Broken Frontier

Capt. Hawkins is back for the third installment of this Edgar Rice Burroughs inspired adventure, featuring Amazons, aliens, and endless action!

Dan Parsons (Harpy: Prize of the Overlord, Star Wars) is not a household name, but he should be.  One look at his masterful grey-toned artwork, as seen inside any issue of Savage Planet , and you’ll be hounding his website in search of more.  Much to the torment of those who tuned in for episodes one and two, this third chapter took five years to see the light of day (thank God the issues are, at least in part, stand-alone).  But much to the pleasure of those thinking to pick up Secrets of the Empire, it looks as though the title’s heyday is just around the corner.

Capt. Hawkins is the hero, an Earth-born spaceman who undertakes a journey into the great unknown, in search of a new hospitable planet for mankind to replace their desiccated and depleted Earth.  Tragically, the planet he finds is then colonized by force, its indigenous (and indigent) species enslaved, and when Hawkins takes a stand and retaliates to stop this horror, he becomes the ultimate outlaw, on the run from all humanity.  In Secrets of the Empire , Hawkins and those who search for him collide on a planet filled with barbarians and lizard men, and ruled over by a strange Amazonian culture.

So: rogue hero, space travel, barbarian warriors, alien monsters, an evil empire, and, of course, Amazons—I mean, Jesus H. Christ what’s not to like?!?  Savage Empire is, without doubt, one of the best pulp comics out there today.  It’s not an update, a reinvention, a deconstruction, or a genre blend.  It’s not so much what Gødland is but rather what Thomas Scioli’s Myth of 8-Opus is to Jack Kirby comics; it’s exactly what it pays homage to: an old-school schlock-fest with a very heroic and violent hero, gorgeous women both vicious and guiltless, and a thousand weird sci-fi conventions flung at warp speed in all directions.  It’s never enough, when the covers are closed, and all I can think of after I read the cliffhanger last page of any given issue is how much I cannot wait to see what happens next.

The plot within Secrets of the Empire is a highly intriguing one, not only advancing the overall arc of Capt. Hawkins flight from his fellow humans, but additionally it introduces an unexpected Zardoz -like setup of giant-sized floating stone heads that spit out Amazonian women to collect the odd intergalactic species to take home with them in order to force these new slaves to duke it out within a war-like arena to produce some all-ages Amazon entertainment (whew!  And isn’t that really saying something about feminism's effect upon the modern world—in Zardoz , the heads spat out phallic weaponry for men, to show the oppression of the barbaric male mentality, and here we’ve come full circle with the same conceit producing war-crazed women!).  The action is ever-present, if told in a more classic narrative format, like those of the old Flash Gordon comic strips rather than the more modern paradigm of complex martial arts choreography.  But the excitement factor is high, and the last page promises big, big payoffs to come in near-future installments.

But will it be five years until the next chapter?   Not likely; the back of the book shows preview pages already complete for part four, speaks of an upcoming graphic novel, Clan of the Cave Bear, and has previews for a new ongoing called Savage Planet Adventures, written by the outstanding Mr. Parsons and with art by a little known duo called…The Fillbach Brothers!  It seems the perfect time to become a new reader and catch up on the story while the catchin’s good.

And if nothing else entices you, just take a look at the sample art; detailed, smooth, classic, gorgeous, all in one.  I’ve been a fan of Dan Parsons ever since I came across him at a convention years and years (and years) ago, when he was peddling an oversized little ditty called Night Warrior (and Dan, if you’re reading this, yes, I once owned that and Skab and all the Aetos the Eagle books!).  Even then, and even though those books were dubious in quality at best (notice they appear nowhere in his current bios), I knew the man would someday produce something mighty damn good, and I think, with Savage Planet, it’s finally here, in all its uncomplicated though creatively complex glory.

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For more information and previews, go to www.danparsonsart.com

For all ordering information for any issue of Savage Planet, go to: http://www.amryl.com/htmlpages/parsons/parsons.html