Broken Frontier

Mike Allred’s pop art work has made him one of the most influential comic artists.  Following the launch of Madman Atomic Comics, BF looks back at Allred’s career.

Mike Allred’s comic book career began in 1989 with a one-shot comic called Dead Air.  Originally conceived as a screenplay, Dead Air transformed into a comic book when Allred was inspired by the innovate works of the Hernadez Brothers and Frank Miller. 

Turning his back on a career as a television reporter, Allred’s unique pop art inspired work made him one of the most original and influential artists to come out of the 1990’s comic boom.

Allred’s comic work next surface with Creatures of Id (Caliber Comics, 1990), Grafique Musique (Slave Labor Graphics, 1990) and Grafik Muzik (Caliber, 1990/91).   As a testament to his early work’s lasting appeal, the pages of Grafik Muzik spawned the 2000 low-budget cult-film, G-Men from Hell, directed by Christopher Coppola and featuring Robert Goulet as the Devil.  Grafic Muzik was also the home of a character called Frank Einstein.  Appearing almost simultaneously there and in Creatures of Id, the character drew his name from two diverse inspirations – Frank Sinatra and Albert Einstein (in addition to being a play on Frankenstein). 

The character, a hitman killed in a car accident and resurrected by a duo of mad scientists, brought a strange humanity to the printed page, one that Allred decided to develop further.  In preparation for a 3-issue mini-series, Allred tweaked the character, garbing him in an outlandishly simple superhero costume.  After considering and rejecting the new name “The Spook,” Allred found inspiration in the pages of Catcher in the Rye – and thus Frank Einstein adopted the name “Madman.”  

Madman quickly established a loyal following, making his series (collected as The Oddity Oddyssey) an independent hit in 1992.  Allred followed up the project with the 3-issue Tundra Comics series, Madman Adventures, in 1992/93 before finding a new home for his creation in 1994.

The jack-of-all-trades everyman/super-hero Frank Einstein, and his 1960s pop art inspired home of Snap City (along with it’s many mutant, alien, mad scientist and beatnik inhabitants) quickly found a key role in Dark Horse Comics Maverick line of comics.  By the time Madman Comics debuted in April 1994, Allred and his creation had become a true comic book success story.  Allred’s style brought him work with filmmaker Kevin Smith, first doing design work for 1995s Mallrats, and several featured art pieces in 1997s Chasing Amy.  Allred’s affiliation with Dark Horse also spawned a pairing of Madman with another independent comic icon – Mike Baron and Steve Rude’s Nexus (in the pages of the 1996 one-shot, Nexus Meets Madman).

In 1997, Allred began an interesting multimedia side-project.  Dark Horse Comics published the seven issue series, Red Rocket 7, a space-opera fable (with ties to the book of Revelations) that told the history of rock and roll.  The series coincided with a low-budget independent film (Astroesque), written and directed by Allred (and starring many of his friends and family).  The final component was a soundtrack for the series, released with the collected edition of Red Rocket 7.  Son of Red Rocket 7 featured all the tracks mentioned in the comic story and was performed by Allred’s own band, The Gear.  Although all three components add layers to each other, the comic, movie and CD are design to work as an experience unto themselves.

As the ongoing Madman Comics series continued, Allred also worked on 2 crossover mini-series.  The first, co-published by Dark Horse and DC Comics, teamed Frank Einstein with Superman.  The Superman/Madman Hullaballo found both characters crossing into the other’s universe, as Superman’s powers were dispersed (including a portion that landed in Madman). 

The climax of the entertaining series featured a dramatic Twister showdown between Madman and Superman’s impish rogue, Mr. Mxyzptlk.  The next year, Madman also paired with Bernie Mirault’s character, the Jam, in the 2-part Madman Jam. 

As the 1990s turned to 2000s, Allred began moving towards an arrangement to co-publish his books, with his own studio (AAA Pop) and Oni Press.  The first comic was 1999’s Madman spin-off one-shot, Crash Metro and the Star Squad.  After the Madman Comics had concluded it’s 20 issue run at Dark Horse, AAA Pop and Oni released The Madman King-Size Super Groovy Special, which not only featured an original Allred Madman story, but also several other industry creators with their own interpretations of the inhabitants of Snap City.  As Madman himself temporarily moved to the back burner, Allred launched the ongoing series, The Atomics, a group of superhero supporting characters from Snap City (which enjoyed a respectable 15 issue run from 2000-2001). 

Allred’s next project proved to be a surprising assignment from Marvel Comics.  Tying into an effort to regenerate flagging sales on the company’s derivative X-Men titles, Allred was tapped to draw Peter Milligan’s re-imagining of X-Force (the book debuted in the early 1990s, under superstar artist, Rob Liefeld and cast “junior” X-Men trainees as pessimistic, teenaged freedom fighters). 

Milligan and Allred jettisoned the X-Force concept (only acknowledging the existence of the previous team fleetingly), and instead debuted a team of mutant superheroes that were also media megastars.  Their new X-Force (which debuted in X-Force #116, July 2001) quickly became a critical hit with it’s satire of both superhero comics and societies obsession with celebrity. 

Another hallmark of the series was the intense violence and mature subject matter (X-Force was the first of the Marvel line to abandon the antiquated Comics Code Authority stamp), as well as Milligan’s habit of unexpectedly killing off lead characters (the first issue ended with almost the entire cast being killed in action, and debuting a new squad the next month). 

Following X-Force #129, the title was cancelled and relaunched as X-Statix (September 2002, reportedly, the real-world motive was so that Marvel could avoid royalty payments to the original X-Force creators).  Milligan and Allred continued their cynical satire, even prompting mainstream media recognition with the announcement of the controversial “Back from the Dead” story arc.  The 13th issue of X-Statix was intended to feature Princess Diana returning from the dead as a mutant superhero that would join X-Statix, but early Allred art of the book was leaked through a British tabloid. 

In the immediate media backlash, Marvel announced plans to alter the story, replacing Diana with a fictional pop superstar (that looked very much like Diana with a different, darker hairstyle).  Although this resulted in a brief resurgence of interest in the book, sales began to slip and the title was cancelled following 2004’s X-Statix #26.

During his time with Marvel, Allred continued his independent work, releasing a trio of Atomics one-shots – Spaceman (2002), It Girl (2002) and Mr. Gum (2003) – all of which were collected (along with the earlier Crash Metro book) in The Atomics: Spaced Out & Grounded in Snap City. 

Allred also began work on a very personal project – The Golden Plates, a projected 10-12 issue adaptation of The Book of Mormon.  Recently, Allred has done work for both Marvel (covers for the X-Statix Presents Dead Girl mini-series) and DC Comics (a two-issue arc of Fables).  Beginning April 11th, Allred also is returning to Madman, with a new monthly series (Madman Atomic Comics) debuting through Image Comics. 

Looking to the future, director Robert Rodriguez has long been attached to a live-action cinematic adaptation of Madman.  Currently in pre-production stages, Allred will be involved in the film in a manner very similar to Frank Millar’s involvement in the Sin City film.  Rodriguez and Allred have been collaborating on creating an iconic Madman story culled from past works as well as developing a digital film style for movie that will effectively interpret Allred’s unique pop art styling.

Madman Atomic Comics debuted to incredible fan and critical acclaim earlier this month through Image Comics. The issue flew out of stores fast ; the second printing is coming soon, along with issue #2, out on May 2nd.