30 days of comics I love #20: So much for subtlety!

Epic #4 

By Martin Edmond (and others, I suppose) 

It's in weird little series like this one - a four-part prestige format comic from Marvel's Epic line, largely published to bring more attention to the more regular Stalkers, Wild Cars and Nightbreed series that they were putting out - that you find real comics treasure.

I'm a massive, massive fan of the late, great Martin Emond, a kiwi cartoonist who did remarkable things with pencil, paint and tattoo ink in his short life, and I thought I knew of all the comics he had drawn, but I can still find a few precious pages lurking in this reject from the dollar bins.

Even better, it's Emond's take on Clive Barker's Nightbreed, and this short example shows that Emond was born to draw these wonderful freaks. Look at what he does with this spider hybrid lurking in the back of a pickup truck - 

- or the incredible way he draws Craig Sheffer's Boone in all his Cabal glory - 

or even just the wiry rednecks who have the misfortune to run into the Nightbreed crew - 

Even a tragically short artistic career can produce gorgeous comics hiding in the most mundane of places, and I know I'm never going to stop looking for them, especially when I see those bug eyes of doom staring back at me.

30 days of comics I love #19: I have taken his name, I must take his destiny

Legion of Super-Heroes #59 

by Levitz, Giffen, Bright, Gordon and Garzon 

With such a large and sprawling cast, a long-running series like the Legion of Super-Heroes always needed issues like this, where a solo member gets something of a spotlight, and usually learns an important lesson about life and heroism, often by studying something from the Legion's past adventures. 

This particular one was the last of the classic period Legion - the next issue saw the Magic Wars kick off, and then the whole concept was crashing into the five years later era, and literally nothing would ever be the same again. 

That v4 Legion is my favourite incarnation of the team ever, so I will never regret the decisions that led to those comics, but it is still a little wistful to see Levitz sign off from his long run on the regular Legion with a focus on the Invisible Kids (and poor old Chemical King).

It's a pretty standard effort, giving a little more depth to characters that were killed off years and years ago (although it is weird how much Lyle Norg keeps calling Chemical King a kid, when they're all basically children), and has some lovely Mark Bright artwork which looks a lot like something Curt Swan would have done in 1968, along with some gorgeously grimy Giffen pencils on the framing story.

And while it might not have felt like it at the time it was published in early 1989, it really is the end of an era. There was one more small epic too come, and then innumerable reboots and rethinks, but the simple pleasure of a basic solo Legionnaire comic book would never quite be the same again. The future moved on, a long time ago, and is already ancient history.

30 days of comics I love #18: You think the stain'll lift?

Warrior #26 

By Dez Skinn and pals 

You could always tell when a British comic paper that went after a slightly more sophisticated audience is about to fade away, because that's when the European reprints start overwhelming things. The comics from the continet are fun and stylish, but they're always a sign that the comic is running out of money.

Warrior only lasted a couple of years in the early eighties, but left behind a great legacy, if only because it was the first palce that Alan Moore's Miracleman and V For Vendetta appeared. The 26 black and white issues that were produced had a lot more than just Moore's post-modern superheroics going for it, before blazing out with this final issue.

Even at the end, and even with the overseas reprint crowding things out, the last issue of Warrior was a lot of fun. Moore and Lloyd were still doing V For Vendetta right till the end, and while Miracleman was absent, publisher Dez Skinn was still doing the very strange Big Ben spin-off with Will Simpson, and it is one of the very few comics that has both Moore and Grant Morrison in the credits box. 

The Morrison story - Liberators with the great John Ridgeway - is the first chapter of something that went exactly nowhere, but still hints at future greatness for the writer, while you also get a silly four-pager from a very young Carl Critchlow.

But, despite promises of big doings in the next issue, that was it for Warrior, although that more mature audience would still be a target for the rest of the decade, with comics like the brilliant A1 limited series giving writers and artists greater creative freedom, or efforts like Crisis and Deadline taking things in a more political and nihilistic directions.

So while this Warrior dies here, at least it goes down fighting and resides in the halls of comics Valhalla, where plenty of others would soon join it, once they resort to cheap reprints. 

30 days of comics I love #17: We all need hope.

Superman/Batman: World's Finest #3 

by Dave Gibbons, Steve Rude and Karl Kesel

My faith in the inherent justice of the universe took a major hit when I saw Steve Rude begging for comic work on social media. He should be fending away offers from every comic book publisher on the planet, not begging for scraps.

Maybe it's because he spent so much of the prime of his career on Nexus, an extremely 1980s sci-fi epic that is largely forgotten today, but Rude's art has always been incredible, with warmth, vitality and humour and should be appreciated more.

Consider this series from 1990, a period when Superman and Batman were hardly friends, and any sort of team-up between them was relatively rare. The scrip from Dave Gibbons is overloaded and overcomplicated in the way of so many superhero comics of the era, but Rude's art is genuinely timeless.

His Batman is sleek, flowing and mysterious, while Superman is open and powerful, always ready with an encouraging smile alongside some feat of super-strength. With able assistance from Karl Kesel and Steve Oliff, World's Finest looks like nothing else produced in the early 90s, which makes it even more appealing today. 

Rude's retro style helps with that timeless factor, but the storytelling is also always so clear, with plenty of visual gags and character moments to keep things moving. It is, quite frankly, so hard to understand why Rude isn't held up with the greats of the medium, and able to pick his projects on a whim. Maybe it's just too smooth, too pretty, and just too good for the world. 

We just don't deserve Steve Rude and his incredible style. 

30 days of comics I love #16: One cannot fall from so lofty a height without breaking.

Thanos Annual #1

by Jim Starlin and Ron Lim

With such an overwhelming personality and ethos, less really is more when it comes to Thanos. He was never more of an imposing presence than when he was taken off the table for more than a decade in the 1980s, and frequent attempts to do more with the character in the past few years have only diluted his appeal.

Even creator Jim Starlin can take it too far, with a number of graphic novels in the past decade that were painfully inessential, and all I've ever needed in 21st century Thanos is in the one-shot annual from 2014.

With typically slick art from Ron Lim and Andy Smith, this Thanos comic is set in the mad Titan's past, with one aspect of Thanos coming from the split second where he is about to pound on Captain America in the Infinity Gauntlet series from more than 20 years earlier, and clashing with an even earlier version who is still suffering a cosmic cube hangover.

Thanos likes the sound of his own voice as much as he literally loves Death, and this comic ensures that everybody is clear that Thanos' only great foe is himself, and that he has let omnipotence slip through his big chunky fingers time and time again, because deep down he believes he isn't worthy of it, and whether he is fighting Mephisto or the Silver Surfer or everybody in between, he's really only battling himself.

Everybody and their grandma knows who Thanos is these day, he was the ultimate villain of the Marvel movies, and had to be slain twice before it would take and the universe could be saved. And while Josh Brolin's performance found some surprising depths beneath that grey skin, it's Jim Starlin's version who is the one, true Thanos, defeating himself over and over again, because nobody else is worthy.

30 days of comics I love #15: Gentlemen, I hate you all.

War Story: Condors

By Garth Ennis and Carlos Ezquerra

When Garth Ennis is interviewed about a new comics project, he often gets asked why he keeps going back to the war stories, and you can almost hear the writer roll his eyes. He'll usually just ignore the fact that nobody asks why there has to be so many superhero titles, and patiently explain that while the comics are set in times of conflict, you can never run out of storytelling possibilities in the stresses and emotions of the characters living through such times.

Because these stories are never about the great leaders, the generals and political leaders who decide the fate of the world, they're about the people that are trapped in these places at the sharp end of the bombs, and just trying to stay alive, and maybe hold onto some scrap of their humanity while they do it.

Condors is entirely set in a foxhole during the Spanish Civil War, where four men from different backgrounds are trapped together, and have nothing else to do but tell their stories until the shelling lifts. They're all fighting for different reasons, some for ideology, some for the love of their country, some because they have no choice, but they're all circling the carnage of industrial 20th century conflict.

Most of Carlos Ezquerra's long and distinguished career was spent telling comics in the far future, or on another worlds. Even the real-life setting of his war comics were usually in some unnamed battlefield, but this is his home, the land of his forefathers, and the disgust at the nations using his own as their testing grounds for mass slaughter given their horrible clarity

And it is horrible, with a graphic depiction of the bombing of Guernica, one of of the most terrible events of that time in history, unflinchingly portrayed in all its gore and pointlessness. This is the price of war, as babies are burned alive in their mother's arms, and makes a cruel mockery of any justification for any kind of war.

There is no justification for this, of course, and the same old arguments in the foxhole may be given more weight with the experiences of each of the men that ended up in it, but they're still horrible and stupid. And there is always room for more of these kinds of stories on the comic book shelves, alongside all the spandex and crises.

30 days of comics I love #14: I see my whole life flashing before my eyes

Star Wars #79 

By Jo Duffy, Ron Frenz and Tom Palmer

Even with all the constant product beaming its way from a galaxy far, far away, I keep trying out new Star Wars comics. They're usually fairly bland and disappointing, and full of 12-part sagas that explain why some lightsabers are green, but I keep looking at them all the same, because I'm trying to capture the thrills of reading this issue back in early 1984.

It's a simple done in one, when Lando and Chewbacca were searching for Han Solo (which I never really understood, even as an eight-year-old, because it was obvious that Han was being taken to Jabba's joint). But it's got a spark that is often missing in modern Star Wars, full of action and event, and plenty of silly little jokes.

Duffy's script doesn't treat the characters are untouchable icons, but leans hard on the charming rogue factor, and isn't afraid to show Lando making stupid mistakes. He drives the wrong way down a hyper-highway and gives the game away after a few drinks, and some of it is pure slapstick - the part where he puts the wig and eyepatch on the wrong way and blinds himself still makes me laugh.

And when everything goes wrong with the intergalactic gangsters and the shit hits the fan, there is some high-speed action through the crowded space city. Frenz's art isn't quite as defined as it will be, leaning less into the retro look that he will become associated with, with Palmer's typically detailed inks giving it real heft.

It's a tiny part of the overall Star Wars saga, but not everything has to be the most important thing ever, It can just be a fun romp, at ultimate velocity, with lasers flying all around.

30 days of comics I love #13: Should have done this years ago

Judge Dredd Megazine #465 

By lots of different people

Let's talk about value for money. Comics are a notoriously bad return on investment for small businesses with a magazine rack, they gave you fuck all profit for the amount of retail real estate they consume. It's even worse in paces where the comics cost three times what they do in the US, and has only got worse everywhere as comics got flimsier and flimsier.

But you can still get a lot of bang for your buck with some comic books - manga gives you a solid hit of everything with every publication, and I've never seen one of the new digest titles that DC has been publishing out in the wild, but I dig the idea.

And I still feel like I'm getting my money's worth with every new issue of the Judge Dredd Megazine. It's more than $20 an issue, but it's also more than a hundred pages of comics and features, at a pretty high quality.

Issue number 465 is the most recent I've been able to get - I'm at least six months behind the rest of the world and only get a new issue every few months - but it's got a lot going on.  There's brand new Judge Dredd by Carroll and Williams (a middle chapter, but full of incident); Demarco PI by Bailey and Richardson (I'm still weirdly annoyed by the way they took her fortune away, and justifiably outraged by the way they killed her ape); some retro Mega-City 2099 fun from Niemand and Boyle (where they ruthlessly dispose of Maria the Italian stereotype landlady); some Hugo Pratt war comics from 1960; reprints of Hookajw and American Dredd comics that I never read; new Devlin Wayugh by Kot and Austin (nice try with the dildo, but still lacking in the acerbic wit of the original Smith version); and the prerequisite international judges story by Ballie and the still magnificent Steve Yeowell.

It's also got moving tributes to late art droids Ian Gibson and John Burns (the world is lesser without them), as well as several other features, previews and interviews. There has also been some Johnny Red comics by Garth Ennis recently, and Dan Abnett and Phil Winslade's regular Lawless series is fucking excellent, and feels most like classic 2000ad than anything else in the meg or the prog.

I'll be in a town that sells the Megazine next week, and I'm looking forward to catching up on it (and I hope there is some Lawless), and I don't know what issue it will be, or what it's going to have in it, but I know I'm getting my money's worth.

30 days of comics I love #12: We have to see what happens.

Marvels Epilogue #1

By Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross 

There have been many, many attempts to capture the lightning of the original Marvels series that Busiek and Ross gave us in the 90s, but this effort from 2019 is the only one to come close to the quality of the original.

A lot of the follow-ups to Marvels featured the original creators in some way, but rarely working together. Ross even went fully in the other direction with the Earth X stuff, which became voluminous. (I recently found the original Earth X ashcan thing that they gave away with Wizard, and they remain interesting redesigns for the Marvel universe, but I'm also happy with just that one little ashcan and none of the following comics.)

But it's only when Ross and Busiek are working together that the concept begins to sing again. Busiek's earnest style works perfectly with Ross' devotion to making the heroes look like they're flying around the real world, and it remains the principal appeal of the original mini-series.

This 2019 one-shot slots easily into the story of Phil Sheldon and his life photographing the Marvels, finding a brief moment in a 70s X-Men comic to show that it's still as terrifying and exhilarating to run into these marvelous creatures while out with your family.

Ross' painting has obviously evolved over the 25-year gap between the original Marvels and the epilogue, the 90s series has a hazy quality that might be a by-product of the artist's inexperience at the time, but definitely helped wit the dreamlike atmosphere that the story sometimes sought (the bit with Gwen Stacey and the Atlantean invasion in particular, all that wonderful water vapour.). In comparison the art on the epilogue is noticeably sharper, with a clearer line. More exact, which gives a 70s grittiness to this nostalgic trip.

But it's just as open and tender and wistful as anything in the original. Turns out all you have to do to match the success of the original comic was to get those creators together again. Nuff said.