Elementals: The Natural Order

Written by Bill Willingham with Michael Wolff and Jack Herman
Art by Bill Willingham, Bill Anderson, Rich Rankin, Dave Johnson, Mike Leeke, and Bill Cucinotta

Because sometimes, you're in the mood for a good old-school superhero comic from the 80s.  And, if you're like me, there aren't all that many that you haven't read already, at least from the Big Two.  I've been enjoying Willingham's work on Fables for years, and also enjoyed his short-lived stint as a writer and artist on Shadowpact a few years back, but I'd never given his Elementals series, published for over a decade by Comico, a try before.  I remember seeing them in the 3-packs that haunted places like Towers when I was a kid, but I'd never bought a single one before seeing this trade in a $5 bin at a convention recently.

Elementals is basically the Fantastic Four, but with a more literal interpretation of the elemental nature of the character's powers.  The four principles all died in strange circumstances on the same day, and then were resurrected with new abilities.  They have been given these abilities by some elemental spirits, and appear to be back to fight against an immortal guy named Saker, who has his own bad-guy team.  Ahh, comics from the 80s - that's all we need before diving into a lot of fight scenes and the occasional page or two of lengthy bad-guy exposition.

Willingham's art reminds me of John Byrne's in the same era, although Willingham's work feels even cleaner, and perhaps more modern.  This comic has held up just fine, and I'm kind of surprised that a publisher like IDW hasn't brought out an omnibus edition.  Unless, of course, the whole thing fell off the rails after the first arc or two...