Broken Frontier

Hello, everyone! This is William Gatevackes, back for another edition of Guiding Lines. Here is what April 12, 2006, has to offer!

Annihilation: Super Skrull # 1, the first issue of yet another tie-in to the Annihilation crossover, is an oddity in the world of comic books—a series that features a villain as the main character.

The Super Skrull first appeared in Fantastic Four #18 as a genetically enhanced member of the Skrull race sent to Earth to combat the Fantastic Four and other Earth superheroes. Possessing the combined powers of each member of the Fantastic Four, he provided a serious threat to the Marvel Universe.

His cosmic origin makes him a natural to be included in the Annihilation crossover, but his status as a villain makes him an odd choice to get his own book. Titles built around bad guys seldom resonate with the audience.

The conventional reasoning for why it is so hard to market books featuring villains is that people do not wish to read about purely evil characters with no redeeming values.  The only way it seems that you can have any success is to make them anti-heroes, such as Lobo, Deadpool, Venom, and even the Punisher. But otherwise, villains are relegated to limited series and ongoing series that don’t last that much longer. Annihilation: Super Skrull itself is a six issue miniseries, which goes to prove the point.

Marvel is advertising the series as the character going up against “an even greater evil,” a plot that doesn’t shift the Super Skrull too far away from his roots, and leaves him available to continue to be a villain in future issues.  Of course, rumor has it that Marvel might be looking to spin-off new titles from the Annihilation event. If the sales on this series are high, could it mean that Marvel would consider an ongoing series featuring the character? If this happens, I wonder what sort of take they would have on the character.

Dark Horse releases B.P.R.D.: The Universal Machine #1 tomorrow, a spin-off from Mike Mignola’s Hellboy universe. It focuses on the adventures of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense, the government agency Hellboy works for.

Everyone knows the story of how Image Comics was formed. A group of disgruntled, superstar artists such as Jim Lee, Todd McFarlane and Rob Liefeld left Marvel to form their own company, Image, to showcase their own creations. Not long after, Dark Horse created the Legend imprint, a line similar to Image, which allowed some superstar creators not under the Image umbrella, like John Byrne, Frank Miller and Art Adams, a venue to present their own characters to the comic audience while retaining ownership.

Mike Mignola was one of the artists tapped to make up the Legend line, and he brought with him a character he created called Hellboy. The concept was unique and quite unlike anything that was seen in comics at the time. The character found an audience and has had a successful life both in and outside comics. The title has spawned many miniseries and was adapted to the big screen in 2004.

One of the complaints that were aimed at the creator-owned characters that sprung up in the 1990s is that they paled in comparison with the more established characters, like Superman, Batman and Spider-Man. Many critics asked, would these characters be able to survive the test of time? Would they still be around in forty years, let alone sixty?

And to a certain extent, they had a point. Can you name all the members of the Wild C.A.T.S. or Cyberforce, or any member of Youngblood, for that matter? Is Hollywood rushing to get these properties made into movies? I’d say for a majority of you, the answer would be no.

However, if there were any properties that might serve to disprove this theory, Hellboy—along with Spawn and to a lesser extent Savage Dragon—might be the ones to do so. Here it is, more than ten years after they were created, and they still are in the public eye. They are still appearing in comics, their titles have created concepts strong enough to be spun off into their own books, and they are getting attention from the world outside of comics.

Will Hellboy still be around in 2066? Only time will tell. But B.P.R.D.: The Universal Machine #1 proves that the universe still has plenty of life in it. Pick one up tomorrow, and you just might be able to tell your grandkids how you bought that issue right off the shelf.

The Infinite Crisis miniseries has not even completed yet, but we are already feeling its aftermath. Not only is it being felt in every DC book, but also in the aptly named Crisis Aftermath: The Battle for Bludhaven, a bi-weekly, six-issue series, of which the first issue comes out tomorrow.

To be fair, the last issue of Infinite Crisis was supposed to come out next week. The series was delayed due to the lateness of other books that tied directly into it. So, DC wasn’t jumping the gun too much by releasing Battle for Bludhaven this week. But the series is an example of the typical aftermath of the yearly events each company publishes.
It seems that having an event in itself isn’t enough. These happenings are used as a springboard to release a whole batch of new titles on the market. House of M not only crossed over into many monthly Marvel comics, it also generated concurrent miniseries, which tied into the book and led to “Decimation” and new titles such as Generation M and X-Factor, among others. New series to spring out of Infinite Crisis include not only the Battle for Bludhaven but also the new Blue Beetle series, this month’s Ion and Checkmate series, and the forthcoming 52-week series titled, appropriately, 52, as well as revamps of Flash, Wonder Woman and JLA—just to name a few!

Some readers might feel like they have to buy all these series so they get the whole story. But this simply isn’t fiscally possible in most cases (especially with all the Infinite Crisis spin-offs there are).  So fans usually are faced with the hard choice of which books to get and which books to skip over.

If you still haven’t made up your mind about Crisis Aftermath: The Battle for Bludhaven, let me help you reach a decision. This series is written by the team of Jimmy Palmiotti & Justin Gray. I have spoken in this column before about the respect I have for this writing team. From their work on the Monolith (a character which returns in this series) to the latest issues of Jonah Hex, this team has become, in my eyes, essentially money in the bank when it comes to solid comic book stories. So much so that I believe that this book will be good just by them working on it. Admittedly, the concept is one that could come out awful in the hands of the wrong people. But I have enough faith and trust in Gray and Palmiotti to give them a shot.

Last month’s “One Year Later” extravaganza did not allow me to cover Fantastic Four: First Family #1 when it came out. But Fantastic Four: First Family #2 is being released tomorrow, so I’ll cover it now.

The series is written by Joe Casey, who also wrote 2005’s Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Like that series, this new one tells a hidden part of a group’s history. While Earth’s Mightiest Heroes filled in the gaps between the first several issues of the original Avengers series, this title looks like it takes place entirely in between panels of Fantastic Four#1.

The story focuses on the team as they are being held for observation in a government laboratory, immediately following their crash landing and transformation. The first issue showed them dealing with their new powers and set up a conflict with new potential new villains who also resided in the facility.

Last week, I criticized the trend of inserting stories into previously established continuity with the intent of changing said continuity, usually for the worst. If this series is anything like the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, then the opposite will happen here. If it is like that previous book, it will be a respectful addition to continuity, fleshing out what has come before without changing it completely. If you are a fan of the FF, then you should check this series out.

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William Gatevackes is a writer living in Mamaroneck, NY, with his wife, Jennifer. He writes the periodic comic review at PopMatters. House of M and Infinite Crisis has had no effect on him physically, although his wallet has been effected greatly.