Favorite Comics Part Seven: Nexus

To be honest I really don't remember a lot of the details of the plot of Nexus. Written by Mike Baron and drawn (mostly) by Steve Rude, it was one of the earliest of the Direct Market books, originally published by Capitol in black and white and then quickly moving to First Publications and full color. I tapped into Nexus early, with the black and white issues (picked up at Eide's on one of my earliest ventures into the city to find a comics shop, if memory serves).

To summarize; Horatio Hellpop, also known as Nexus, has terrible dreams about mass murderers, dreams that he is compelled to act upon. Wielding tremendous “fusion casting” powers Nexus tracks these genocidal villains across the universe and kills them. He is essentially an assassin, and though his victims are all guilty of horrendous crimes (sort of like Dexter with superpowers), the tragedy of Nexus is that with each victim he takes a step closer to being a mass murderer himself.

I still think of it as one of my favorite books from that time, but recently, in preparation for writing this post, I flipped through a lot of the early issues and the rest of the run and was surprised at how little of it looked familiar. The characters were all well-known to me and as I browsed most of their primary relationships came back. But the stories, the specifics of the ongoing plot remained vague.

While the basic idea of Nexus killing killers provides a structure for the stories, that's not really what the book was about. It was a story about relationships, religion, politics, and societal pressures. It was about free will and moral ambiguity. Though the basic premise of the series was dark, the book was also a tremendous amount of fun. In this way, unlike so many comics that focus on dark themes, Nexus embraced the whole spectrum of life. The joy and love and friendship and laughter that suffused every issue showed the human spirit and reminded us of what we stood to lose when evil prevails.

Nexus himself could be a bit of a downer. He did carry a terrible burden after all, and feared allowing himself to genuinely care. Over the course of the series the amazing supporting cast humanized him, bringing out of his self-imposed emotional exile to join life more fully. Sundra Peale was the love interest, but she was so much more than that. Sundra had a rich life outside of her relationship with Horatio, and of the two was the more self aware. She was independent and confident and self-reliant. Horatio's best friend Dave was centered and calm. Dave's son Fred, who went by the warrior name of Judah Maccabee, was loud, brash and hedonistic. There were many, many more. Baron's skill at presenting richly imagined and thoroughly complex characters cannot be overstated.

And then there's the art. I'm just going to say that Steve Rude ranks among my all time favorite artists. His influences are diverse; comics artists Jack Kirby, Alex Toth and Russ Manning are the most obvious, but artists such as Andrew Loomis and Norman Rockwell are also evident. But Rude takes these influences and makes them his own. When I first saw Nexus I didn't really put any of this together. The sheer power of his graphic design was enough. 






I love the clean lines. His ability to convey emotion through body language and facial expressions is unparallelled. There is a lithe sense of motion in every action, even when characters are at rest. His use of solid black is fearless. Solid black foregrounds are butted directly against solid black midgrounds and backgrounds, and due to his composition it never flattens out.

His color work is pretty awesome as well.

Rude's art has always been something I have aspired to. I think he was a more direct influence on my collaborator Fred, at least in terms of visual world-building, than on me. Nexus subtly influenced our development of the world of Grey Legacy. We were telling a very different type of story, but the pieces are there. The mix of the serious with the absurd certainly was there (though Douglas Adams was responsible for that aesthetic for us as well). Some of our alien species are, well... cartoony. This was a conscious decision on our part. I remember, during one of our early convention appearances someone looking at our art and really taking us to task for this. He just couldn't wrap his head around our more “realistic” looking characters existing in the same world as Lesterfarr and Bilmar. The contrast really bothered him, but it was exactly the look we wanted.


At least some of that came from Rude. The various alien inhabitants of Ylum (Nexus' world, pronounced Eye-Lum) were a mix of the very real and the slightly absurd. The drawings of Dr. Seuss were a huge influence on Rude's designs. It wasn't just background characters either, but many of the central cast. Dave, Judah, Mezz, Tyrone... all of these had an air of whimsy in their design. But that whimsy never undermined the seriousness of their characterization.

I'm pretty sure I haven't done justice to this. Nexus is a series I would love to turn more people onto, but these days it's really difficult to do so. The books are simply not readily available for new readers. The whole series is being collected into beautiful hardcover editions, but at fifty bucks a pop they are only for people who are already fans of the series. A trade paperback edition of the first few issues has been released, but the color issues were reproduced in black and white, and the strength of Rude's design was marred by the addition of unnecessary gray tones. Dark Horse Comics has released the last few Nexus stories over the years, including a brand new one scheduled to appear in Dark Horse Presents soon. Dark Horse has been releasing great color omnibus editions of many of the great books of the 80's at reasonable prices. Come on, let's see a Nexus Omnibus. Unless the rights are tied up elsewhere I can't see any reason not to. I would sell the Hell out of that at Phantom of the Attic.

Nexus is copyright Mike Baron and Steve Rude.

Visit Mike Baron at http://www.bloodyredbaron.com/

Visit Steve Rude at http://steverude.com/

Favorite Comics Part Four – Grendel

I introduced the topic of my favorite comics by saying that I wanted to talk about the ones that were “heart” books, those that resonated with my feelings more than my thoughts. However, as I think about the books I was most into, those that were influential in the way I think about comics storytelling, and more importantly, those that served as some sort of inspiration, I realize that it's a bit more complicated than that. For the most part, this series is still going to be about the “heart” books, but there are a couple of exceptions that have cropped up.

Chief among them, and the one that made me rethink my original goals with these blog posts, was Grendel, by Matt Wagner. Grendel was a book I loved, but it is certainly not one that inspires the warm fuzzies that Zot! or Beanworld do (or several of the others that will eventually appear on this list). Grendel was a book that was dark, and full of pretty extreme violence. You know... the kind of book that I really don't typically read much of these days. Grendel stands apart from most of my favorite books in this way. In general, I'm not a fan of gratuitous violence and graphic gore. But, the key word in that last sentence is gratuitous. If you have read any of my novels, you know that do not shy away from graphic violence if I believe it is necessary for the story. What I'm not a fan of is violence for violence sake, violence as voyeuristic pornography. If violence is part of a story it needs to have a reason.

The violence in Grendel never felt gratuitous, at least to me. Grendel was a meditation on the nature of violence. As dark as the story sometimes became, Grendel was always an exploration of the the theme of violence. It always asked questions. “What are the underlying causes of violence?” “What circumstances would lead an otherwise normal person to extreme acts of violence?” “What is it about darkness that we find so appealing?” “What does it mean to live in a culture that celebrates and indoctrinates us into violence while at the same time desensitizing us to it?”

None of these questions were asked overtly, but they were implied by the narrative.

I first saw Grendel in the early 80's in an ad for four new comics from a new Black and White publisher called Comico. The other three didn't really spark my interest very much at the time, but there was something about this character called Grendel. It was a simple black mask, with white designs over the eyes.

The stripes over the eyes probably reminded me of the pattern of Alice Cooper's eye makeup. But I'm pretty sure that it was the white circle on the nose that won me over. This tiny detail gave the mask a harlequin-like appearance. It was a clown's nose. This mix of the evil-looking eyes with the hint of the absurd worked for me. It was the mix of comedy and tragedy, an iconic representation of the idea of laughter in the face of darkness, and of how suddenly laughter can turn to tears.

Grendel first appeared in Comico Primer #2, an anthology title.

To this day I have never owned a copy of this book (though I have read reprints of the story).

He graduated into his own title, the first run of which lasted three issues. I picked all three of these up at one time.

This series told the story of Hunter Rose, the first Grendel. Hunter was a wealthy and famous author by day, and in the guise of Grendel, the ultra-violent leader of organized crime by night. He had an arrogant swagger. His ruthlessness was coupled with erudition and humor. This was no simple thug. The written complexity and duality of the character met the promise held in that brilliantly designed mask. Wagner was young and new to the business of comics, and his art style was raw and undeveloped. Many of his figures were crude, and his ink line did not have the control he would eventually master. But there was something about it that really clicked with me. As crude as his actual drawings may have been, there was a sense of design, pacing, and storytelling that promised great things.

The series was cancelled after three issues and Grendel next appeared in full color as a backup feature in the pages of Wagner's next series, Mage: The Hero Discovered (about which I will have a whole lot more to say in another blog). Wagner went back to Hunter Rose and began his story again, this time told in a series of art deco-inspired, beautifully designed pages accompanied by text. 

It can be said that this story was not “Comics” per se, but an illustrated story. Whatever you want to call it, we saw the life story of Hunter Rose unfold to its inevitable, tragic conclusion. This story was eventually collected under the title Devil By the Deed.

But that wasn't the end of Grendel. The series came back, in full color with a new #1. In the first story we are introduced to Christine Spar, the daughter of Hunter's ward, Stacy. Though written by Wagner, the art was done by The Pander Brothers. In this story we see Christine, a normal woman, driven to acts of extreme violence by the abduction of her son.

She eventually dons the mask of Grendel and we see the first hint that Grendel is something much larger than Hunter Rose, or any one person. Though never made explicit in any of the many stories that follow, Grendel is the spirit of violence. It is a manifestation of our own darkest nature. In the case of Christine, it starts with a noble motivation: to protect her child. But the line between the warrior who protects and the monster who takes joy in slaughter can be a thin one.

As the series progresses the nature of Grendel changes with it. Christine's lover, Brian Li Sung, is seduced by the spirit of Grendel as well (in an arc drawn by Bernie Mireault), and his tale is more sad than tragic.

Over time the series moves far into the future. In a world controlled by religious fanaticism, madman Eppy Thatcher dons the mask of Grendel to bring down a system that he sees as a corruption of his pure faith. Eppy communes with his visions of Grendel, and like Joan of Arc, believes he is acting on divine inspiration.

More time passes, and the image of Grendel becomes part of culture. Grendel can no longer be contained by a single person, but has become a motivating icon. An elite band of samurai-like soldiers, known as Grendels, arise to wield power. In the last story arc of the original series, Orion Assante rises from their ranks and becomes ruler of the world, The Grendel Khan.

This was followed by Grendel: War Child, a twelve issue series that focused on the young son of Orion, Jupiter Assante, and the war machine/cyborg killing machine designed to protect him, Grendel-Prime.

Each story arc was drawn by a different art team, in order to give each character a look and feel distinct from the others. Over the course of forty issues Wagner expanded his universe and dealt with huge issues. There was a central concept to lead the reader forward, but not a central character. The art and storytelling was, at times, very experimental and challenging. The stories and characterization were complex, and everything had consequences.

Eventually, the concept of Grendel outgrew Wagner. He had introduced an idea that spanned centuries of time. If Grendel was an idea that possessed many people, Wagner decided to allow it to possess other artists. This was an idea he had already established by having different artists on the book. He expanded this idea by introducing a series of miniseries called Grendel Tales, where other writers and artists could take the concept and play in his sandbox.

Fred and I almost had the chance to participate in this, but that's a story for the next blog.

Grendel and all other characters are copyright by Matt Wagner. Check out his web site at www.mattwagnercomics.com

Favorite Comics Part Two: Zot! by Scott McCloud

Before Scott McCloud became famous for Understanding Comics he was a little known comics creator with only one real professional credit to his name. Zot! was originally a ten-issue full color series published by Eclipse Comics in 1984-85. It went on hiatus for a brief period and returned as a black and white book with issue #11 and continued to be published in this format until it finally ended with issue #36.

The hiatus was due to low sales of the original ten issues. I'm sad to say I was part of the problem at the time.

The early 80's featured an explosion on new comics coming out of the creation of Direct Market Distribution. After the dominance of Marvel and DC comics being the only comics available on the racks (with a few exceptions to this generality), it was a time of great excitement in the world of comics. It seemed like there was suddenly a tremendous wealth of new ideas and concepts available. In retrospect, much of what came out during this period were variations on the same superhero, science-fiction and fantasy tropes that had always existed in comics. But to a lot of us it felt very fresh (and quite honestly, most of the books I plan on talking about in upcoming blogs come from this time period).

At the time I didn't have regular access to a comic book store (not counting the once in a blue moon trip to Pittsburgh), and Direct Market books were not available on the newsstand. There were days of panic when I would read about some cool new comic and wonder if I would ever actually see it. I started a subscription service through Mile High Comics in Colorado and would put in a monthly order for comics. Once a month a box of joy would arrive.

Even with this service I wasn't as adventurous with new titles as I could have been. Maybe if I had been going to a comics shop regularly and had had the opportunity to browse titles before purchasing them I would have tried a wider variety of titles. As it was, most of what I subscribed to were the DC titles that had gone Direct Sales only (Teen Titans, Legion of Superheroes, Infinity Inc.), and some of Marvel's Epic line of creator-owned titles. There were a few others, but these were usually only added after I had seen them at a convention or a trip into Pittsburgh (I shopped at Eide's and the nascent Phantom of the Attic whenever I made the trip).

I had seen Zot! advertised in some of the books I read (probably DNAgents, a superhero book from the same publisher), but I pretty much ignored it, for a lot of the very reasons that I eventually came to love it for. Part of the excitement of the Direct Market was that the Comics Code Authority held no sway over the content of these books. They were able to have more sophisticated and adult content (in theory, anyway). This was well before the entire Grim and Gritty fad that took over comics by the late 80's, but still, at the time the image of the character Zot just didn't grab me. It was too clean, too innocent looking, too juvenile for me when what I was looking for more adult than the mainstream comics I had been reading. It looked helplessly retro and as a result I ignored it.

The design of Zot himself immediately brings to mind the original Captain Marvel from the 1940's (SHAZAM, as he is more and more frequently being referred to). The red costume with a yellow lightning bolt on the chest has an iconic look to it (though Zot's lightning bolt is stylized to resemble a backwards Z). The squinty eyes of both characters sealed the similarity. McCloud says in one of the issues that this wasn't intentional and he only realized it after the fact. Given the lack of access to comics from the 40's at that time it's possible that while Scott had probably seen some images of C.C. Beck's art it probably wasn't just lying around. 

The other piece of artistic influence was the design of Astro Boy by Osamu Tezuka, the godfather of Japanese Manga. Originally Zot was intended to be a robot (you can see the design in Zot! #8).

Over time I grew more adventurous and had read some great reviews of Zot! Sometime between the publication of the last color issue and the first black and white one I found the entire first ten-issue run at a pretty decent price (I seem to remember this being at a convention, but I couldn't tell you which one... It could as easily have been at Eide's or Phantom). I took the plunge and bought all of them.

Quite simply, I fell in love with the book. It was, as I had thought, helplessly retro. But it also maintained an incredible sense of hope for the future. It was fun! At a time when superheroes were starting down a dark trail (a trail I followed and thoroughly enjoyed at the time), Zot! was a palate-cleansing breath of fresh air and a renewal of wonder.

McCloud sums up his intent in an author's note in issue #1; “Welcome to Zot! no. 1, home of one of the most incorrigibly happy heroes you'll ever meet.” He goes on to say, “So that's the spirit that Zot carries inside him, the spirit of unyielding and irrational hope.”

From its inception Zot! has been at odds with the prevailing trends of the superhero genre. But for me, that is exactly what makes it stand out.

I don't want to belabor the plot points, but the essence is this... Thirteen year old Jenny Weaver has just moved to a new town with her brother Butch after her mother and father's divorce. She's feeling alone and depressed and friendless in her new middle American suburban home. Suddenly, a portal opens in mid-air and Zot flies through being chased by deadly robots. After Zot defeats the robots he takes Jenny and Butch through the portal to his world. It's the wardrobe of Narnia, or Alice's rabbit hole, one of the classic tropes of the fairy tale. Every child has fantasized about leaving this boring world behind and going to another place full of magic, wonder and adventure. Of course, there's always danger as well.

In Zot's world it is perpetually 1965, an era that looked forward to a utopian science fiction future. It's bright and shiny and clean and filled with technological marvels. The initial story line involved the MacGuffin of the search for a golden key that would open a plain wooden door that hung mysteriously in space (and the reveal of what lay behind it when it was opened was a genuine laugh-out-loud moment for me). Along the way there were chase scenes and fights with villains and mayhem involving monkeys. But the plot was always secondary to the characters for me.

McCloud later revealed that he based the personalities of the four main characters on the four main Personality Types in Jungian Psychology. Zot was Intuition. Jenny was Feeling. Butch was Sensation and the robot butler Peabody was Thinking. It was a shorthand, but it gave McCloud a firm base as to how the characters would react to any given situation. Given my interest in Jungian psychology at the time, and the academic work I did with the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator (my master's thesis used that test), I'm surprised I didn't pick up on this at the time.

    

Even in this Utopian vision of the retro-future of 1965 there were villains, and Zot's villains were wonderful. I read someplace that each of them can seen through the lens of some vision of the future gone horribly awry. I think that's probably true, but I don't want to analyze that here (this is already going on too long).

There is the madman Dekko, an artist who over time replaced most of his body with robot parts as a work of art and an attempt at perfection. His headgear is based on the Art Deco design of the Chrysler building.

Dr. Ignatius Rumboult Bellows, a steampunk villain years before that term had been invented.

The maddening, backward-thinking cult called the De-evolutionaries (With apologies to DEVO, this group seems to have come into actual existence and have an inordinate amount of influence on politics these days).

The Blotch, a gangster who attempts to control the world through media and advertising.

And the main villain of the piece, 9-Jack-9. A truly chilling assassin with no true physical form, he exists as information on the interconnected electronic devices and computers of his world.

I saw the original art for this at a Con in Philadelphia
sometime around 1993. Way out of my price range, but
man, would I love to own this.

When Zot! returned as a black and white series with #11 I was there and waiting. The art style changed somewhat to accommodate the new format. Whereas before McCloud left open areas in his art to allow color to fill in the information, the new series relied more on intricate linework, shading and cross-hatching. For me, as a fan of black and white artwork, it became more solid. Scott's skill as an artist progressed, and he seemed to get better with each issue (by his own admission, the more detailed the work became, the slower he was. Many of the later issues of the series came out late). 

It was during this time that the influence of Japanese Manga became more apparent. Having not been exposed to very much Manga at that point I didn't realize that this is where a lot of what he was doing came from. Some of the techniques he mentions in Understanding Comics, such as the Masking effect of iconic characters played against more realistically rendered backgrounds, were on full display here. He also experimented with different kinds of panel-to-panel transitions than American comics typically did. This was another aspect of comics he talked about in Understanding Comics.

In fact, upon rereading Zot! after Understanding Comics it is easy to see that McCloud was working with many of the same ideas even then. I recently read an interview with Scott that appeared in issue #18 of the magazine Comics Interview in 1984. It is clear that even though Understanding Comics was still nine years away, McCloud was already developing the themes that would eventually become that work.

During the last story arc of Zot! the book took a very different direction than what we had previously seen, and in many ways became a very different story. Collectively known as the “Earth Stories” these issues turned the premise of the series on its head. Instead of Jenny and Butch visiting a world of marvels, Zot was trapped in their mundane world. It was the story of this optimistic outsider, a hero in his own world, forced to live life as a normal teenager. Zot, and the reader, meet Jenny's circle of friends and we get to know them. These stories are heartfelt portraits of everyday people dealing with real life issues. In one amazing issue Jenny's best friend Terry deals with the realization that she is a lesbian. This was at a time when the idea of an openly gay character in comics was still fairly taboo. The topic was treated with respect and empathy and not a trace of sensationalism. Another issue, nominated for an Eisner Award, featured Zot and Jenny having a long conversation about their relationship and whether or not they old enough to be ready to have sex. That's it... a conversation. No supervillains. Nothing blowing up. Just two teens talking openly and lovingly to each other about a difficult topic. It was beautiful.

McCloud used this image as the cover for the Black and White collection.
He felt this summed up the book better than any other single image.

In the course of doing some research for this blog I found a website review of the black and white Zot! that was a little dismissive of these issues. It referred to Zot! as an “American Manga Romance Comic” and went so far as to refer to it as “Twee.” It was obvious from the tone that the reviewer did not see these as good things. It is a Romance comic. And an action-filled superhero comic. It can also be really funny, and sad, and frightening. It's like life that way.

As I've said in previous posts, McCloud was one of the people we sent copies of Grey Legacy to, and Scott always responded in an encouraging and positive way. I've met him a couple of times and in person he has always been friendly and outgoing.

Unfortunately, right now Zot! isn't in print. There was an expensive color collection of the first ten issues published in the 90's that you may be able to find on Ebay. You can probably track down the original issues that way as well. As of this writing my store has a complete set of them on sale, though that may change tomorrow. The black and white issues were collected into one giant trade paperback a couple of years ago at the great price of $25. It's unfortunately out of print at the moment as well. I found four remaindered copies of it at a Half Price Books a couple of years ago for $4.99 each. I bought one as a gift and have been kicking myself ever since for not grabbing the other three just to have to give to people.

Zot! ended up being one of my all-time favorite books. I'm sure parts of it are dated now, and if you prefer your superheroes more in dark, grim and gritty style, then this probably won't be your thing at all. But if you want to have fun, to feel some optimism and hope, to be reminded of youthful romance, to experience a moment when the future was believed to be bright and shiny (and maybe to be reminded that it still should be), then please, find copies of Zot! and enjoy.

McCloud did a new Zot! story available exclusively on his website a few years ago. You can read more about Zot!, McCloud, Understanding Comics, and whole bunch of other stuff he does at www.scottmccloud.com.

Zot! and all other characters and images are copyright Scott McCloud.

Bang-Shang-A-Lang

I've been on an Archie kick recently. Yeah, that Archie, the perennial teen humor comic. I read Archie when I was a kid. I read pretty much all comics democratically. I watched the Archies Saturday morning cartoons. The Archie comic Madhouse changed its name to Gladhouse and served as my introduction to hippy culture (through the parodic eyes of the older men who wrote the book).

But, like most people I guess, I outgrew Archie. Archie and the Riverdale gang didn't care. They continued to be published and have their adventures for a new generation without me, just like they had been doing for years before I was born. Archie first appeared in Pep Comics #22 in 1941 and got his own title in 1942. It's still being published, making it the third longest running comic in history (the other two being Detective Comics and Action Comics respectively). Over the years Archie has produced a number of wonderful and influential writers and artists, too many to go into detail here. My own comics art has been moving into a more simplified and iconic direction, and the Brix strip I've been archiving here is the best example of that. As a result I've been looking at a few of these artists more closely. Bob Montana was the original artist on the series and established the basic look of the characters.

But it was Dan DeCarlo who solidified the style and became the most recognizable Archie artist. I really love his clean lines, uncluttered composition and solid inks.

I also really love the work of Harry Lucey. There's a wackiness and animated feel to his take on the characters that I find charming.

I came to these artists backwards. I've never hidden the fact that Jaime Hernandez of the comic Love and Rockets has been a primary influence. I think that's pretty obvious in any of the various Grey Legacy projects that Fred and I have done. Jaime has always talked about the influence of DeCarlo and Lucey and it took me awhile to really go back and look at what he was talking about. I'm glad I did.

And it's more than just the art. The stories I've been reading are great. The simple love triangle of Archie, Betty and Veronica lends itself to endless variation. The relationships and friendship among all of the characters is truly timeless. Many stories turn on a very simple punchline, some completely subvert traditional storytelling and cross the fourth wall into the surreal.

In the late 60's the Archies were a real band. Okay, they had actual humans playing the instruments and singing, but they were billed as The Archies. The song Sugar Sugar was the #1 pop song in America in 1969. There was this weird promotion where breakfast cereal boxes would have a playable record on the back of the box. The grooves of the record were actually embedded in the cardboard with some kind of plastic/vinyl. You could cut the record out and play it on your record player. I remember doing this with the Archies.

I also remember buying the single of Bang-Shang-A-Lang, with the b-side of Truck Driver. I haven't heard those two songs since I was 9 or 10 years old. Yesterday I downloaded an Archies Greatest Hits album. I still knew all the words to Bang-Shang-A-Lang.

For the record, I'm neither a Betty or a Veronica. I completely understand Archie holding on to both of them.