EVERYTHING BUT IMAGINARY #185: MELTING DOWN YOUR SUPERHEROES

[Blake Petit]

One of the coolest things about my job here at Comixtreme is the opportunity to see a comic book in progress. Not often, but once in a while I’ll hear from some creator or editor who says to me, “Blake, you’re the Internet’s most intelligent, well-respected, articulate and influential comic book columnist, and good GOD you’re a snappy dresser.” (I am paraphrasing here.) “How’d you like a preview of our upcoming comic book?” And I reply, “Yes. Yes, I would.” And they will say, “grammatically speaking, ‘How’ isn’t a question that demands a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer.” And I conclude, “shut up.”

But I always take that opportunity – sure, there’s a lot of crap out there. If you grab a comic book at random off the shelf, there’s a better than 50 percent chance you’ll get something that isn’t worth reading at all. But when you find something good, that makes all the garbage you go through worth it. The last time someone offered me a preview, I jumped at it for two reasons. First of all, it was free (which you can't argue with). Second, it was by somebody I already was familiar with, respected and considered cool as beans. I’m talking about Image’s upcoming miniseries Meltdown by David B. Schwartz and Sean Wang.

In a nutshell, Meltdown is the story of a flame-powered superhero called “The Flare” whose powers have not only bogged him down his entire life, but now seem to be leading towards his death. With everything he cares about coming apart at the seams, the young hero decides to strike back at the enemies he’s never been able to cut loose against before. It’s a surprisingly introspective story, not quite the action piece you would expect from the synopsis. There’s very little dialogue – almost the entire comic book is told through Cal’s captions, remembering his life to this point or explaining his current conflict with his arch-nemesis, Maelstrom.

It’s a strong, emotional story about a hero that gets pushed to his limits and beyond. There are a lot of superhero stories out there, and frankly, the idea of showing a hero past the breaking point is done a lot, but telling a story like this really works better in a self-contained miniseries like this one. Let’s face it, no matter how bad things get for Spider-Man, you know he’s not going to die (permanently), and because he’s not going to die, you know he won’t be pushed past the point of no return. That really limits the possibilities of a story, and that detracts from the suspense. With Meltdown, though, with a hero we’ve never seen before (and may never see again), we believe that anything can be possible.

I’m not really familiar with David Schwartz, but Sean Wang is a different story. One of those great finds I mentioned before, one of those fantastic comics I never would have gotten to read if it weren’t for Comixtreme, is Wang’s incredible Runners miniseries from last year. This little science fiction gem is about a group of cargo “runners” who get caught up in more than they bargained for when they discover the cargo they’ve been hired to transport is a living, blue-skinned girl. This miniseries really blew me away (and if you haven’t picked up the trade paperback yet, you’re wrong), and I’ve been waiting for Wang’s next work ever since.

Meltdown is a completely different book from the adventuresome, often comedic Runners, of course, but it’s still a great read. It also shows Wang’s versatility as an artist. He employs two distinctly different styles in this issue – a lighter, more iconic style similar to his Runners work shows us Cal’s more innocent days, his youth, his first love and so on. When we move on to Cal’s adulthood, Wang’s style grows sharper, more realistic, more like a traditional superhero comic book. Please keep in mind, “traditional” is by no means intended to be an insult here – to the contrary, putting these segments of the story in a style that looks like a “usual” superhero story really helps to set off just how different it is.

This is a good example of a genre I’ve really grown interested in lately – the sort of “twisted” superhero genre. An awful lot of creators are turning the superhero on its ear, and while I enjoy an old-school cape and tights romp as much as the next guy, these creators that are doing different things with superheroes are putting out some of the best comics on the market. I’m really looking forward, for example, to Gail Simone and Neil Googe’s upcoming Wildstorm book, Tranquility, about a superhero retirement community.

The polar opposite of this, of course, would be Aaron Williams’ brilliant PS 238 about an elementary school for superhero kids (or, as they say in the comic, “Metaprodigy Children”). This is a really funny series, but it’s got a strong plotline as well – children learning to be heroes, other children learning how not to be villains… Williams shows an understanding for both children and superheroes unmatched by virtually anyone else writing comics. We've got the son of the world's most powerful heroes unsure if he even wants to be a hero, a kid with no powers desperate to be one, a would-be supervillain who seems to get caught up in doing the right thing despite himself, and as of the latest issue, a child who can communicate with the dead... and may have even more unique abilities than that. I absolutely love this comic.

On the more serious side, John Ridley and Georges Jeanty just finished up a series for Wildstorm that I’m certain is destined to go down as one of the greats. I mean Marvels Great. Watchmen Great. The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Great. In the eight-issue American Way, Ridley and Jeanty took us back to the early 1960s, a time that was volatile throughout the world as the Communist block and the Western Democracies were at each others’ throats, and volatile on the homefront as race relations threatened to tear the United States apart. Ridley uses both of these conflicts as the backdrop for his story, in which the government creates its own superheroes to help maintain public morale against the Russian threat. When one of the heroes dies, a shrewd publicist decides to replace him with a black man, planning to “unveil” him after he’d become a media darling. The plan goes wrong, and the United States is brought to the brink of a super-powered Civil War. This book is flat-out brilliant, one of the best takes on superheroes you’ll ever read.

I love a classic superhero story as much as anyone. I’m enjoying the heck out of watching Superman track down Subjekt 17 over in his eponymous title, seeing Batman solve one mystery after another in Detective Comics and seeing Brad Meltzer put together a brand-new Justice League of America. But some of the greatest superhero stories ever told are those where we take the conventions of the genre and give them a little twist. Meltdown looks like it could be one of those titles. I, for one, certainly can’t wait to read it.

Favorite of the Week: October 4, 2006

Speaking of twisted takes on superheroes, in a squeaker race, Robert Kirkman and Phil Hester took last week’s “favorite” award for The Irredeemable Ant-Man #1. With Henry Pym on yet another of his constant quests to figure out his place in the universe and Scott Lang on another of his… well, he’s dead… the role of the Marvel Universe’s Ant-Man is open. In the first issue of this new series, SHIELD is hard at work trying to build a new Ant-Man rig, when the suit falls into the hands of a pair of agents who may not quite be of the highest moral caliber. Kirkman is a really strong storyteller, and he works well in a variety of storytelling styles. This first issue gives me a lot of enthusiasm to see where the book will go next.

Blake M. Petit is the author of the superhero comedy novel, Other People's Heroes, the suspense novel The Beginner and the weekly “Think About It” humor column at Think About It Central. His new comic, Evertime, is coming soon from Tightlip Entertainment. E-mail him at Blake@comixtreme.com and visit him on the web at Evertime Realms.