Non-Humans #1

Written by Glen Brunswick
Art by Whilce Portacio

Often in comics, great ideas lack the execution or follow through that would allow them to become great comics.  I was unsure about picking up Non-Humans, the new series (mini-series?) by Glen Brunswick and Whilce Portacio.  I'm disappointed to say that this is an example of that type of idea.

Brunswick caught my eye with his series Killing Girl, which also didn't live up to its potential (but the blame for that lies in the shift in artists half-way into the project).  Portacio is an artist that I've both liked and disliked over the years.  He was a cool alternative to artists like Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld back in the pre-Image days, but at other times, I've found his storytelling difficult to follow, and his art very unclear.

I think Portacio is the biggest problem with Non-Humans.  The central idea is very interesting.  NASA space probes have brought a strange disease back to Earth that causes inanimate objects to come to life.  Somehow, this birthing is caused by a person who is carrying the disease, which is most active in adolescents.  That means that it is most frequently toys that gain life.

The implications of this are wide-spread.  Everyone between the ages of 13 and 18 are forced to take medication to deaden their creative impulses, leaving the world full of addicts who have to continue buying the pills on the black market once they hit the age of 19.  It also means that toys and other things that spark imagination, such as the Internet and television, have been banned.

The living Non-Humans are conferred some basic rights, assuming they have the appropriate paperwork, but they are discriminated against, and live in ghettos.  One Non-Human, Humphrey, a former ventriloquist's doll, has made a name for himself as a serial killer and assassin for hire.

Our hero in this series is Detective Aimes, your typical overworked brilliant detective, who comes complete with a failed marriage and a difficult relationship with his son Todd.  Todd has been dating a Victoria Secrets mannequin, and they want to start a family, so he's stopped taking his medication.  Aimes has to manage this issue, hunt for Humphrey, answer to his bosses, and break in a new partner.

That part of the story is pretty standard stuff, but Brunswick makes the characters interesting.  The problem for me is mostly visual.  Many of these Non-Humans are impossible to understand.  Action figures, mannequins, stuffed animals all make sense, but there are some truly horrific, human-sized things wandering around in this future world, and I don't understand what they are supposed to be, or why anyone would have made them.  There is a Non-Human detective, named Medic, and he looks like a robot.  Were he a crash-test dummy, it would make sense, but this doesn't.

And, as is usual with a Whilce Portacio comic, there are sequences I just can't decipher.  I wish this comic had a stronger artist, and had been workshopped a little further, because it's an interesting read.  At this point, I'm not sure if I'll be getting the next issue or not.

Elephantmen #42

Written by Richard Starkings
Art by Axel Medellin and Dave Sim

A new arc starts with this issue, but once again, Elephantmen is all over the place story-wise; arcs don't much matter in this comic, it's more about theme, and the slow advancement of myriad plot lines.

In this issue, Panya, the dancer who looks just like Sahara, is implanted with an embryo that matches Sahara's - if both women are successful, they will give birth to the first new Elephantmen since Mappo was shut down.  What Sahara doesn't know though is that Panya has recently been with another man - the hired killer known only as The Silencer, opening the possibility that the child may end up being his.

Meanwhile, Hip Flask is investigating the drained river bed where the Silencer has been dumping bodies for years, hoping to find clues as to his identity or location.

Of most interest in this issue is the state of Ebony Hide, who is in hospital recovering from the injuries he received three issues back.  While unconscious, he dreams, and those pages are the ones that Dave Sim drew for the Hero Intiative's 2012 comic a few months back.  It's cool to see them repurposed and worked into the story here, and it's also cool to see Sim's artwork coloured; something that doesn't happen that often.

This comic opens with the text of two laws that were written in the last ten years in America to limit the extent of experimentation with stem cells and human/animal hybridization.  It's kind of strange that Starking waited until now to include this information in the comic, but I guess with the pregnancies taking place, he felt it was appropriate.

This issue also comes with some other goodies.  Starkings revisits his 'English & Media Studies' text-piece with a bit about Arnaldo Putzu, a British comics cover and movie poster artist from the 70s.  The 'Charley Loves Robots' back-up strip is entertaining as always, and there is a preview for Non-Humans, an upcoming series by Glenn Brunswick and Whilce Portacio.  I liked Brunswick's Killing Girl, and while I don't usually enjoy Portacio's work, it looks okay here.  I may be checking this out.

Strikeforce: Morituri #1 - 10

Written by Peter B. Gillis
Art by Brent Anderson, Scott Williams, and Whilce Portacio

I've always been curious about this comic.  I remember when it came out, and being intrigued by a series about characters who are expected to die at any point, who actually do. I'm not sure why I never bought an issue, but when I found the entire series at a ridiculously low price while on vacation, I thought it was time to correct that.  I only bought the first ten issues, not being sure of how good the series would be, and not wanting to have too many comics bulking up my luggage.

That's unfortunate, because now that I've read these first issues, I want to read the rest.  The comic is set in the future, at a time when the Earth has fallen victim to The Horde, a barbarous race of hoarders and scavengers, who have appropriated technology from any number of races.  They randomly seem to attack human cities, stealing technology, old film reels, Hershey's chocolate, and slaves.

The only weapon that seems effective against them is the Morituri process.  This turns regular humans into superheroes, with an unpredictable and wide-ranging power set.  The only problem is that the powers will burn the person out, an event expected to happen within a year, but often sooner.  In other words, this comic is a science fiction mash-up of THUNDER Agents and Suicide Squad.  For a comic from the 80s, the writing holds up very well, with a slow development of the characters, and an element of the unknown (any book that kills off the POV character within its first year gets my vote).

The comics were written by Peter B. Gillis, and it's impressive that he got such a long run on the book.  Also impressive is the art by Brent Anderson and Scott Williams.  Anderson has always been a classic artist, and it's nice to see such a substantial body of work from him.  The Whilce Portacio pages (used for flashbacks in the first issue, and for a flashback tenth issue) are interesting, as this work would have been some of his first for Marvel.

It seems I now have a new list of comics to hunt for at conventions and sales.

Alien Legion Omnibus Vol. 1

Written by Alan Zelenetz
Art by Frank Cirocco, Terry Austin, Terry Shoemaker, Carl Potts, Chris Warner,  Whilce Portacio, Larry Stroman, and Randy Emberlin

I checked out the Alien Legion last spring, when I read an old trade paperback I'd picked up for a very cheap price.  I liked what I read, and decided it was time to start tracking down the whole series.  Therefore, I was thankful to see that Dark Horse is collecting the book as part of its Omnibus series.

This is a very satisfying brick of a book, collecting the first eleven issues of the first Epic Comics series from the mid-80s.  These comics hold up very well, and are a good, solid read.  Reading them reminds me of how much more material there was in a comic back in the day.

The Legion is a low-cost, high-mortality group soldiers made up of a number of different species, helping to protect the Galarchy, a Federation-style confederation of many different worlds.  They have held a truce with their traditional enemies, the Harkilons (think female Dire Wraiths meet JarJar Binks) for years, but the Harkilons are starting to push into their territory again.

The comic is focused on the Legion's Nomad Squadron, a group of rough and tumble aliens, under the command of Captain Sarigar (a very cool-looking half-snake character) and Lieutenant Montroc, a human.  The characters are developed very slowly over the course of these eleven issues, as Zelenetz keeps sticking them into some pretty sticky situations.  It isn't until the last few issues, which make up the Slaughterworld arc, that we really start to get a handle on who everyone is.

The art in this comic is great.  Frank Cirocco draws slightly more than the first half of the book, and demonstrates a very cool approach to design.  His art varies quite a bit depending on who is inking him.  Later, Chris Warner takes over the book, and breathes a lot more characterization into the different aliens, some of whom are very strange looking.

I definitely liked this enough to want to get the second Omnibus.  I'm not sure if Dark Horse is intending to publish more of these, or if I'm going to have to start digging through back issue bins...

Alien Legion: Slaughterworld

Written by Alan Zelentez
Art by Frank Cirocco, Terry Austin, Chris Warner, Whilce Portacio, Randy Emberlin

For a long time, I've been curious about the Alien Legion, but have never read even a single issue, until I found this long out-of print trade paperback for only $5, and figured it was well worth the risk. The book is really good. It is rare to find science fiction that is this action-oriented without the need to either over-emphasize the technological aspects of things (ie. almost any episode of Star Trek or Stargate or their spin-offs), or to add 'cute' story elements to appeal to a wider audience (Star Wars).

To be fair, Alien Legion is more of a war comic, with science fiction trappings than it is anything else. The Legion, modeled I assume on the French Foreign Legion, contains a bunch of rough and undesirable folk from different worlds. They are at war with the Harkilon, a single-minded group of ugly aliens. Not much more is explained, and it doesn't really need to be. We're well programmed to know what to do with a set-up like this.

Strangely, this volume collects the first issue of the original series, from 1984, and then the seventh through the eleventh issues. I don't know why, but 7-11 provide us with a complete story arc, and I liked getting the first issue introduction to the characters, so I'm happy with this choice. The fact that the first issue has a lot of plot similarities (with its crashed ships) is odd, but the first story depicts a military mission, while the second is about survival.

A group of Legionnaires, tasked with protecting a couple of Magistrates and the data they carry, get attacked by the Harkilon, and end up crashing a shuttle onto some planet, as do their enemies. Slowly, the two groups realize that they need to come to some sort of truce in order to get rescued and fight off the hostile indigenous life forms on the planet, although their mistrust is not easy to get past.

What makes this book really work is the strong character work done by Zelentez. While many of these characters are basically cannon fodder, there are some, such as Jugger Grimrod, a salty old soldier with a tendency to get in trouble.

The art on the book is really nice, especially considering its age. The first issue, by Cirocco looks fantastic, while Chris Warner's issues look really good. There is a lot of creativity put to work in creating these worlds, and some of the character designs (such as Captain Sarigar, the snake-guy) are awesome.

I'm pleased to see that Dark Horse has been giving these books the Omnibus treatment, as I feel the urge now to track down everything and read it....