The saying goes, “All good things come to those who wait.” Sadly, it’s not always true. This week, yours truly was stuck on an airplane on my favorite of all days, Wednesday aka New Comic Book Day. (Not officially or anything, that’s just what I call it.) Regardless, it means this week’s crop of #1’s got into my hands a day late, and even more sadly, there were few bright spots among them. In fact, there were only four new #1’s at all on the shelves this week, all from franchises we as geeks should be well versed in.
Certainly the most entertaining of the lot was the first issue in a new Emily the Strange series from Dark Horse Comics, Emily and the Strangers #1. Emily’s status as a pop-culture anti-icon has been well established since the ‘90s, and her individualism has always been part of what makes the Girl in Black tick. Emily is known as quite the loner, keeping to herself as she invents, skates, and refuses to follow anyone’s lead. This series opens with Emily at her best: wandering about in her own mind, trying to find ever more exciting ways to amuse herself and her cats. Since work on her time machine is going slow, she decides to write a song and enter a local radio contest to win a guitar that may or may not be haunted by the ghost of Professa K, her favorite musician. Emily is quite the rocker, but not much of a joiner, as fans to the character certainly know. Her plan is almost a perfect success, but when she wins the contest (of course) she encounters a hiccup in the person of Evan the Intern for DJ Eclectic. Evan insists that she must form a band and perform her winning song if she wishes to acquire the guitar. Emily, not one to play well with others, reluctantly agrees, and Emily and the Strangers is born! This comic is a nice treat in the Emily line from Dark Horse, and not just because it presents the teenage icon in such a positive light. The story is the first time Emily is done in full color, with art by Emily Ivy and Buzz Parker, and she gets a slight makeover, trading her trademark Mary Jane’s for black rocker boots. Through subtle changes, we get to see Emily who’s growing up a bit, becoming more adaptable, and willing to form a partnership or collaborate with someone who’s not Sabbath, Nee Chee, or the rest of her cats. While it’s great to foster individualism in young girls, it’s also nice to see a character who can bring her fierce independence, strong self-identity, and her talents and intellect into a group dynamic. The writing here is filled with typical Emily word play, and fans of the character will be well pleased.
Speaking of well-loved characters, IDW brings us a new series starring one of the most renowned in all of geekdom: The Doctor! In fact, Doctor Who: Prisoners of Time #1 tells us a tale of the very first Doctor, as he and his three human companions – Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright and Vicki – travel into the past to help the famous biologist and evolutionary scholar Thomas Huxley. While their aim is to help Huxley battle their old foe, The Animus, unbeknownst to them, their true enemy is a shadowy figure determined to remove the Doctor’s human companions. This unknown nemesis is fully aware of all of the Doctor’s incarnations over time, and seemingly seeks to destroy them all. Thus, the series promises to incorporate all 11 Doctors by the time it’s all over, and a good number of the series’ supporting cast as well, presumably It’s all done as a co-presentation between IDW Comics and the BBC to celebrate 50 years of Doctor Who. This is a grand undertaking, to be certain, but it’s handled well in the first issue, and in a very “Doctor Who”-like way, if I may say so. The story in issue #1 is fairly self-contained, with the traditional lighthearted sci-fi feel of the TV series. The First Doctor is well represented here as a teacher and elder mentor, and the artwork by Simon Fraser and story by Scott and David Tipton feed the overall “Who”-ish aesthetic nicely.
There are less enjoyable new series from some of the major tent poles this week as well. Before Watchmen: Dollar Bill #1 (actually a one shot series) is probably the most disappointing of the DC franchises’ prequel series to date. The character of Dollar Bill is such a minor part of the original Watchmen story that it seems almost superfluous to explore his origin story. For those unfamiliar, Dollar Bill was essentially a cautionary tale personified in the original group of this universe’s masked heroes, The Minute Men. What we all know about him is the only part of the character that ever held any importance – that bank robbers killed him when his cape got caught in a revolving door. Intended as a metaphor for this ridiculousness and impracticality of costumed crime fighting, Dollar Bill didn’t seem to need a great deal of depth. Writer Len Wein may have known that all along, as he provides very little depth of character here, neither for Bill nor any of the other characters who appear in his tale. Dollar Bill, as we learned earlier in the Before Watchmen: Minute Men series (easily the best of the bunch), was in fact a corporate sponsored super hero, a heralded college athlete whose injuries prevented him from having a professional career. Down on his luck, the good-looking young man adopted the persona created by National Bank as its in-house protector, so to speak. The story here fleshes out a few of those details, but it’s not particularly interesting. In fact, there are unfortunate negative references to homosexuals (made in regards to wearing the skin-tight uniform) and rather ham-handed attempts to establish the nature of the story’s setting in the 1950’s. That no one bothers to counter such statements makes them somewhat offensive, as does Bill’s negative viewpoint of lesbian teammate The Silhouette, who was treated ever so much more compassionately by Darwyn Cooke in Minute Men.
Lastly, in more ways than one, we have DC’s Masters of the Universe: Origin of He-Man #1. This is a rather simplistic story of how Eternia’s Prince Adam became the legendary (?) hero He-Man, and his first battle to defend Grayskull Castle from Skeletor. These are characters that a great many of us have known since childhood, but the franchise has never carried too much weight in the annals of geek lore, in my opinion. It’s felt like a manufactured universe designed largely to sell toys that never even had the depth of character that Transformers or GI Joe (the first comic book this writer ever purchased by the way) managed to muster. He-Man is exactly what his name implies, a hulking giant with little going for him other than his magical sword, and it turns out, from this “origin” tale, that the sword is pretty much all it takes. The book ends up reinforcing about a thousand negative misogynist myths, like the divine right of Kings, or that might makes right. Prince Adam became He-Man, apparently, by divine right handed down from his royal lineage and the fact that he could pick up the sword, not through any particularly winning characteristics. Also, Skeletor’s actually his uncle, which would qualify as a spoiler if anyone bothered to read He-Man anymore. Frankly, you shouldn’t bother with this one.
Thanks for your patience this week, everyone. Hopefully you’ll enjoy your weekly reading as you hit your comic shops this time around, and be back nest week for more new stories.
