Broken Frontier

Howdy, intrepid readers. In search of a little more of that wonderful stuff called inspiration I have headed into my long boxes to dig out some of my favourite comics from the last 14 years. What's in it for me is the chance to recharge my creative batteries. What's in it for you? Well, you get to read my ramblings about why these two comics changed my life forever.

My first foray into collecting a monthly title was heralded by the re-discovery of my love for Star Wars. In late 1993 I returned to the fold of comic reading after becoming hooked on Star Wars Galaxy trading cards. In my never-ending chase for foil-etched cards, I ransacked every card store in town (back in the days when there were shops that only sold collector cards!). Once I had depleted their stocks I discovered something amazing; a hidden fortress of wonder, a comic book and collectable megastore in the centre of Melbourne called Minotaur. Once inside the store I discovered that not only did they stock the trading cards, but on the third floor they also had Star Wars comics. The first time I headed up to the third floor of Minotaur, I became a little giddy. This wasn't altitude sickness that I was experiencing; I just never expected to be assaulted by the sight of three walls of comic racks!

Completely overwhelmed by this cornucopia of sequential storytelling, my eyes searched frantically for any sign of familiarity among the hundreds of covers boasting mutants, gun-toting-big-muscled-maniacs, silicone-enhanced-sisters-of-sadism and more capes than you would find at a Spanish bull fighting tournament. Among this kaleidoscope of confusion stood one familiar and reassuring symbol: the Star Wars logo. After reading Classic Star Wars, Tales of the Jedi and Droids I was ready to branch out into something all-new and all-different. As a new collector I was struck by the inaccessibility of ongoing titles whose issue numbers were well into the hundreds. So, naturally I was pretty excited when, in the back of an issue of Tales of the Jedi I saw an ad for a new comic Dark Horse comic called X. In February 1994, just before beginning my third year at university, I picked up my first monthly ongoing comic. X was the tale of an enigmatic psycho killer; a former mob enforcer murdered by the men he once served, only to seemingly return from the grave with an insatiable hunger for vengeance. Steven Grant's script was unlike any story I had ever read before; it was merciless, adrenaline-infused, action packed, bloodthirsty, bleak, and brimming with un-satiated vengeance. X ran for 25 issues and through it all everyone wanted to know "Who is the X Killer?".

X was a brutally violent character, a real love child of Frank Miller and the excesses of the 1990s. A man driven insane by his lust for vengeance, X was one mad killer. His modus operandi saw him targeting crooked cops, mobsters and tricky politicians in the fictional city of Arcadia. He would "mark" his victims, often on a photograph or sometime in real life. One red diagonal line across your face was your first warning. If you didn't change your ways, a second red mark would form a cross over your image and X was coming to get you. Grant's script often evoked childhood figures of the bogeyman and for anyone corrupt enough in Arcadia (almost the whole population was doing something dodgy) an X mark, followed by a brutal "x-ecution," was an almost certainty. Along the way X battled souped up bikies, government assassins, mobsters resurrected from beyond the grave, martial arts cultists and even paranormal villains, all the while tightening his grip on Arcadia. After he launched a full-scale war against the mobsters, politicians and police running the town, X even took on Federal super agents and won. Issue #25 was always dangled before readers as the chapter that would reveal all about the one-eyed, red-caped spirit of vengeance who terrorized a city and brought its legitimate and illegitimate rulers to their knees. We did learn his origin and the reason for his near invulnerability, but sadly #25 was the series' last. There was an open-ended promise to bring X back at some point in the near future that, to my knowledge, Dark Horse never fulfilled. In a way, the abrupt series end was appropriate. We learned a little about the X killer, but not enough to fully deflate the terrifying enigma he became.

Tiki's Phayrie and another creator-owned idea of mine are both inspired by arguably the most successful fantasy series spawned by the comic book industry: Joe Madureira's Battle Chasers. Debuting in April 1998, Battle Chasers paved the way for the success of fantasy titles from the Dabel Brothers, Devil's Due, WildStorm and many others. Clearly series such as Skye Runner, Legacy, Cannon Busters and others owe their existence to Battle Chasers. Like X, Battle Chasers remains an enigma. I will never fathom why the most popular fantasy comic to ever grace the spinner racks remains unfinished. Gully, Knolan, Garrison, Calibretto, Monika and the other weird and wonderful villains, characters and heroes that populated the BC universe were at once completely unique and uncannily familiar. So much of Battle Chasers didn't work; the core story thread of Gully searching for her father Aramus was never properly explored or resolved; whether this would have been tackled in later issues is something that we will most likely never know. The plot of the series was, to me, almost non-existent. I am not intending to write a critique of Battle Chasers, just to share my thoughts. However, Madureira is one of those creators whose work is read not for the literary masterpiece of his storytelling skills, but for the sheer audacity of his approach to character design and the eye-bulging that almost always results from looking at his work. The visual style of Battle Chasers re-defined American comics in the 1990s and arguably his influence is still being felt today. Why else would Marvel herald his return to the spinner racks with a run on the mega-successful book The Ultimates ?

X and Battle Chasers remain two of my favourite comic book series. I actually don't know where my Battle Chasers floppies are, but I only have issues # 6 - 9 as floppies. The Battle Chasers TPB sits on my bookshelf and I regularly flip through it while writing. After all these years the unfinished story still inspires me. X is a comic I look at rarely. From time to time I climb up into my cupboard, risking life and limb to take down the pull box that holds my X issues and give them another read, rediscovering the thrill I experienced reading my first ever ongoing comic series. I have no intentions of writing anything vaguely similar so the book doesn't inspire me in the same way as Battle Chasers . Nonetheless, it has a special place as the first ever ongoing I collected, paving the way for hundreds of wonderful stories and laying the foundation of a hobby that I love even more today than when I first embraced it 14 years ago.

Next: What's The Story? 2