Broken Frontier

If you’ve ever read old issues of Fantastic Four, you’ve probably come across a cover or two featuring one of the team members (usually Ben) walking stoop-shouldered away from his comrades.  “That’s it!” he might have been saying (and all the best comic covers have word balloons, in my opinion, preferably in a jagged, explosive shape).  “I quit!”  I only read “the World’s Greatest Comic Magazine” every now and again, but it seemed like every time I grabbed an issue, the Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Thing was in the middle of calling it kaput.

Today’s column isn’t about the FF, though, but about throwing in the towel and walking away—just as Ben walked away from his shocked teammates—something I did to comic books a few years ago.

I started reading comics waaaaay back in the 70s, and my collecting frenzy peaked in the 80s.  Right before I turned 21, I sold every comic I owned.  (No, I didn’t use the pay-off for booze, but I’ll write about that at some later date.)  Still, even though I no longer considered myself a collector, I read comics—maybe not as many as I once did, but plenty just the same.  This was the early 90s.  New Mutants had only recently become X-Force.  Spawn and Pitt and WildC.A.T.S. were hitting the stands with much fanfare.  Somewhere along the way, comics started to lose their appeal, and all the die-cut, embossed, glow-in-the-dark covers in the world couldn’t recapture the magic I once felt.  I still found a few gems in my monthly pile of comics, but they became few and far in between.  Despite my waning love of comic books, I eventually found myself managing a comic shop in St. Louis, Missouri.

You’d think being surrounded by comics 40 hours a week might stoke the fires of my interest.  My reaction was quite the opposite.  Every comic I read seemed no different than the one before it.  I was unimpressed (and sometimes aghast) at the artwork, and—for an era of “extreme” characters—the storylines seemed shrug-worthy at best and ridiculous at worst.  I realized comics had entered a dark age from which they might never recover, and I felt sorry for readers who had never known the joys of the comics of the previous decades. 

But wait... around about 1994, a couple of titles popped up that made me sit up and take notice.  Unique characters, settings, and plots were part of what made these comics different, but they each had special kind of charm I wasn’t finding anywhere else.  One of the comics was Blackwulf.

Even though Blackwulf #1 had one of those overused embossed covers, it caught my eye above all the other comics hitting the shelves that week.  For a hero named Blackwulf, I would have expected a trench coat-sporting avenger armed with oversized gatling guns.  Instead, the guy on the cover wielded a glowing staff.  A staff!  And his outfit looked like something he stole from Kilraven’s closet.  The supporting cast members looked as off-beat as Blackwulf himself.  Right off the bat, I knew I was in for something different.  And if I couldn’t reach that decision for myself, the cover told me... twice.

“The Next Generation of Hero...”

“From a daringly different domain of the Marvel Universe!” 

Two explosive captions!  Not as good as word balloons, but almost.  How could I not buy Blackwulf?

Blackwulf was melodramatic and complicated and weird and over the top.  And I loved every page of it.  Reading that comic, I felt like a kid again.  The story was a throw-back to the good old days, with exposition-heavy dialogue that hurled me right into the story.  Nowadays, a writer might spend hundreds of pages setting up a tale and introducing every character.  But writer Glenn Herdling wrote mean, compressed panels and dialogue that rocketed the story along.  Check out this bit:

“My shadowlance is far more than a mere staff, Pelops!” Lucian says as he spars with his twin brother.  “You of all people should know that it is the very extension of my rage!”

“Indeed,” says Pelops.  “Just as I know it is your rage which will be your undoing!”

“Not tonight, brother.  I have learned to control my rage and focus it on the task at hand—which is destroying you!”

“Don’t make me laugh, Lucian!  Look at you!  Your rage consumes you!  The birthmark which taints you with our bloodline’s genetic instability now blankets half your face!”

That’s all on page 2.  In a matter of a few panels, we know the names of the brothers.  We know all about the rivalry between them.  We know something of their philosophies, their powers, their mysterious heritage, and their weaknesses.

And how about the first appearance of Lord Tantalus on pages 3 and 4:

“Remember,” Pelops says after he has bested his brother, “strength not tempered by wisdom is the greatest of follies.”

“Very amusing, my son,” Lord Tantalus interrupts.  As Lucian turns to face him he adds,  “My sons.”

Lucian makes the mistake of calling Lord Tantalus “father,” and the massive would-be world conqueror sets him straight.

“Must you constantly remind me of that fact, Lucian?  In the future, I insist you forego the use of any patronymic appellation and simply call me—Lord Tantalus!”

Bonus points for the use of “patronymic appellation.”

It’s obvious that not only is Pelops a more skilled warrior than Lucian, he is also the favored child of Tantalus.  Lucian, who wants desperately to please his father, is seen as something of a failure.  Because Pelops is his favorite son, Lord Tantalus chooses him to lead a team called the Peacekeepers on their next mission—the kidnapping of a genetic scientist who can help him strengthen his armies.

“Before we can reclaim the surface, I must amass an army not subject to the genetic instability which has made them already second-rate warriors … like Lucian.”

But Lucian begs to lead the Peacekeepers, and Tantalus reluctantly agrees, warning that failure will mean certain death.  Further, he cautions that the rebel Blackwulf and his underground resistance may stand in Lucian’s way.  Lucian swears to defeat Blackwulf once and for all, and Pelops vows to create a foolproof strategy for his brother to follow to guaranteed victory.

Here’s the fun part—what Tantalus and Lucian don’t realize is Pelops himself is the masked rebel called Blackwulf. 

When the Peacekeepers and the Underground square off, Lucian is at a hopeless disadvantage.  During the battle between two groups of odd characters, there are hints of strange connections between the villains and the heroes.

“I have been awaiting this encounter for quite some time, my temporal brother,” the Peacekeeper called Wraath proclaims as he slams into the equally gigantic Mammoth.  “You will soon learn that we share more in common than mere size.”

Later, as Mammoth puts Wraath in his place, the disfigured giant cries:

“Wait—Mammoth!  Beware of the man bearing the name Blackwulf!”

That kind of foreshadowing of bizarre events had me chomping at the bit, and there seemed to be plenty more where that came from.

After Blackwulf saves the geneticist, Pelops returns to Lucian’s lair in hopes of sparing his brother from his father’s fury.  But he himself becomes a victim of Tantalus’ power.  Without a second thought, Tantalus strikes down his beloved son.  As Pelops withers and collapses into a decayed husk, he makes a desperate plea.

“Lucian... the dream... don’t let it die... F-follow your heart...”

So here I’ve been reading about this cool, Zorro-like warrior, only for him to die before the end of the first issue of his own comic.  To make matters worse, Tantalus has gruesome plans for his son’s remains:

“Tell the others that there will be a feast this evening in the main banquet hall.”

“What,” a servant asks, “shall I say the chef is preparing?”

“Blackened Wolf.”

Of course, Tantalus has not seen the last of Blackwulf, because Lucian decides to take up his brother’s mantle and seek revenge. 

“I have no need to hide behind masks!” he cries.  “Unlike you, my brother, I will defy our father openly!  When the time comes, Tantalus will know his enemy as his empire crumbles beneath his feet!  So swears Blackwulf!”

Lucian was but a shadow of his brother, but he was ready to stand against Tantalus—the very being who had killed Pelops without breaking a sweat.  Gotta love the underdog.

But this opened up all kinds of possibilities.  Would Lucian, who had been a bad guy up until the last couple of pages, ever fill his brother’s shoes?  How would the Underground react to him?  And would I learn more about Tantalus’ plans?  I loved epic storylines akin to The Micronauts and Dreadstar, with rebels battling against overwhelming odds, and a tale like this, I realized, could last for hundreds of issues.

It lasted 10.

The fans, I suppose, weren’t quite ready for a “daringly different domain of the Marvel Universe.”  Even though I encouraged all my customers at the store to buy the comic, Blackwulf made way for stories like the Spiderman Clone Saga and Onslaught.  Other comics I loved were vanishing about this time, too, and I started to wonder if my readership spelled an untimely death for any book I genuinely enjoyed.

I felt disconnected from comics, and I had to admit to myself the disillusionment had been building for many years.  So I packed all the comics I’d recently purchased into a few dusty long boxes and shoved them into a basement corner. 

“That’s it!” I said, turning my back on my books, including good old Blackwulf.  “I quit!”

We all know whenever Ben Grimm stormed off from the Fantastic Four, he always came back, no matter how disgruntled and dejected he felt.  And, as you know, I eventually came back to comics.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t be writing this column.  My return to not just reading but collecting comics again did not come about for several years, and it took a mighty fine book to bring me back.

But that, as they say, is a story for another day.

• • • • •

Cullen Bunn's fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies.  His comic series The Damned will be published by Oni Press in late 2006.   You can find out more about his work here.