Broken Frontier

Hello everybody! Welcome to Guiding Lines, where we look at tomorrow’s comics today. My name is William Gatevackes and we will be taking a look at some of the comic books coming out August 23, 2006.

Heroes for Hire #1 arrives tomorrow, written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray. I have featured this writing team enough times in this column, most recently last week, that I think that I might as well give them the lead spot this time around. Especially since this series might bring them to a broader audience.

The book spins off from the team’s recently completed Daughters of the Dragon limited series and ties in directly to the Civil War crossover. Colleen Wing and Misty  Knight are now joined by Shang-Chi, Black Cat, Paladin, Humbug and an all-new Tarantula to form an organization that hunts down superpowered individuals who refuse to sign up for Marvel’s registration act.

The team of Gray and Palmiotti got their start on the Wildstorm book 21 Down. From there, they moved on to The Resistance before creating Monolith for DC proper. That series got them more work at the company, such as Hawkman, Jonah Hex and Crisis Aftermath: Battle for Bludhaven. 

What I love about these writers, outside of the quality of their work, is their diversity.  Monolith was a gritty urban fairy tale. Their work on Hawkman was solid superhero action at its finest. Jonah Hex is unusual in the sense that in an era of deconstructed storytelling, each issue stands alone as a great, self-contained western. And their Daughters of the Dragon series was like a female comic book version of the Lethal Weapon flicks. Like those movies, which helped popularize the “buddy” film concept, the series was a mix of comedy, action and adventure. Those of you who missed the series when it came out should seriously consider picking up the trade paperback when it’s released.

The reason I don’t feel guilty about giving the team so much press in this column is because their books are not reaching that big of an audience. They have seldom worked on any “big guns” and instead they are assigned B through Z level characters. The closest they got to the A-list was Hawkman, who is definitely a second-tier character. Just look at the Heroes for Hire line up above. That is a veritable who’s who of “who the heck are they?”  Sure, last week’s Claws co-starred Wolverine, but that series is just a limited series, and one of many to star the character in the last several years.

The result is a lack of sales. The team had two books in the top 100 books published in July 2006, Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters #1 at 54 and Crisis Aftermath: Battle for Bludhaven #6 at 61—respectively a first issue, which almost always is the best selling issue of any series, and a last issue. Jonah Hex # 9 is criminally undersold at 106 and Daughters of the Dragon #6 ranked a feeble 154. In a business where whether you work or not is judged on whether you sell or not, it appears surprising that Gray and Palmiotti continue to get new assignments.

Heroes for Hire might be different. Sure, the book features a comic relief villain, two characters who were mainly supporting characters, a D-level occasional guest star, a reformed Spider-Man villainess/love interest and the only character that had his own series hasn’t headlined an ongoing in over 20 years. But it also crosses over with one of the biggest events of the year. The first arc, at least, should have its plot interwoven with that of the Civil War limited series. And if Palmiotti and Gray keep the tone similar to that of Daughters of the Dragon, the humor should serve as a nice contrast to other CW tie-ins we have seen so far.

Best case scenario, half the readers of Civil War buy Heroes for Hire, making it a success. They like the writing so much that they stick around and the series continues its popularity. Then, these newfound fans of Palmiotti and Gray decide to give Jonah Hex, Uncle Sam or some of their other work  a chance. This gives these titles a boost in sales, hopefully one that will last. This insures that the creators will keep on getting work and I will be able to stop promoting them so hard in this column. It could happen.

Batman and the Mad Monk #1 begins a 6 issue limited series that is a sequel to the recently completed Batman and the Monster Men. Matt Wagner is back again, detailing an adventure inspired by DC’s Golden Age and taking place in the early days of Batman’s career.

The influence is clear by the cover, which pays homage to the legendary art on Detective Comics #31. That issue featured the first of a two-part story where Batman took on the mysterious Monk, a villain with hypnotic powers and a horrific secret.

They weren’t kidding when they said early in Batman’s career! If this is a remake of Detective #31 & #32, it will be retelling the fourth story to feature Batman. Fans who pay close attention to Golden Age continuity might wince at this story being a sequel to Monster Men, which took its plot from a story in Batman #1, which came out about six months after Detective #31 did.

In Monster Men, Wagner expanded a 12-page story into a 6 issue series. This time, he has much more to work with because the original two-part Monk story totaled 20 pages. Regardless, the story is in good hands. Matt Wagner came to fame by creating Mage and Grendel for Comico in the 1980s. He is excellent at setting mood, building characterization and writing compelling stories.

Hopefully, this will not be a two-time affair. While most Golden Age stories are dated by today’s standards, the Batman stories from the 30s and 40s could work well today with a little polish. And there are tons of Golden Age Batman stories.  If DC continues this trend, Matt Wagner could be writing 6 issue limited series’ until the end of time. And that would not be a bad thing.

Dynamite Entertainment brings us The Savage Red Sonja: Queen of the Frozen Wastes #1. The four issue series comes to us from Frank Cho, Doug Murray and somebody by the name of Homs. You might think that a female character that wears a chain mail string bikini and Frank Cho would be a marriage made in heaven. After all, Cho is one of the most renowned “good girl” artists working in comics today. However, he is not doing the art for the series, Homs is.

Frank Cho is only writing the series (and being helped by ’Nam writer Doug Murray at that). I am wracking my brain to think of a reason why he is not doing the art instead, or in addition to writing the story. The solicitations crow about Cho being a “Marvel Exclusive” creator. Perhaps the exclusivity only applies to his artwork and maybe that’s the reason why he is able to write the series while his art is relegated to the covers.

But still, Frank Cho only doing the writing on Red Sonja is like having Jimmy Page play drums in your Led Zeppelin tribute band or having Paul Schaffer host your late night talk show. Will it be bad? Not necessarily, but it wouldn’t be as good as it could be. And since Dynamite relies heavily on Frank Cho’s name in its advertising for the series, I can’t help but feel that inattentive fans might end up disappointed.  Like I said above, fans of Cho’s artwork most likely would consider him drawing Red Sonja a dream come true. If they don’t read the solicitation closely, or flip through the books before picking it up, they will be upset at what they get.

Finally, Image brings us the Shadowhawk One-Shot. This features yet another story from Image Comics’ 10th Anniversary Hardcover to be reprinted in comic form.  This issue has a list price of $1.99, which is slightly less that the normal price Image usually charges for its fare. Jim Valentino, Shadowhawk creator and one of the original seven creators who left Marvel to form Image almost a decade and a half ago, writes the issue.

Back in the early 90s, Valentino might have seemed like the odd man out. After all, Todd McFarlane and Erik Larsen gained fame on Spider-Man, Rob Liefeld was the creative force behind X-Force, and Jim Lee, Marc Silvestri and Whilce Portacio were known from the X-Men books. Jim Valentino was only working on Guardians of the Galaxy at the time, a book less popular than the others mentioned above.

Yet, he had something the others lacked: experience in the world of independent publishing. He was the creator of Normalman, an independent book that ran from 1984-1985.  The title was first published by Aardvark-Vanaheim (created by Dave Sim and publisher of his Cerebus series) before moving to Renegade Press with issue #9.

Valentino added experience and legitimacy to the fledgling Image comics, even becoming the company’s executive director for a while. And now, he’s one of the few founding members to continue to have his work published by the company.   People might have wondered ten years ago why he was included when Image was founded, but it’s hard to believe that there would be an Image without him.

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William Gatevackes is a writer living in Mamaroneck, NY. William is married to his completely awesome wife, Jennifer, and next to Guiding Lines, writes the occasional comic review for the PopMatters website. For those of you who would like to point out that no woman in real life, not even Pamela Anderson, has the proportions as Frank Cho draws them, I would like to point out that NO ONE has the proportions as Rob Liefeld draws them. So there!