Reviews of Comics from Wednesday 1/13

Abe Sapien #30
Story: Mike Mignola & Scott Allie
Art: Santiago Caruso & Dave Stewart

Abe Sapien is the darkest of the Mignolaverse titles. While BPRD has a lot of adventure to it, Lobster Johnson is a pulp action book, and even Hellboy in Hell has a spooky, supernatural vibe, Abe Sapien is a soul searching story of one man who doesn't know his place in the world. But occasionally, the series has these interesting one off issues that take us away from Abe in the present and let us see some of his past. This issue is one of those, and it is a sight to behold. Back in 1983, Abe is spending the night talking to Professor Bruttenholm, the father figure of the various B.P.R.D. agents, and Abe stumbles across a book of spells and magic by a mage named Gustav Strubl who lived in the nineteenth century and has since returned from the dead and, unbeknownst to Abe, been on his trail and in his orbit for some time in the present. Bruttenholm brushes it off and heads to bed, but a Dr. Malloy comes in and tells Abe the story of Strubl, a story of dark schools, witches, trips to Hell, and prophecy. It's a delightfully classic horror story, Strubl being a Doctor Faustus-esque figure who wanders the world trying to gain a position in the world to come when Hell rises. And the story ends with a classic end of horror movie/story disappearing act. The pleasure of what Mignola and his various collaborators do when telling these kind of stories is that they take tropes and twist them into a slightly new formation, often with the help of an able artist. This issue's artist is an artist new to the Mignolaverse and to American comics: Santiago Caruso, whose art is absolutely astounding. His art has a very European style, which makes sense being he;s a European artist, with soft lines and inks that make for eerie shadows. His devils and demons have proportions that are large and just a bit off, adding to their sense of the unnatural. And his version of Hellboy is excellent: I'd love to see him do a Hellboy short at some point in the future. Generally, there's an almost Hieronymous Bosch vibe to the issue that really adds to the horror of the issue. If you're looking for a fun, one off horror story, this issue of Abe Sapien is a great choice.

Gotham Academy #14
Story (Framing Sequence): Brenden Fletcher
Art (Framing Sequence): Adam Archer & Sandra Hope

After Olive Silverlock's encounters with Hugo Strange and her family history, and the Robin War, Gotham Academy takes a break from the more serious plots for a light-hearted anthology arc, "Yearbook." When Maps Mizoguchi is turned down to join the yearbook at Gotham Academy, her best friend Olive gives her a scrapbook to make her own yearbook, and so Maps begins making yearbook pages around some of the wilder adventures of the year we haven't seen yet. In "Animal Science 101" (Story: Derek Fridolfs. Art: Dustin Nguyen), Colton, the school's second story man, breaks into the  science lab during prank week only to find that Dr. Langstrom's experiments aren't so easily taken; "Queen Glee" (Story & Art: Katie Cook), sees Olive and Maps trying to find out why Dyllin, head of the Glee Club, has suddenly made the Glee Club more popular than ever; and "Scottie Dog" (Story: Hope Larson. Art: Kris Mukai) follows an adventure of history teahcer Professor MacPherson when she was a student at Gotham Academy, and her meeting with another student with a special power. The stories are charming and fun; each with a slightly different flavor. The first, from Fridolfs & Nguyen, has an action tone, with Colton and his friend Eric being chased by a genetically altered goat. Katie Cook's is a mystery with a high school vibe and cute cat videos, and if there's something Kate Cook draws better than anyone, it's cute cats. Hope Larson and Kris Mukai's story is one of teen angst and accepting yourself for what you are and not letting other's opinions matter. They each hit a different genre, but all feel perfectly in line with what we've seen in Gotham Academy. A gem of the current Batman line, Gotham Academy works in so many different ways, and it looks like the Yearbook arc with spotlight many of them. I'm curious to see whether the stories will remain whimsical, or take on a more serious edge as the arc continues.

Leaving Megalopolis: Surviving Megalopolis #1
Story: Gail Simone
Art: Jim Calafiore & Jason Wright

After Gail Simone and Jim Calafiore's dark super hero graphic novel, Leaving Megalopolis, was published beyond it's Kickstarter backers by Dark Horse, I reviewed it; it's a great, dark superhero story that doesn't deconstruct the genre but embraces its darkest aspects. Now, in Surviving Megalopolis, a new story that opens a month after the original series ended, things have not improved in the city of Megaloplis, which remains in the control of the superheroes who have been turned into monsters. But while we do spend time with the still evil heroes as they retrieve the body of Overlord, the hero who turned on the rest at the end of Leaving Megalopolis, and see just how depraved they are, the focus of the story is again on the normal people who live in the world around them. Mina Gutierrez, the chief protagonist of the original graphic novel, has spent the month getting ready to make her move against the evil heroes, as she remains in Megalopolis. We get more of her backstory, and meet another hero through her flashback, the Crimson Shadow, this world's Batman analogue, and she confronts the current Crimson Shadow with a surprising revelation if his identity. Harold Lamb, who Mina helped escape, is tracked down by a man who is working for a wealthy sponsor seeking to make a trip into Megalopolis to find her missing husband and needs a guide. As with any Gail Simone project, this issue nicely blends action with character. Mina and Harold are both great, layered characters, and Bennet Tanner, Harold's handler and new love interest, is one of those men of seemingly casual violence, who claims to not like violence but easily takes out two large men. And I am very curious about the origins of this new Crimson Shadow and how his background ties with Mina's. And credit goes Calafiore for his excellent designs; Crimson Shadow and Amphibonaut, who is an underwater hero, have these designs that are both fresh and still hearken back to classic superhero aesthetics. If you haven't read Leaving Megalopolis, that's fine; Surviving Megalopolis gives you everything you need to understand the world, and provides a superhero story tinged with horror and great characters.

Recommended Reading for 9/26: Leaving Megalopolis

The deconstruction of superheroes and the genre tropes entailed therein goes back to at least Watchmen, although I've heard it argued (and can agree) that Mark Gruenwald's Squadron Supreme is the first deconstructionist superhero story. Since then, plenty of creators have torn down the genre, and some have rebuilt it afterwards. It would be easy to look at Leaving Megalopolis as another such book, but I don't feel it is. The new graphic novel from Gail Simone and Jim Calafiore (best known together for their work on Secret Six) does not deconstruct the genre. They play completely true to all the tropes, even if they take it beyond the point that most traditional superhero stories do. It's a dark book that instead shows what the common person has to do when their super protectors go mad, and how people draw together in the worst of all worlds.

Leaving Megalopolis shares more in common with The Walking Dead than it does with any of the output from DC or Marvel, and I say that as a high compliment; it's a story about regular people, not the great forces around them. Gail Simone has always been a writer whose characters shine through, able to make them three dimensional in less time than it takes many writers to just introduce one dimension. The graphic novel follows a small band of survivors trying to, well, leave Megalopolis, a city once protected by costumed champions before a battle with a creature from the depths of the Earth drove them all into a homicidal frenzy. Now, death can appear from any corner at any moment. The only hope is to slip out of the city, avoiding the attention of these super powered lunatics.

The book opens on the devastation in Megalopolis and closes in on Mina, our principal character for this volume. She's wearing a police uniform, carrying a shotgun, and is about as friendly as the shotgun when we meet her. Simone isn't playing any of the cliches here; Mina isn't the hardbitten cop who has seen too much of this, nor is she the warm and fuzzy, to serve and protect officer. She's a person, with hopes, dreams, and a past that has prepared her to close herself off and survive in this broken city.

The book is actually three intertwined narratives. The first is the present, with Mina and the other survivors making their way through the wreck of the city, encountering supers as well as other survivors, some good and some even more frightening than the supers. We also see Mina's history from childhood to present, and see how that life informs her decisions. And we also get cutaways to a Senate hearing about the incident in Megalopolis, giving us a fuller view of what happened and how the world is reacting to it. It's a great bit of world building, and it never feels like we're thrown out of the main story for a random aside.

Mina quickly encounters the rest of the cast including Harold, a middle aged guy in a suit; Michael, a male nurse; Meredith, who waits at the hole the monster came from, reacting to her trauma by hoping for her dog to climb out; and Lisa, who appears having been attacked and traumatized, but if by supers or people it isn't made clear. Others make it in and out of the group as they encounter various supers along the way, but this is the core group who make it the story's climax. Each of them reacts differently to the new world of Megalopolis, Michael is the compassionate voice to Mina's cynicism, while Harold is, according to Simone's endnotes, "the representation of free will." Meredith comes out of her stupor to be a stronger person than it seemed. And Lisa seems to be broken by her experiences, but looks can be deceiving. The great thing about these characters is that they are more than I can sum up in a paragraph. Each jumps off the page with their own voice.

Thematically, Simone touches on some powerful issues. The central theme is that of heroism and community. These are different people, people who didn't know each other before the disaster, and now have to work together to survive. More than that, Mina has to step up and move beyond her past to become the hero that the people around her expected her to be. We also get to see the opposite of that acceptance, in a group of survivors who are doing nothing more than appeasing their new psychotic super-powered masters, and how easy it is to give in. It's also very interesting when we hear the heroes talk exactly what is going on in their heads. They aren't the walking dead, killing because they must. There is a very specific methodology and..., psychosis, maybe, behind what is going on here, but the more you learn, the more there is a philosophy to this madness. I also fell in love with a brief scene where the survivors find a bobcat loose in the city, and there's a discussion about how nature overtakes civilization, and whether it means the "time of man is done" or that life finds a way, and we will too.

In building a world of new superheroes, you need an artist who can come up with all sorts of great designs. Simone says in her notes that she didn't want, "homage" characters, characters that are clearly Batman in purple or Superman in black and gold, but characters who capture an era or a particular archetype. Jim Calafiore does this with ease. Each character design is original, but is clearly in a tradition. Overlord (in green and grey above) is your typical godlike hero, with super strength, flight, etc., and you get the impression just from looking at the costume what tradition he is in. Fleet (bottom left) is a speedster, and it's easy to tell just from looking at him that he's the fast guy. The Red Flame (not pictured) is a fire based hero, and his design doesn't look like Human Torch or Firestorm, but still has the essence of flame. And Calafiore's personal character, the one he designed for the short he wrote and drew at the back of the book, Southern Belle (below Overlord), is a great mix of the patriotic hero with a more genteel ideal that fits with her name. And kudos for having to design two versions of each costume, one before the monster fight for flashbacks and one after, and have them all work perfectly, the evil versions looking logically connected to the original, but the evil version being a creepy twist.

Leaving Megalopolis is marked as volume one, and there's a doozy of an ending that makes me excited to see more. But in itself, it is a self-contained story of heroism and loss, set in a world of superhumans. If you like superheroes, the work of Gail Simone, or stories of survival against all odds, this is a book you should try.

Leaving Megalopolis was funded initially through Kickstarter, but a mass released edition came out from Dark Horse Comics last week (the cover of which is below). If you happen to be in the New Jersey area this weekend, artist Jim Calafiore will be doing a signing of the book at Dewey's Comic City, my comic shop, on Saturday from noon to two, along with our Fall Back Issue Clearance Sale. Stop by, pick up a copy, get it signed, and say hi.