Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #61 by Drew Barth

State of War

In the pantheon of planets in the DC Universe, Rann is underrated. By all accounts, it is considered a paradise in its small corner of the galaxy. Its capital city, Ranagar, looks as though it were carved from glass in the dreams of sleeping gods. Rann is also a planet that can’t stop going to war. Its genesis and fertility crisis came from a war: the Rann-Thanagar war was one of the largest galactic events in the DC Universe outside of a Crisis event. Now we see Rann being swarmed by the Pykkt.

One of DC’s oldest heroes lies at the center of Rann’s wars and is being brought back in a limited series from Tom King, Mitch Gerads, and Evan Shaner: Adam Strange.

As a character, Adam Strange is an icon, but in a way almost completely separate from DC. He is a quintessential 50s spaceman: jet pack, space suit and helmet, and a ray gun with ambiguous powers. His origin story is even more sci-fi pulp: beamed from Earth to the distant planet of Rann to be its savior from evil and sterility.

Much like King and Gerads’ efforts with Mister Miracle last year, Strange Adventures dives into some of DC’s cosmic heroes to explore themes and ideas in a single twelve issue run that no other series in DC’s current line-up is tackling. Adam Strange will always be a sci-fi pulp ideal of a adventurer, but now we’re able to see how the adventuring has affected him and the family he’s created on Rann. Continuing off from Mister Miracle, we’re getting a closer look at what war and conflict do to these characters—how do they cope? And how do they exist in a world that doesn’t seem to care? In this first issue of Strange Adventures we already have Adam Strange writing a memoir and going viral as a man screams at him during a book signing for the conflict on Rann. But then we also have him flying across Rann, blasting aliens with his ray gun.

Strange Adventures is a comic of contrasts. From Gerads’ sketchy, almost surreal vision of Earth to Shaner’s pure pulp alien landscapes across Rann, we have these divergent moods of what a character like Adam Strange can encompass. There is room for creators to experiment and breathe with characters that may be limited in normal continuity. The focus is more on story and character than simply working through to the next yearly event. And we as readers can revel in these new contrasts. Characters we have forgotten can come back and still receive the love and care they deserve. And in this instance, we get a strange off-world adventure that fits right in on Earth.

Get excited. Get ready for Adventure.

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #60 by Drew Barth

Stick ‘Em Up

Vault Comics continues to impress. I’ve previously written about them here.  Since last year, Vault has become a consistent figure on the weekly comic shelves. While their series are typically science fiction, fantasy, horror, or some combination of those three, this last month they debuted a series that delves more into magical slice-of-life with Finger Guns. Created by Justin Richard and Val Halvorson, Finger Guns has the makings of something great.

Issue one accomplishes what any reader wants from a first issue: characters (Wes and Sadie), a  hook (both characters have the ability to make people angry or calm by pointing their fingers at them), and some complications (both characters have parents who are either absent or unrelenting). As a first issue, Finger Guns is almost textbook in how it paints the world its characters live in. But where Richards and Halvorson excel in Finger Guns is in how they approach their story. From the outset, the focus for Sadie and Wes is not in their powers, it’s on the relationship between them and their parents. We see how Wes’ father is never there through a series of texts, and we can hear Sadie’s parents arguing long before we ever see them on the page. As readers, we get burial and deflection from Wes and Sadie respectively. And for the most part, there’s nothing either of them can do about their situations.

Well, mostly. The first issue of Finger Guns ends with Sadie’s hand behind her back, finger gun primed, to calm her parents down. But it’s stated a few pages earlier that this placation is only ever temporary, and Sadie says that with the heaviness of experience.

What propels Finger Guns outside of its full characters is the way they are shown to us. Val Halvorson is a master at his craft. From blocking out the moment where Wes realizes what his finger guns can do to the passing of time between Wes being at home, on the bus, and at the mall in one seamless transition to that final panel with Sadie’s hand behind her back shows this phenomenal awareness of how readers’ eyes follow forms and motion across the page. The cleanliness of the lines and the perfect palette set by colorist Rebecca Nalty establish a mood and tone to the story without using words. The visual splendor on display is stunning, even when it’s just two characters laying on a car.

Last week I talked about an issue one and this week I am doing the same, but these are different kinds of first issues. There are first issues that need to show a world; there are first issues that need to establish boundaries to an idea that seemed massive; there are first issues that need to put a threat to scale; and there are first issues that need to show you a character. Finger Guns’ strength comes from its characters. I’m excited to see where Richards and Halvorson take them.

Get excited. Point them guns.

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #59 by Drew Barth

Today’s Double Feature

A month ago I wrote about some of the upcoming comics this year that have me most excited. And to my excitement, one of those just released. Tartarus is a new series from Image by Johnnie Christmas and Jack T. Cole. The duo spin a new universe filled to bursting with technology bordering on magic and a family story built on deception and secrets. The first issue hits all of the marks—new worlds, interesting characters from their first panels, and a story that burns slow over its fifty-five pages. But what is most interesting is the way Christmas and Cole build their story.

The first issue of Tartarus is split in two—one story in the past, one story in the future. Both stories center around either imprisoned Surka or her daughter, Tilde. And this dual family narrative is what makes Tartarus so interesting from the beginning—namely since Tilde doesn’t know her lineage. From the first page, Surka is a figure spoken of as a hushed legend. She’s the long shadow cast over the Baxnan empire whose crimes have landed her in a deep, dank pit on a mining colony’s prison. So of course she escapes from prison in this first story. But it is in this first story that we are introduced to her infant daughter, Tilde, and it is where we see Surka die.

And so begins the second part of Tartarus. Seventeen years later, Tilde is in a Baxnan empire military academy and learns that she was lied to about her parents. As a piece of family intrigue, it’s incredibly interesting since the above-mentioned reveal is the kind of thing saved for the end of the first arc. But here, we know that Tilde is Surka’s daughter, and we know that she has been lied to most of her life. Where will the story go? If you’re a team like Christmas and Cole, you can take this story so much deeper. The questions set up in the first issue (namely how did Tilde end up in an academy for the military that killed her mom?) are the kinds of questions series are built around. And with the abundance of world-building on every page, there’s nearly another series worth of characters and story to to build off of.

I don’t know if this dual story structure will continue. The interplay of past and future allows the reader to start piecing together puzzles that characters don’t know exist and creates a different kind of reading experience, one that isn’t seen all that often in monthly comics.

Get excited. Split the story.

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.