Category: Uncategorized

Alien Legion (1987) #1-18
by Chuck Dixon, Larry Stroman, Mark Farmer and a bunch of other people

Hang on! Didn’t we just do Alien Legion? Yes, but that was The Alien Legion while this is just Alien Legion.

We lost that effete “the” and we’re now dark and gritty, as Archie Goodwin explains. Well, this is 1987, after all, and Dark Knight Returns had been a major success, and everybody learned one thing from that: Dark. Gritty.

Hang on, that’s two things.

So writer Zelenetz is out (although he co-scripted the first two issues) and soon-to-be-famous writer of gritty things, Chuck Dixon is in. (He’d worked on Airboy before, which wasn’t very… gritty.)

We start off a couple of years later, and all the characters we cared about from the first series have been lost in action.

So the boss guy has to quit the Legion to go after them, see? All on his own, see?

Fortunately he’s got the backing of a billionaire, which helps, I guess.

Is it!?

Series creator, I mean, copyright owner Carl Potts does the introductions.

This is a dark and gritty Alien Legion, so of course we get some schematics for Alien Legion Halloween costumes.

Well, you can’t say that they’re not self-aware of what they’re doing…

One of the things I liked about The Alien Legion (the first series, with the effete “The”) was that they did establish everybody with a very distinct character, and they unfortunately undid a large bit of that. For instance, the guy above there was the nice guy, and here they try to redo him as a berserker kind of guy, which gets into the territory of at least two other characters. And then they sort of backtrack, and then they sort of forget about him altogether.

So feral! They’re all so feral now!

So they set up a squad of all the most losingest losers in the Legion, and that’s what the rest of the series is about. Well, it’s a concept, I guess? That we’ve seen … all the times before? Gone, too, are any mention of preserving any ecologies or anything like that, so it does make you wonder why they didn’t just start all over again with different characters.

The penciller and inker from the The series stayed on, and the character designs grow wilder and wilder. About this time, Epic started publishing Moebius translations, and I wonder whether Stroman was comped a whole bunch of copies, because his artwork grows more and more fun. It also grows more incoherent: He excels at these tableaux, but the action scenes seem more dashed off.

Oh, yeah, I guess Dark Knight Returns was out…

Storywise, there isn’t really much I have to say about this series: It’s pretty much nonsense all over, and not very entertaining. Getting through these 18 issues was a drag. But the pages are pretty fun to look at; especially the totally weird colouring by John Wellington. It’s very dark, but not very gritty, and uses way more cold greens and cold blues than you’d think somebody would be allowed to on a Mando paper (i.e. somewhat absorbent paper) comic.

You gotta love that running pose.

The book is told in a fairly straightforward fashion; not very tricky. This is as experimental as it gets: We get the narration from the green guy (he’s the grittiest) being contradicted by the panels themselves. Sure, it’s a hoary old trick, but it’s fun.

Oh, yeah, in the first series there was some kvetching about the lack of female characters, but we get a bunch of them here. None of them have very prominent roles, but on the other hand, their combat uniforms don’t have high heels.

While fun to look at, the artwork is wildly variable. At random, the characters will grow necks twice as thick as normal.

Did I mention that this is a very stupid book? I wonder whether the writer has any interest in sci-fi at all, because all the concepts introduced are just… moronic. Here, for instance, an alien race has put all their knowledge on an unmanned station far in space, so our heroes just walk in and steal the knowledge they need.

It’s… like… *sigh*. It’s just bad on all levels.

But that sure is a design for a memory storage device, isn’t it? ISN”T IT?!

Here we have a guy from The Planet of the Clowns, and one from The Planet of the Bears, and one from The Planet of the Posh, I guess.

Oh, and they plant a virus that’ll take down a planet. Apparently. I don’t think anything really comes of it? Perhaps it was just a bad idea?

The character designs keep happening.

But pages like this make me happy. Look at that colour scheme! Look at those … bannisters? I have no idea whether it makes any sense at all, but it looks sharp.

Some readers think that it’s not as gritty as it should be.

Look at this character design! Just look at it!

We get a few more pages of stats (a recurring feature in the The series), but only for a very select number of aliens. Most of them are killed off within a few pages of being introduced anyway…

Heh. They had a competition where you could win a Sienkewicz (sic) toaster? Nice. I tried googling for images, but couldn’t find it.

Oh yeah, Janet Jackson took over the colouring after some issues, but continued on in much the same vein. People noticed and liked it. And, of course, she was gone the next issue.

But this was when Archie Goodwin left, too. Probably not related events, though.

I’ll probably write more about that when I get to 1989 in this blog series. I mean, when I get to a #1 from 1989.

The colouring doesn’t change radically, but it does become more conventional gradually over the remaining issues.

As soon as Goodwin left, the pages get this “tab” thing on the top, which I guess means that Alien Legion now has newsstand distribution? (The colours are a code to let retailers know what books are current without having to look at the date.)

Very Star Trek!

The last few issues focus on this character to the exclusion of everything else. He started off in the The series as a psychopath, but is obviously who they think is the only interesting character in the book.

We even get an entire issue about his sad childhood.

Then it’s over! *phew*

No it’s not! Instead of a continuous series, we’ll get a number of miniseries. Gah. I guess there’ll be one more blog article about (the) Alien Legion, then…

Up until now, there’d been virtually no ads for non-Epic Marvel comics in the Epic comics, but things are getting more muddled now that Goodwin is gone.

I tried finding contemporary reviews of this iteration of Alien Legion, but I was unable to.

Video Jack (1987) #1-6
by Keith Giffen, Cary Bates, Dave Hunt and a whole bunch of people

I’ve been a fan of Giffen ever since he started doing Muñoz, but this is a series that haven’t really appeared on my radar, for some reason. So I’m excited to read it now.

Goodwin says that Video Jack is a totally original concept… and then seems to imply that it’s a rip-off of Max Headroom.

The comic is printed on “mando” paper (as opposed to the usual totally white, thicker paper Epic was using for all their other titles), and it’s at a lower price point. So were they going for a slightly more mainstream audience with this book?

Oh, wow! This is prime Giffen! My guess is he took one look at Watchmen and said “pshaw! a nine panel grid? I’ll go three better!”

There’s nothing here I don’t love, from the pacing, to the slightly oblique storytelling, to the super-close-ups that are pleasantly befuddling, to that one panel in black-and-white that’s totally unexplained by you know is going to be explained later.

And indeed, some pages later…

… and then the final reveal towards the end. Stuff like this just pickles me pink.

So we’ve got super-late-80s storytelling with all the trims and extras, but if the story’s lame, that’s not going to help much, is it? But the story’s also quite fascinating, with a huge cast to keep track of and a serial killer and ominous forebodings and stuff. I’m completely on board.

And there’s a cat!

When Giffen finally deviates from the grid, it’s somehow not as cataclysmic as you’d want. Perhaps it’s because he did that full house just a couple of pages before? Or perhaps this is just a bit underwhelming in itself.

Yeah, that’s the plot, recapped in the second issue. It’s unfortunate that they’re doing these recaps, because it goes against the grain of the book. But, yes, they have a remote that lets them pop between various TV worlds. I’m pretty sure that’s been done both before and since?

I love this stuff, and it feels like we have a story going that has some depth to it beyond the high concept. Conspiracies and secret organisations and stuff? Fun.

Video Jack is the only book that brings Goodwin’s cartoon editorials into the storyline (somewhat).

Oh, yeah, when they zap between different worlds they change to fit that world.

Don’t have a cow? Had The Simpsons started by then? Oh, yeah, started on the Tracey Ullman show in 1987…

After a four month delay before the third issue, where they go to Andy Griffith World (I think; I’ve never seen it), it seems like we’re making progress with the serial killer sub-plot, too…

… but Giffen more or less disappears from the book by the fourth issue. Giffen was notorious for dropping out of projects back in the 80s, or being very late indeed, but I have no idea what happened here. We get a ton of guests artists filling in over the final three issues, and Giffen is still listed as co-plotter, but the tone changes completely, and the fill-in artists do not adhere to the twelve panel grid. They are all somewhat grid-ey, but use more traditional proportions to their panels.

It’s not that there aren’t good pages here, like the DeStefano one, but we just get random TV shows, and there’s no plot development at all. Everything about the book that was fun: The paranoia, the plots, the oblique storytelling… it’s all gone. Instead they’re just filling pages without any rhyme or reason, which leads me to guess that Giffen isn’t involved with plotting any more, either.

Everything’s off model by this point.

Cary Bates worked for DC in the 60s and 70s, and it really shows. One of the TV worlds just had scene after scene like this: Uninspired “kooky” set pieces. It’s dreadfully done unless it’s actual 70s DC comics.

And then we get to the final issue, where they bring in a bunch of different artists to really put a stake in the project.

Michael T. Gilbert manages to get a few jokes in, at least.

Walt Simonson draws some nice dinosaurs, but the only inspired piece is by Trina Robbins, where they zap into I Love Lucy World.

And finally, somebody does the Giffen grid (it’s Bill Wray).

And then they tie up the main plot threads and forget all about the other stuff they had going in the first three issues and call it a day.

What a squandered series: They had something fresh, fun and intriguing going in the first three issues, and then… nothing.

A preview in Amazing Heroes #133, page 190

Starting with issue #4, if plans work
out, says editor Margaret Clark, a
different artist will render each of the
video realities. Issue #5 will see an
increasing number of realities. And #6
will be the all-out battle between Jack
and Damon for the remote control,
featuring a whole series of channel
changes, producing a multitudeof videc
realities, each losting only a page or two,
Artists were being lined up at press time,
but Clark wasn’t prepared to announce
names yet.
The series has an option for another
six issues if sales support it, says Clark,
so there is a possibility the story will not
be resolved in #6, but instead be con-
tinued through to #12.

Well, that’s one way of spinning “Giffen is leaving the book”, I guess. “If plans work out”.

I was unable to find any contemporaneous reviews of the book, and it has never been reprinted (for obvious reasons, I’d say).

But here’s a review:

All in all, I can appreciate what Bates & Giffen were trying to do with Video Jack; they had a fun concept that allowed them to tell stories that varied dramatically depending on what genre the remote control sent the characters to. At the same time, six issues was probably a good duration for the series, and much longer would have gotten repetitive. The characters and setting didn’t have enough depth to force the reader to demand more. I imagine sales on this weren’t particularly high, given its somewhat opaque nature and delays in coming out, but it was an interesting experiment that at least told a complete story.

Intradesting:

Noteworthy: although these comics were published five years after the first Epic Comic came out, this title had the lowest cover price of any Epic series.

I guess there isn’t too much chatter about this series around dem webs, even if Giffen is kinda a big deal…