Last November, comics creator Ron Randall released Battlefields, the latest volume in his long-running series, Trekker, about future interplanetary bounty hunter Mercy St Clair. I have written many times on this blog about how much I enjoy this series (I have added a Trekker label to those posts, rather than put all the links here). This volume continues to demonstrate all the qualities that make this a great series, but while I do want to talk about this book, they also connect to some larger thoughts I’ve been having about comics in general.
Before I get started, I would like to draw your attention to a couple of Kickstarter campaigns related to books I’ve discussed here. I’ve been waiting to write about Trekker: Battlefields until now so I can also mention Randall’s latest campaign: a beautiful, oversized hardcover edition of the first bunch of Trekker stories, with the black and white stories newly colored. As I write this, he has already reached his goal. As I’ve said many times before, all the Trekker stories can be read for free on his web site. So you don’t have to take my word for how great the series is.
I’ve also written about Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett’s series, Section Zero. While I’m still waiting on the second volume of that (and the first volume of Kesel’s other creation—this time with artist David Hahn—Impossible Jones), he’s launched a lower-end Kickstarter for sets of trading cards from both of those series. But that’s not all; if this campaign is successful, it will also include an eight-page comic introducing his latest creation: supernatural investigator Sam Hell. This time around, Kesel is writing and drawing the story completely by himself. The last time I can recall him completely drawing a book on his own was the faux Captain America newspaper strip on the Marvel web site, and it was fantastic. As this is posted, I believe that campaign still has a couple of days to go, so I recommend checking it out.
Trekker: Battlefields continues the story from previous volumes, but provides enough information that a new reader should feel comfortable starting here. (Although, really, having the context of the earlier stories helps, so you might as well support the Kickstarter for the earlier stories, right?) This volume starts with Mercy and Captain Quigg heading off to the dangerous Delta Quadrant to follow up on clues to the resistance group, Rigel, discovered in the earlier volume, Chapeltown.
Of course, upon arrival, things immediately take a dark turn, as the planet Mercy is seeking is already a battleground. She launches herself from her ship in a combination escape pod/battle suit, and encounters a different resistance group. Initially suspicious of each other, Mercy and the troops ultimately realize that they have a common goal, and head off in search of the gang from Rigel.
Naturally, disaster ensues, and—as the title suggests—Battlefields becomes a very action-packed installment in the series. I don’t really want to say too much about the rest of the main story, because I don’t want to spoil any of the twists. Suffice it to say that along the way, we check in with characters who I was afraid were gone from the narrative, and meet a few new ones who I am interested in seeing more of. As I said, like each Trekker volume, Randall has worked to make this accessible to a new reader, without sacrificing the forward momentum of the ongoing nature of the story. But even if this is someone’s first Trekker story, I find it hard to believe they could finish this book and not be looking eagerly forward to the next installment.
(And, of course, in the meantime, they could back Randall’s latest Kickstarter and get a really nice edition of the earlier stories. I have all those stories, and I’m looking forward to this collection like nobody’s business.)
For an artist who has been working professionally in comics since the 1980s, Randall’s art keeps getting better and better. (And it was pretty good back then.) I continue to be particularly impressed with the acting his characters do on the page; he does a fantastic job of conveying emotion through expression and body language.
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| These pages show how easily Randall works information about the characters' pasts from earlier stories into his current works |
In addition to the main story, this book includes a couple of shorter back-up tales. What Dreams May Come is the now-regular feature in which Randall draws high-end Kickstarter backers into a Trekker story. It is to his credit that he integrates these stories into the ongoing Trekker saga, rather than just make them feel like eight pages of gimmick. And the story Homefronts shows what Mercy’s girlfriend, Molly, is up to while Mercy and Quigg head off to the Delta Quadrant.
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| Trekker superfans Darrin and Ruth Sutherland make an appearance in the comic |
A couple of weeks ago, I was chatting with a friend of mine, who is also a comics fan. We were both talking about how we were becoming less interested in the current output from Marvel and DC. Since then, he has decided to take a break from comics altogether. Me, I’m not giving them up, but I am finding myself less and less interested in the new Marvel and DC comics featuring characters I’ve loved for decades. I just don’t feel like reading them that much; I’d rather read independent series like Trekker or Section Zero, or comics like 2000 AD. Or reprints of the comics I loved when I was a kid.
Talking to my friend got me thinking about why that is. Part of it is the nature of the superhero comics industry. It’s a genre featuring characters who have been around for over 50 years, for the most part, having stories told in one monthly comic after another after another after another. Because of the commercial nature of the properties, there’s never going to be any particularly significant change; Marvel needs Spider-Man to fight bad guys every month, otherwise they don’t have Spider-Man stories to sell.
But in order to keep fans interested, there needs to be the illusion of the promise of change. So we get stories like Superior Spider-Man, where villain Doctor Octopus effectively kills Peter Parker by overwriting Spider-Man’s mind with Ock’s own consciousness and becomes Spider-Man FOREVER! (Except Peter Parker comes back, and things go back to the way they were.) Or Batman proposes marriage to Catwoman, so he can retire from being Batman and they can be a married couple FOREVER! (Except they don’t.) Captain America becomes the head of evil organization Hydra and kills the Black Widow FOREVER! (Except good Cap comes back, and a backup of Natasha’s consciousness is implanted into a clone body.)
I started thinking about children’s classics, particularly more modern ones, and even more particularly the Harry Potter series. That’s a set of stories with a beginning, a middle, and an end. And it feels like the world has accepted the closure of that set of stories. I’m not plugged into the world of Harry Potter fandom, but it doesn’t seem to me that fans are clamoring for more new adventures, and are more content to reread the complete story that they have. I kind of wish the superhero industry had been able to follow that sort of model: we would have gotten one really good set of Batman stories, telling tales of his life as it develops through a series of adventures that would have had impact and consequences, and ended with some sort of closure. And if it was really good, it would have been read and reread for generations.
Unfortunately, that’s not the way the industry developed, and so we get literally thousands of Batman comics, many of them promising big changes that will last forever, and then don’t. In recent years, DC has started formally publishing more self-contained stories featuring their characters outside of the ongoing continuity, under their Black Label imprint, and some of those have my attention. Because I know I can read one of those in isolation, and get a good story featuring characters I am interested in, without feeling like I have to commit to reading however many back issues, and however many ongoing new issues in the future.
Otherwise, my most fondly-remembered childhood series seem to be as much about the creators behind them—and the moment in time that I was reading them—as they are the characters. For example, I loved the Legion of Super-Heroes by Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen, starting from around issue 290 in the mid-80s. But when Levitz returned to write the characters several years ago, it didn’t feel the same. It wasn’t the same version of the characters, it wasn’t a continuation of the stories that I had loved—and which ultimately felt pretty thoroughly told anyway—and I wasn’t the same reader. Similarly, as much as I loved Batman and the Outsiders by Mike W Barr, Jim Aparo and Alan Davis, I have zero interest in reading the new version of the series that DC is currently publishing. It may be a really good comic, but it’s not the one I read and loved.
It’s no surprise, then, that one of my favorite DC superhero comics is Starman, by James Robinson, Tony Harris, Peter Snejbjerg and others. The character of Jack Knight, Starman, was created by Robinson for that series. His story is told across the 80 or so issues of that series, and when the series ended, so did Jack’s story. The character still exists, out there in the DC universe, I suppose, but nobody has told his stories except his creator. His life genuinely changed across that series, and DC hasn’t come along to undo any of it or restore it to some artificial status quo. It’s the same with Neil Gaiman’s Sandman; to my mind, that’s why series like those are as fondly remembered as they are. They’re successful enough to have a long run, but they manage to represent the creative vision of a single writer, even working with a group of artists. They don’t feel like they’ve been inconsistently built up by additions from multiple creators, and they don’t feel static and unchanging.
Of course, there are creators who make their runs on long-running characters feel personal and impactful. Al Ewing’s work on Immortal Hulk right now particularly has that feel, and it’s a comic that I am enjoying reading. But it’s also with the knowledge that eventually he will be done with the book, and someone else will take it over. And maybe everything Ewing has done with the comic will remain, and maybe none of it will. (For what it’s worth, the only real significant changes/developments to Marvel or DC comics characters that I can think of are: Dick Grayson stops being Robin and becomes Nightwing FOREVER! Superman reveals his true identity to Lois Lane, and they get married FOREVER! And Bucky Barnes comes back from the dead as the Winter Soldier FOREVER!)
Otherwise, I feel that the only way I’m going to get the kind of long-term consistency and development that I crave is to hitch my wagon to creator-owned books like Trekker, or Section Zero, or Monster Island, or Atomic Robo, or Girl Genius, or Greg Rucka’s work, or that of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips. Or at least creator-driven stories like those found in the pages of 2000 AD, even if the stories are owned by the publisher and not the creators. If I want a great superhero comic that doesn’t remain static and unchanging, I can read something like Robert Kirkman’s Invincible or Erik Larsen’s Savage Dragon. And when I’m done, I can read them again. Is there really much difference between rereading a comic that I love, even if I know what happens, and reading new adventures of characters who I know will never really change? I don’t think so.
Speaking of 2000 AD, I’ve received 3 progs since the last time I wrote about it, and they’ve all been really strong. I feel like, after however many years dealing with the aftermath of the apocalyptic Day of Chaos, the Dredd series is finally getting back to telling some of the more weird and wacky types of stories. And the art on the current story is fantastic.
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| Judge Dredd |
Long-running future-noir strip Brink continues to be fantastic, as well as completely unpredictable.
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| Brink |
New strip Feral & Foe is turning out to be a lot of fun, feeling like a classic fantasy story on the surface, but with the subversive edge I expect from 2000 AD just underneath.
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| Feral & Foe |
My current favorites, however, have to be Proteus Vex and Zaucer of Zilk.
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| Proteus Vex |
They are both fantastically drawn; Zaucer by veteran artist Brendan McCarthy, and Proteus Vex by slightly-younger veteran artist Henry Flint. And neither one feels particularly straightforward, so they reward both close first readings and eventually second readings, once the stories are complete.
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| Zaucer of Zilk |
And that’s about all I have this week. Please back the Trekker and Section Zero Trading Cards Kickstarters, and I will see you in a couple of weeks!
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