-D2, C-3PO and others, of course. But most of the action in this particular volume seems to center on Leia and Vader. And while both stories are interesting and nicely illustrated, this entire six-issue trade feels more like a teaser for things to come than a complete story.

I'm very curious to see how the Imperial forces are managing to stay one jump ahead of each rebel scouting party. And Brian Wood is an accomplished writer who makes readers feel Leia's frustration as nearly everything she tries seems to fall apart before yielding any answers.

I'm also quite curious about a woman named Birra Seah and her interactions with Darth Vader. It is obvious that they do not know each other previously, but once this woman comes to Vader's notice (by publicly standing up to him, no less), she very quickly earns his trust. She even renders Vader speechless at one point. My interest is very piqued about her and what exactly is going on with her.

Some critics of "writing for the trade" say that such practices rob single issues of their impact. Whether or not you subscribe to that notion, how much sadder is it when an entire trade feels merely like setup for what is to come next? I am curious where this story is going, and I'm not ruling out buying the next trade in hopes of finding out more about the rebel spy, if one exists, and Birra Seah and her connection to Vader. But if money is tight when the next trade is solicited, the lack of forward momentum will make it that much easier to give this title a pass. And if I do buy the second trade and still find no story progress being made, I'm pretty sure I'll move on. I want a story, not an installment.

Hard To Keep Up With But Worth The Effort

The Perhapanauts: Danger Down Under 1-5
Image Comics
Todd Dezago, writer
Craig Rousseau, Lauren Monardo Gramprey, Matt Wieringo, Eric Henson, Matthew Dow Smith and Christian D. Leaf, artists

This is a quirky little book that comes out in limited series form every once in a while and then disappears for a bit. There have been three multi-issue minis, all later collected in trades, and several stand-alone issues and one-shots before this series. The first two minis and trades -- First Blood and Second Chances -- were under the Dark Horse imprint before Todd Dezago and Craig Rousseau moved their creation to Image Comics.

I think a series of limited series is preferable to an ongoing monthly in some cases, especially when the character is not as well-known or established or the creators need more time between story arcs. Tell the story you have in mind and then stop until you have another idea or more books in the can. It doesn't work quite so smoothly for this series, however, because the title is told as if it was an ongoing. Take the end of this five-issue mini, for example. As the title implies, much of the action in these issues takes place in Australia. Technically, at the end of issue five, none of the characters is still in Australia, and I very much doubt that they will be returning there any time soon. However, the situation that took them to Australia is not yet resolved. In fact, a pretty major plot thread left dangling by the third mini, Triangle, is not advanced in this fourth mini until the very last page, and it is really more of a teaser of things to come than a resolution. So the story is very much an ongoing.

To further confuse things a little bit, if you are buying Perhapanauts in singles, each issue contains two or three stories -- the main, and one or two backups, often by other artists to give main artist and co-creator Rousseau a break, I assume. Sometimes those backup stories serve to expand on some detail in the main story, but other times they might be a completely separate tale with no relation whatsoever to the main. That can get even more confusing if you're reading the series in trade and have to figure out why these side-trip stories are placed in between chapters of the main story.

Once you get used to those idiosyncrasies of Dezago's writing, however, this is a very fun read filled with colorful characters. There are five main characters when the Perhapanauts series starts out, all agents of a secret organization named BEDLAM, the Bureau of Extra-Dimensional Liabilities and Management. Arisa is the leader of Blue Team and a psychic. There's also Molly, a teenage ghost; Choopie, a video-game playing, blood-sucking chupacabra; Big, a genetically enhanced sasquatch; and MG, the enigma of the group about whom little is known. There is also a Red Team led by an ex-Marine named Peter Hammerskold. Other members of Red Team include the Merrow, a sea sprite, and Karl, a mothman able to instill fear. There are also multiple BEDLAM bases around the world, so other agents may show up from time to time, many of them human, but certainly not all of them.

So what exactly does BEDLAM do? They track down things that have accidentally or by design arrived in our world from other planes of existence, be they alternate universes, parallel dimensions or simple tears in the fabric of reality. So the reader never quite knows what Dezago and Rousseau are going to throw at the Perhapanauts. So far they've crossed paths with cryptids you might have heard of such as gremlins, the Jersey Devil and even Karl's people, the mothmen. But there have also been a number of other scary things like a chimaera, an aswang, a tatzel wurm, the Dover Demon and a growtch.

If you are interested in the bizarre and enjoy some humor mixed liberally with your drama, this is a book you should check out.

A Nice Visit With Old Friends

Serenity: The Shepherd's Tale hardcover
Dark Horse
Joss and Zack Whedon, writers
Chris Samnee, artist

I was a fan of "Firefly," the short-lived sci-fi series created by Joss Whedon that aired on Fox during the 2002-03 season, and the follow-up movie, "Serenity." I've also enjoyed two previous minis featuring the same characters in comic format from Dark Horse. So I was excited to learn that one of the characters from the series -- Shepherd Book, played by actor Ron Glass -- was finally going to get his back story revealed in a Dark Horse comic one-shot a few years ago.

When the book was first released in 2010, it was a hardcover. I decided to wait for the (likely cheaper) softcover and have waited patiently for three years, but one has never been solicited. Finally I found an online site, In Stock Trades, offering the hardcover at a cheaper softcover price and snatched it up.

This book was worth the wait. Coming from Joss and Zack Whedon, these characters read like the familiar friends they should be for someone who has watched and read all of their adventures. And Chris Samnee does a nice job capturing the likenesses of most of the actors who played these roles before. The art certainly isn't photo-realistic like some artists strive for, but Samnee captures the characters quite nicely in his own style.

Shepherd Book was kind of an enigma on the show. He was not one of the original crew members of the Serenity, but rather one of a handful of passengers who bought a seat on the spaceship to its next port of call. In the series, Shepherd is the title of a preacher, and that was mostly what we knew of Book's character -- he was a man of God, full of wisdom and quick to lend a listening ear for someone else's troubles. But through the course of the series, Book also proved he knew his way around a gun battle and was not to be underestimated as a hand-to-hand combatant. There was a history to the man that had very little to do with religion.

This book nicely fills in that back story, the details of which I won't reveal here. Buy the book; it's worth it.

In an interesting twist, Book's tale is revealed in reverse, like peeling away the layers of an onion. The book opens just moments before the attack that would lead to Book's death in the film "Serenity." From there, a number of jumps backward reveals the man's steps along life's path all the way back to his childhood. It is an interesting way to reveal the middle of a story when the end is already known. This is a good read and a satisfying answer to the mysteries of this character. Check it out!

She's Haunting Comic Shelves Again

Ghost: Resurrection Mary (Dark Horse Comics Presents Vol. 3, 13-15)
Dark Horse Comics
Kelly Sue DeConnick, writer
Phil Noto, artist

Or is she? Because this reimagining doesn't seem to be the same Ghost character as in the last go-round.

Ghost was one of several "superhero" characters created by Dark Horse Comics in the mid-1990s. That series, by writer Eric Luke, centered around Elisa Cameron, a former reporter apparently killed while working on an investigative piece in the fictional city of Arcadia. At first, Cameron does not recall who she is or how she came to be this ghostly apparition. Through several specials, one-shots and finally a 36-issue ongoing series, she battled the mystical villains and underworld types who populated the very dark Arcadia. I enjoyed that first run of Ghost because the character was smart and used her brain, unlike many other female comic leads at the time, but I dropped the book once Ghost learned the truth about her death.

Apparently, there was a relaunch that ran for another couple years shortly after the initial run, still focusing on Elisa Cameron as Ghost but changing some of the details of her back story along the way.

Now this three-part serial in Dark Horse Comics Presents is reintroducing Ghost, and I am definitely signed up for the ongoing that is following. This Ghost may or may not be Elisa Cameron. Not even she knows who she is after she is forced to materialize by two television "Phantom Finders" using a strange device while taping an episode of their program. The pair are trying to summon a spirit named Mary Bregovy, after all, and since this serial is subtitled Resurrection Mary, I'm not assuming this is the same Ghost we've seen before.

"Phantom Finders" host Tommy Byers seems to be a smooth-talking young con man who doesn't really believe in the phantoms he "finds." The character puts me in mind of the host on a real ghost adventures show I've seen. His "partner" and video man is Vaughn Barnes, a former newspaperman who isn't "former" by choice. Vaughn may not be any nicer a person than Tommy, but at least he's honest about it, which gives him an endearing quality.

We don't have much information on the device they have except that Tommy acquired it through mysterious means. After using the device to make Ghost materialize and capturing the event on film, Tommy tries to cash in on their video proof of an afterlife, a move which Vaughn sabotages. While the two argue about that incident, the former owners of the device show up wanting it back. Ghost also reappears and saves Tommy and Vaughn by killing one of their assailants. Vaughn decides that they now owe it to Ghost to help her figure out who she is/was and drags Tommy, reluctantly, along. And that is where this setup ends.

The writing on these three short installments is good, and the art is terrific, so hopefully DeConnick and Noto will continue into the new ongoing. The action is fast paced, and I'm definitely along for the ride to see where this is headed. If you happened to miss these three issues of Dark Horse Comics Presents, you can pick up all three chapters collected in Ghost No. 0, released the month before No. 1.

Sidetrack From The Saga

Whipping Boy
Dell/Abyss
John Byrne, writer
***mature content warning***

There is still one final tangent to explore along my journey through both volumes of John Byrne's Next Men and their prequel comic, John Byrne's 2112.

As discussed last time, I don't always read all of the fan mail or cross-reference notes in an older comic I'm reading for the first time. Sometimes I do, but other times I just breeze right past them. When I discovered that the link between JBNM and 2112 was much stronger than I at first realized, I decided to go back and check out another editor's note from JBNM Volume 1 a little closer.


In JBNM No. 16, the final issue in the "Fame" story arc, Dollar Comics executive Ben Horowitz has introduced the Next Men to the world as real-life superheroes. A Chicago-based newspaper reporter and her editor, simply named Donna and Walker, respectively, take note of the story and are curious about it. The pair have a brief conversation about the Next Men and wonder about their link to someone named Paul Trayne and some events from five years in the past in a place called Faulkner, Ill. Donna and Walker show up again briefly in a later issue of Volume 1 while the Next Men are being hunted by the authorities but not at all in JBNM Volume 2, so their contributions to the overall narrative are slight. But that first conversation between them that references Paul Trayne and Faulkner, Ill., includes an editor's note: "For complete details, pick up a copy of 'Whipping Boy,' available from Dell/Abyss."

So off I went in search of this title to see how it tied in with the rest of JBNM.

I searched several back issue sites online, as well as eBay, but could not find a single comic going by this name. I wasn't familiar with an Abyss comic publisher, but Dell published a number of comics several decades ago. Still, I was coming up empty everywhere I searched. By chance one day, I decided to try a search on Amazon.com. Amazon is not a great site for finding single-issue comics, but maybe, just maybe, I thought, there might be a trade of Whipping Boy available. I did find the book on Amazon, also learning why I'd had so much trouble locating it before. Whipping Boy is NOT a comic, but a prose novel written by Byrne and published in 1992, the same time 2112 and JBNM got started.

In hindsight, this novel really doesn't tie into JBNM much at all. I think Byrne merely chose to include Donna and Walker, two of the characters from his novel, in JBNM as a way to cross-promote the paperback. But if you happen to be curious, it isn't a bad read, although a tad long at 498 pages. (I personally think the narrative could have been edited down from that length somewhat as the action seems to bog down a bit in places, but I was interested enough to finish the entire thing.)

The title Whipping Boy refers to Paul Trayne, a 15-year-old mutant with the ability to look into people's souls and remove their guilt and shame, taking those things into himself. On the surface, this might seem like a wonderful thing, even a gift, as many in the novel first describe it. But keep in mind that as much as JBNM is a science fiction story, Whipping Boy is a horror story with an emphasis on religion and morality. Paul, guided by his father, the Rev. Robert Trayne, reaches out to the residents of Faulkner, Ill., offering his gift. The phenomenon comes to the attention of Chicago newspaper editor Walker Stone, who decides to send one of his reporters, Donna Wojciechowski, to see if Trayne is real or a charlatan. Donna finds more than she bargained for when she arrives, first finding many of the residents of Faulkner greatly changed by the power of Paul Trayne, and later feeling the effects of his "gift" firsthand. And Faulkner is just the beginning of the plans Paul and his father have for bringing this "gift" to the world.

Genesis Of A Saga

John Byrne's 2112
Dark Horse Comics
John Byrne, writer and artist
***mature content warning***

I completely missed the references the first time through.

The previous two posts to this blog have been about John Byrne's Next Men. I don't always read the letters pages when I go back and read an old comic I've recently purchased. I typically scan the letters for familiar names or things that might catch my eye, but seldom do I read them all. Such was the case when I read my first dozen-and-a-half issues of JBNM for the very first time. But in this most recent reading of the books, I stumbled across several mentions of another Byrne/Dark Horse book, a one-shot, titled John Byrne's 2112. I gathered from those letters that this was a book published before JBNM and that the big bad from that title, Sathanas, had first appeared in 2112.

I decided to make my reading experience of JBNM complete by trying to include this book, too, if possible. But to be honest, I expected the link between 2112 and JBNM to be very slight. My expectation was that 2112 was written as a self-contained, standalone, done-in-one story, possibly having been written a few years before JBNM. Then later, while crafting the story that would become JBNM, Byrne had decided to reuse an old character from a previous story.

I was successful in my attempt to find a reasonably priced copy of John Byrne's 2112, and it arrived in time for me to read it immediately after I finished Next Men: Aftermath. I wish I had known about the book earlier and had ordered it and read it BEFORE reading JBNM because it truly is a prequel to the JBNM saga.

The book was published in November 1991, just two months prior to the publication of JBNM No. 1, likely just allowing enough time for the four Dark Horse Comics Presents vignettes later collected into JBNM No. 0. Sathanas is the evil mastermind behind a mutate uprising in the year 2112. Think of mutates as similar to mutants. And the events of the 2112 one-shot lead directly into Sathanas' appearance in the pages of JBNM. But the connections do not stop there.

The point of view character in 2112 is a young law enforcement cadet named Thomas Kirkland who also plays a key role in the JBNM series. Kirkland learns in 2112 that his superiors have kept secret the origins of the mutates from the general populace -- that they stemmed from a government genetics project gone wrong in the 20th century, a project codenamed Next Men. There are other names and characters in 2112 which reappear in JBNM, so there can be no question that Byrne fully intended this book to lead into the Next Men saga. For completists, this book is indispensable when trying to read JBNM, and well worth a look.

The Saga Begins

John Byrne's Next Men 0-30
Dark Horse Comics
John Byrne, writer and artist
***mature content warning***

John Byrne's Next Men initially saw print as four short vignettes in the pages of Dark Horse Presents in the early 1990s. The anthology title offered Byrne the chance to slowly introduce some of the players who would be key to his series, and the four pieces were collected together in a JBNM 0 issue for those who had missed the initial printings. Many readers expected a typical superhero story (if one can gauge by the letters printed in the first few issues of the title), but Byrne was telling a story that fit more comfortably into the science fiction realm. To be sure, JBNM makes use of many superhero themes; in fact, I would be willing to say that the series could not exist in this form without story-telling tools familiar to superhero fans. But to call JBNM a superhero comic is to ignore so much more of what is going on.

The first issue of JBNM came out in January 1992 and obviously had some readers scratching their heads as the action clearly starts "already in progress" and even an inside-front-cover "The story so far" synopsis leaves many questions unanswered. In a move of brilliance, Byrne and/or Dark Horse must have anticipated the confusion as the 0 issue was published the very next month.

The title characters in JBNM are five young people ranging in age from mid-teens to early-20s. Jasmine, Bethany, Nathan, Jack and Danny all live in an idyllic environment they call "the Greenery." Occasionally, newborns appear in the Greenery, so there are younger children present, but they aren't the focus of the story. There have also been older youths before these central five. At random times, older children in the Greenery might start to display special abilities. Not long after that happens, each in turn has "faded" from the Greenery to be replaced by a stone marker in a field. This is the only life these five young people have ever known until Jack unexpectedly "wakes up" to find himself and the others hooked into some kind of machinery in the "real" world.

Before we ever meet these five youths, readers are introduced to U.S. Sen. Aldus Hilltop, the financial backer behind the secretive Project Next Men. Hilltop and his lead scientists are trying to end the genetics project and destroy all evidence of its existence before they are discovered by federal investigators. We also meet one of those investigators, Tony (short for Antonia) Murcheson, who already knows some of Hilltop's secrets and is determined to expose his crimes. Murcheson finds the five awakened youths, and she tries to help them escape before Hilltop can have his research facility destroyed.

Along the way, Murcheson's charges discover they have some fantastic new mutations here in the real world. Danny can run at incredible speeds, but in the course of a day, his legs bulk up to look like those of a bodybuilder, not a 15-year-old like the rest of his body. Jack is incredibly strong, but finds he has lost the ability to control that strength; he can't touch anything without crushing it. Nathan can see long distances and wavelengths of light others cannot, but his eyes take on a hideous, large, blackened appearance. Bethany is invulnerable to any harm to the point that a single strand of her hair can slice through iron, but she has lost the sense of touch. Only Jasmine has no visible side effect to go along with her new acrobatic prowess. But despite being identified in the story as the oldest of the Next Men, she seems to be the most naive and child-like in her behavior. Maybe that's just my interpretation and not something Byrne intended, but otherwise, it seems odd that she would have no "curse" to go along with her "gifts."

Other characters figure prominently in the Next Men story as it progresses through these first issues. Willis Ducummen, or "Control," is the leader of the federal investigators trying to expose Hilltop's misdeeds. Sathanas is the true brains behind Hilltop's schemes. Ben Horowitz is the publisher of Dollar Comics, a master showman who introduces the Next Men to the world as real-life superheroes. Sandy Tolliver is a young artist at Dollar Comics who takes an interest in the Next Men's plight as they are hunted and reviled by the public.

A number of subplots are also introduced along the way and later brought into the story proper. JBNM No. 7 introduces a backup story titled M4, which continues until issue No. 23 when that storyline is brought into the overall narrative. M4 refers to an android designated M-IV or Mark Ivey. Mark and Hilltop's former secretary and lover, Amanda Watson, run into each other and try to figure out who or what Mark must "get away" from. Later, a time traveler named Thomas Kirkland shows up and claims he has come back from the year 2115 to prevent an attack on the president of the United States that will set in motion a chain of events centered on the Next Men that will lead to the extinction of most of humanity.

Believe it or not, all of these various plot threads tie together into a climax in JBNM No. 30 which looks to have dire consequences for our heroes. Except the series ended on that cliffhanger. The book was released more or less monthly at first. After a point, each new story arc was released monthly, with small breaks in publishing between arcs. The letters page in issue No. 30 starts off with an explanation by Byrne that he will be taking a hiatus and that he has a definite end game in mind for the series. But fans would end up having to wait quite some time before being offered an ending to this series.

I did not read this initial run of JBNM when it was originally published. I don't even remember being aware of the series in the early '90s, despite the fact that I was in college and paying regular visits to my then-local comic book shop. Some time after all 31 issues had been released, however, I became aware of the series and was curious about it. So, I managed to get my hands on the first 19 issues of the series (0-18) read them and enjoyed them. So I kept watch for more issues to continue the tale.

Fast forward several years. The four-issue Faith arc beginning in issue No. 19 was one I could never find in single issues, but I'd finally managed to get the Faith trade collection and single issues for Nos. 23-30. At about the same time, I'd managed to fill in holes from several other series in my collection and had decided I wanted to go back and re-read every comic in my collection in order of publication. (I was crazy to attempt it, I now realize, and I did not complete the task, although I stuck with the effort for several years.) The important point here is, I opted to wait to read the rest of these JBNM issues until I reached the 1990s in my collection. So, this is the first time I have read the second half of JBNM Volume 1.

All in all, I have to say this is a very entertaining and satisfying narrative, although Byrne's deliberately slow pacing would have been maddening on a monthly -- and later less than monthly -- basis. This story is built with secrets within secrets -- many kept from the readers as well as the characters -- and quite a few twists and surprises, even for the writer. For instance, it is clear from the letters pages that many followers of the series guessed at a secret relationship between Sathanas and one of the other characters in the story. It seemed an obvious connection to me early on as well. But then the text piece in issue No. 30 explains that the readers' guesses were a surprise to Byrne. He had not intended the relationship readers were so certain of, but it made so much sense to Byrne after the fact, that he incorporated that into the story.

Come back next time for the (eventual) return of JBNM.

I'm Sensing A Trend Here

The Manara Library Vol. 2 hardcover
Dark Horse Books
Hugo Pratt and Mino Milani, writers
Milo Manara, artist
***mature content warning***

This volume, like the first one, contains a pair of stories; and once again, I liked one selection more than the other. I'm not sure how many of these volumes Dark Horse plans on producing (although I've recently read online that nine volumes are planned), but they are a bit costly if I am going to continue to only really like half of each hardcover.

The first selection in this second volume is "El Gaucho," an historical fiction set in Buenos Aires in the summer of 1806, when the British invaded Argentina. The story follows a young British drummer aboard one of the invading ships and tells of his fictional adventures during those real events. I've never been a history buff, but I enjoy a good story. This is a good story, but it felt a bit disjointed as portions of the young man's time in Argentina are skipped over. In the story's defense, I read the lengthy tale in several sittings, and this made it a bit hard to follow the narrative at times, and therefore hard to really get into the story.

The second selection in this volume is a series of 10 "trials" wherein Manara and Milani present the historical facts of a famous person's life as if they were defending their actions before a jury in a courtroom, hence the title, "Trial By Jury." The premise is that the facts of the person's life and actions will be related "impartially and faithfully" and that "the readers will serve as the jury, and render judgment according to their own understanding of the case, tempered by their compassion."

No final verdict is clearly reached in the narrative of each case, because it is up to the reader to decide the validity or unjustness of each person's actions. The defendants in the series include figures such as George Armstrong Custer, Attila the Hun, Alfred Nobel, Maximilien Robespierre and Julius Oppenheimer.

Both selections in this volume rely greatly on the inclusion of historical facts, and in all honesty, some installments of "Trial By Jury" were of more interest to me than others, but this piece was definitely the better of the two, in my opinion. Its combination of prose and illustrated segments helped to ease the reader through what was intended to not always be a linear account of the events related. I'm not sure that the "trials" changed my mind on my previous ideas about each of the historical figures presented, but these tales did serve to teach me some things about history I did not previously know. Not bad for a comic book.

One Great Story, One Long Greek Tragedy

The Manara Library Vol. 1 hardcover
Dark Horse Books
Hugo Pratt, writer
Milo Manara, artist
***mature content warning***

This volume contains two stories: Indian Summer and The Paper Man. Of the two, the much shorter Paper Man is the better. Indian Summer is not bad because of its length. In fact, it's not a bad story at all. I just prefer the secondary tale.

Indian Summer opens with two young braves spotting a lone white girl along the beach in Colonial times. The youths assault the girl, and afterward begin to frolic together in the ocean. A third young man comes upon the scene, and deducing what has happened, shoots and kills both of the young Indians. Feeling himself a hero, this young man gives the girl back her torn clothing, kisses her despite her protests, and decides to take her back home where his mother will know what to do next. Almost this entire opening scene takes place without dialogue.

What follows is a tale of Puritan America, hypocrisy, incest, sexual and physical violence, friends attacking friends only to go along with peers -- it is NOT a happy story by any stretch of the imagination. A story doesn't have to be happy for me to enjoy it, and certainly the subject matter would seem to preclude happiness, but I just didn't care for this tale. None of the huge cast of characters is really very likable. This reader, at least, was left feeling pity and contempt for most of them rather than empathy.

The Paper Man is also set in Frontier America. It also is not a very happy story. But this tale, unlike the first one, has moments of whimsy that override the sadness. The title character is a young man traveling through Arizona on his way to Canada. Along the way, he happens across first a lone British soldier seemingly still wrapped up in the Revolutionary War, and a young Sioux woman charged with some unspecified crime. Circumstances throw these three travelers together again and again despite attempts to go their separate ways, and the reader feels their growing affection for each other along the journey in spite of their various protestations. These characters, I developed an affection and appreciation for.

I hope to get the other volumes in the Manara series because his art is very good, but this first volume was a bit uneven for my tastes.

You Can't Judge A Book By It's Cover (Or It's First Issue)

Whenever possible, I like to try new books by reading the first trade or several issues, enough to get a good feel for the story. That doesn't apply to everything, of course; if they launched a new Aquaman book or Nightwing book or Titans book, odds are I'm there from the first issue, and sold on each subsequent issue unless they are just awful, and maybe even then. But any new concept for which I have no prior knowledge, I try to be fair and give the book a solid chance to grab me.

I wasn't always so generous with my time and money.

I've mentioned in passing before that I've always liked the old Turok, Son of Stone series by Dell/Gold Key. At my youngest, it was likely mostly the dinosaurs which drew my attention. As I've gotten older, I've come to appreciate many things from different American Indian cultures, so there's the appeal of two competent Native American leads, as well. While I haven't gotten around to reading them yet, I was excited by the prospect and quickly snatched up the first three Turok Archives published by Dark Horse Comics in the last few years. The only reason I haven't yet bought Archive editions 4, 5 and 6, also available, is the cost. But I'll likely get them eventually.

Turok's adventures did not end with the publication of Turok, Son of Stone No. 130, the final issue of the series, however. In the 1990s, Jim Shooter's Valiant Comics bought the licenses to several of the original Dell/Gold Key characters and began publishing new adventures for them, including Turok, Dinosaur Hunter. This series debuted in 1993, well after I discovered my first comics specialty shop, and so I knew of its pending debut ahead of time, and had my copy of the first issue reserved. And when it arrived and I sat down to enjoy it, I was quite underwhelmed. In fact, I was VERY confused.

Turok, Dinosaur Hunter, No. 1 was obviously NOT the next comic to feature the character following Turok, Son of Stone, No. 130. Much of the first issue of this new series was Turok recalling, in flashback, a series of events that made little sense to me at the time. To make matters worse, the end result was Turok being dropped into modern times for this new series, along with a bunch of mechanically enhanced bionic-dinosaurs. That most definitely was not what I had signed on for, and I didn't pick up another issue of the series.

Until recently, of course.

Otherwise, what's the point of this post, right?

Well, thanks once again to the comics-themed podcasts I've been listening to, my interest in the Valiant series was rekindled, and I decided to give them a try when the opportunity presented itself. Since Valiant went out of business after just a few short years, I don't think any of the Turok issues were ever collected into trade format. But I came across a small lot of early Valiant Turok issues on eBay recently. The lot wasn't a consecutive run, but the price was right, so that I opted to overlook the missing parts and look at these issues as a sampling. Included in the deal were issue Nos. 1, 3, 4, 6 and 7.

I re-read the first issue and was quickly reminded of what must surely have turned me off the first time around. David Michelinie was the writer for the book, and he usually does a fair job. Bob Layton was the book's editor, and he, too, has done many books I've liked. But I still wasn't a fan of the bionic dinosaurs, and the page after page of recap was still a little hard to follow. To make matters worse, none of the recap events have editor's boxes or reference of any kind to let someone new know where to find more on the information provided. If you are a regular follower of a book or character, references to what issues or titles contained past events can be a drag sometimes. But not everyone IS a devoted follower of every character they pick up.
One advantage the subsequent years have brought me in dealing with this first issue of Turok, Dinosaur Hunter, is that I now recognize some of the other characters in Turok's flashback sequences when I didn't back in 1993. They are other Valiant characters, so I deduced that maybe this was some big company-wide crossover, likely a title I knew nothing about beyond the fact that it WAS a Valiant company-wide crossover title. That book was called Unity. So, I'm guessing that reading that book MIGHT give me more insight into how Turok went from the Lost Valley of the Dell/Gold Key books to modern times. If any of you kiddie cops reading this can help me track down what came between, I'm definitely interested in your input.

But continuing on with the rest of my purchase, it began to seem that many of the elements I despised most about this new book quickly went away. I didn't have No. 2, but No. 3 seemed to wrap up that first story arc, and indicate that maybe the bionic dinosaurs would go away with the end of that arc. And sure enough, issue No. 4 brought a new writer, Tim Truman, and nary a trace of bionics anywhere. There were dinosaurs, yes, but normal ones. The government assigns a scientist "handler" to follow Turok, and he goes on missions to investigate possible dinosaur sightings, some of the huge lizards having made the journey from the Lost Valley the same way Turok did. Turok even finds Andar, although his former youthful companion is now much older, having arrived back in the real world much earlier than Turok did. Turok agrees to teach "the old ways" to Andar's grandson, also named Andar, and the character almost seems to have come full circle.

After this new try-out buy, I am ready to dip my feet into more of Valiant's run of Turok, so I'll be looking for additional back issues of this series. I'll let you know, if I find any, what I think in future posts. And again, if anyone out there has info on other Turok appearances, please let me know. Until next time, Happy Collecting!!