TOTALLY EPIC

Offcastes (1993) #1-3
by Mike Vosburg

Mike Vosburg… that’s a very familiar-sounding name, but I cant’ quite place it.

On the inside front cover Vosburg explains about the insightful comments he’s gotten from his friends.

Oh, boy. We start off in deep, deep infodump territory. If there’s something that’s more offputting that starting off on an infodump, I don’t know what. But… somehow… I don’t mind it here? I can’t explain it; I feel like I’m reading a good olde-tymey adventure comic, where that sort of thing is integral, of course. It might just be that the world Vosburg is setting up here seems genuinely complex and interesting, but this opening, surprisingly enough, makes me want to read on.

It turns out (on page four) that the presumed protagonist is an agent for a fascist, racist regime, for instance.

Perhaps a lot of my immediate fascination with this book has less to do with the narrative style and more to do with the artwork. It looks like… Howard Chaykin? But more humanised? I find it quite attractive — varied characters, solid anatomy, backgrounds that are actually there…

That’s a very Chaykin face, right?

The characters never stop thinking thoughts that are very helpful in explaining to the readers what’s going on. Normally this would totally drive me nuts (I mean, more than usual), but, again, here it just feels very natural, for some readson.

Perhaps it’s because this turns into a surprisingly complex story with a bunch of twists and reversals, and without these reminders this would be a different genre than what it reads like, which is a lighthearted adventure story.

Ped Xing? C’mon.

Oh, the thing I said about good anatomy? Not so much in that panel to the right there, I guess…

Aha! Vosburg shared a studio with Howard Chaykin. I guess that explains it.

I really like the designs on these pages. They’ve got a natural flow even when the reading direction flows from the right towards the left, which is a difficult trick to pull off. The colours (also done by Vosburg) are also great. Just the right degree of modelling, and with a consistent (and very pretty) colour scheme.

I’m not going to go into the plot at all (as usual), but just note that things grow more and more complicated in a very satisfying way, and we focus more on the kid character who’s the one who understands most of what going on, and is the most powerless character. We spiral inwards into a very tense ending.

It’s pulled off in a most excellent way… even though the ending is pretty bleak. (And I’m not totally sure that it really makes sense, but…)

I’m guessing there’s not anything more for Zak, because the era for comics like this had been over for half a decade when this was published. It feels like a throwback to the mid-80s wave of indie comics (in all the best ways): A very personal, original project that doesn’t conform to many of the clichés that a reader would expect.

I’m going to go ahead and guess that it bombed sales-wise, but most of the Heavy Hitters books apparently did…

The book has unfortunately never been collected or reprinted, but Vosburg started a Kickstarter to make that happen in 2019.

Huh:

Originally printed in 1993 in a three issue series, this reprint will collect them all in one graphic novel, completely digitally recolored and with enhanced printing shot from the original Duo-Shade pages. It was the first chance I had to do an entire project on me own: writing, penciling, inking, and coloring. I was very proud of the work. Unfortunately, the printing process that we used was not advanced enough at the time to handle the color work that was done, and the finished books looked pretty murky at time.

I liked the colouring! Well, just goes to show…

Looks like it was funded successfully, but I’m not sure whether you can actually still buy a copy…

You should, though. It’s interesting.

I couldn’t find any reviews (or talk) about this series at all on the web.

Feud (1993) #1-4
by Mike Baron and Mark Nelson

Baron is the writer of Nexus, of course, and the name Mark Nelson sounds familiar, but I’m not sure where from… Did he do stuff for the Eclipse anthologies?

Anyway, with a name like “Feud” I was expecting some kick-ass action (like the Epic ads for the “Heavy Hitters” line-up promised). And, indeed, there’s action, but there’s no humans in sight, and it’s a comedy of sorts.

And go-to comedy element number one is always having somebody talk with a lisp. *sigh* I can’t really express how annoying I find reading this stuff at length, so I’m not even going to try.

They do use this as a plot element later in the series, so I guess that’s better than usual.

In any case, this is a surprisingly complex little story. We’ve got four different species, mutually dependent on each other, but also constantly in conflict with each other. It’s an interesting setup, rife with possibilities that are, indeed, used to good effect. It’s a good story.

But I guess I can take or leave schticks like having the frog species swimming really fast to create a tsunami. I mean… it’s fun? But…

Nelson’s artwork is attractive, but his action scenes (and there’s a lot of them) are often less than exciting. I mean, individually, these panels are great: Look at those copters! Look at that ptero guy firing that gun! Great! But combined it doesn’t quite flow, I think?

The major problem is that Nelson commit hard to these species, meaning that the facial expressions are sometimes hard to read, and it’s difficult to keep the individual characters separate. For instance, above the head honcho, Brad, is the one with those subtle spikes on top. In most of the panels he’s purple, but then the colourist goofs and switches the colours. Presumably because he couldn’t really keep them apart, either.

So you have to consciously remember “Oh, that’s the guy with the spikes… that’s the guy with a broken tooth…” to keep them apart. And that gets old.

It is funny, though.

But Baron’s go-to edge lord sense of humour makes it difficult to care about the characters, and subsequently care about the plot: Having the reptile leader suddenly kill and eat the frog leader (because she moved around too much; instinct you know) sure is a knee slapper.

“Heavy Handed Froog”. Nice.

In the final issue, we get a bunch of process pages from Nelson.

This series has never been collected or published, which I think is surprising. These are moderately big names, and it’s a completely standalone work… and it’s pretty good.

This person liked it, too:

The sheer audacity required to create an anthropomorphic political thriller like this is incredible. The very fact that Baron & Nelson even decided to tackle a comic like this should be rewarded. But, the real reward goes to the reader: They pulled it off! Tons of humor and action keep this series moving along as you find yourself actually caring about these imaginary reptilian creatures.

This one, too:

Looking back at it now, it almost sounds like one of those convention pitches or new series proposals that veer straight into horror-story territory: a writer or artist will try to sell a world that has sixty pages of backstory before the plot even starts.