Random Thoughts

Badlands (1990) #1
by Steven Grant, Vincent Giarrano and others

So this is the second ambitious series Vortex launched early in 1990, and like Doc Chaos, it’s also 32-page (well, 28-page), has shiny paper, colour, and lasted one issue.

“A Red Fist Production”. Well, the design here isn’t up to Vortex’ usual standards… Anyway, let’s read the first four pages.

So we have a psychotic hired killer, Kennedy, Texas… Pretty standard stuff. Giarrano’s artwork is attractive, but not particularly interesting. The demonic look on the psycho in the final panel is pretty special, though.

It turns out that the psycho used to rape this guy in jail, too, and the rest of the issue is basically the psycho pressuring this guy into a life of crime, going as far as paying off half the town not to hire him. The question is, of course… does this makes sense? I mean, either dramatically or … any other way? Of course not, which makes this all rather…

My left eyebrow was raised throughout reading this. It’s a puzzling comic. Is it just ineptly written or is it going somewhere?

The only this that this book has going for it is really the colouring by Richard Ory. He uses colours in a striking way, and he seems to be doing the highlights by scribbling over the colours with whiteout or light-coloured er… crayons? I’m not an artist! Get off my back!

Anyway, it looks really, really good, I think.

Heh… Those prices are … odd? $80 for the second issue of Post Bros?

I guess that wouldn’t have been a solid investment.

ANYWAY.

Badlands seems fine, but it’s a pretty weird book for Vortex to be publishing. I mean, it’s so… normal? There’s nothing really that makes it stand out in any way, and Vortex did have an eye for the unusual.

Somebody writes in Amazing Heroes Preview Special #11, page 16:

This is something completely different: a real
crime comic, in the sense that it deals with
criminals, not merely a mystery or an
espionage thriller. Badlands is about the real
assassin of John E Kennedy. Theretare no
spandex costumes, no hard-boiled detec-
tives, and whodunnit is clearly and carefully
explained. This is about criminals, and is set
in 1963.
It seems that all those theories are right:
Oswald didn’t kill J.F.K. Of course, he wasn’t
originally going to be the guy who took the
fall, eithet In fact, he warrants only a cameo
appearance in Badlands.
Steven Grant says that this book is in the
same sort of spiritual milieu as Jim Thomr
son. Basically, the book is about a young
Chicano car thief who manages to get
himself manipulated into performing the
assassination of the president. His name is
Conrad Bremer. The book involves actual
aspects of the alleged conspiracy to kill
Kennedy. Grant did a lot of research on the E
subject so as to be as accurate as humanly
possible.
Although the book deals with a complex
subject and will be nearly as convoluted as
all the J.F.K. conspiracy theories, Grant notes
that the book will still be easier to follow than
Whisper, his acclaimed non-ninja series for
First.
The book contains a lot of what Grant calls
his own “holy triumvirate”—sex, violence,
and politics.
Publisher Bill Marks notes that the book
has been scheduled for a slick paper format
to make full use of colorist Richard Orry’s
palette.

Heh. There’s an appearance in one of Amazing Heroes’ swimsuit issues:

Dark Horse published Badlands as a graphic novel:

In the grand tradition of crime fiction, it features a main character who can’t seem to make a good decision, along with corrupt oil men, a nymphomaniac daughter, and a scary, scary hired killer. The really scary part, of course, is just how plausible it all seems.

People seems to like it:

Steven has written an in-depth and compelling crime comic here, one that will sink its hooks into people right away and hold them throughout the story.

This blog post is part of the Into the Vortex series.

This blog post is part of the Into the Vortex series.

Doc Chaos: The Strange Attractor (1990) #1
by David Thorpe and Stephen Sampson

Based on the name alone (“Doc Chaos”), I assumed that might be a book by Peter Milligan or somebody like that. If there are anybody like that. I mean… Freakwave… Paradax… Doc Chaos…

But it isn’t. It’s a bit hard to read, but this seems to be a project from David Thorpe? And there’s supposed to be thirteen issues of this series, but there’s been previous incarnations:

Thorpe’s next work of note was Doc Chaos (1985–1990). Doc Chaos was a commissioned TV series, two comics series, and a novella. Limehouse Productions commissioned scripts, which were co-written by Thorpe with Lawrence Gray. A comics version achieved a cult following. The first series was serialised by Rob Sharp’s AntiMatter Comics, then collected into books by Paul Gravett’s Escape. In North America it was published by Vortex Comics, with cover designs by Rian Hughes. The scripts were adapted into comics by artists Phil Elliott, Duncan Fegredo, and Steve Sampson.

A novella, Doc Chaos: The Chernobyl Effect, was published in 1988 by Hooligan Press, with illustrations by comics artists Simon Bisley, Brian Bolland, Brett Ewins, Duncan Fegredo, Rian Hughes, Lin Jammett, Pete Mastin, Dave McKean, Savage Pencil, Ed Pinsent and Bryan Talbot. An e-book version, with an added story: Doc Chaos: The Last Laugh, was published in 2012 by Cambria Books.

Well, OK then! This is gonna be awesome! Let’s read the first four pages.

Uhm… er… So we’ve got a pretty standard evil biotech company, and a pretty standard anarchist-ish good guy, and we’ve got… a very non-standard artist. I kinda like it? Or is it horrible?

Is this super-refined, super-arty artwork (a la Pushwagner cough cough), or does Sampson just not know how to draw a human being?

It’s either shockingly bad or shockingly good. It’s bleeding shocking, is what it is.

But I think pages like this kinda dispel the mystery: It’s just kinda amateurish. The storytelling is muddled and uneven. Even word balloon placement feels random.

But I do love these wild, wild colours. It shouldn’t work, and perhaps it doesn’t. but I still love it.

OK, it’s impossible not to like this panel.

Somebody writes in Amazing Heroes Preview Special #11, page 37:

Dave Thorpe’s satirical allegory of present-
day Britain continues with a look at two
British youth cults in issues #3 and #4. The
College of Unlimited Ecstasy is a hedonistic
cult run by the svengali-like Jock McLeod
while another youth group is more anarchic-
ally minded, wearing large spikes on bald
heads implanting music directly into their
brains. “That’s a dig at dependence on the
material world,” said Thorpe, “with the
theory that the more people use machines
the more they merge with them. A person
who uses ther computer a lot will gradually
merge with the computer and a person
working in a sweat shop will gradully begin
to merge with their sewing machine.” The
merge is initiated by a virus. Attempting to
induce all the various youth cults back into
labor is The Ministry of Leisure, once better
known as The Ministry of Employment.
With mayhem raging all around, Tito is
now being mistaken for Doc Chaos, and is
being hunted by the police. He in turn
suspects Eve of being an agent of Doc
Chaos, and it’s business as usual while
everyone is looking for Doc Chaos.
Thorpe has planned the first dozen issues
as self•contained stories with ongoing plot
threads as part of an overall story titled “The
Strange Attractor,” and issues #5 and 6
concern the Gene Police. They’re technolog-
ically advanced dog catchers with hermetic-
ally sealed suits and a large van into which
they throw all mutants en route to Centre For
Genetic Rehabilitation. It’s a pleasant little
place where Doctor Bedlam gets to perform
unspeakable experiments on the mutants,
who’re not the cuddly super-powered types
found over at Marvel. That story is titled
“Splice My DNA.” Well, it made me laugh.

Apparently more issues were made? But never published?

I can’t really say that I’m surprised.

Mister X (1989) #1-13
by Jeffrey Morgan, D’Israeli, Ken Holewczynski, Shane Oakley and others

So this is the second Mister X series, and shopping the issues I didn’t have was an er interesting experience. Most of these covers don’t have an issue number, and you have to read the often-minuscule indicia printed on the inside back cover (usually in colour combinations that makes it difficult to read) to find out what you have. So when shopping “Mister X vol 2 issue 5”, for instance, I’ve gotten another copy of vol 1, or a different issue, or just something totally different sometimes.

But now I have them all! Haha! Well, at least I think so…

Let’s read the first four pages.

Wow. That’s… something? Shane Oakley does the pencils on the first six issues (and Ken Holewczynski does the inking on the entire series). This doesn’t look anything like what the original vision of the series was: It’s a lot more cartoony and it’s not real art deco at all. Is Oakley British? It has a kind of 2000 AD thing going on, I think? And what’s up with those enormous rounded shoulders?

Hah! I guessed it!

Shane Oakley is a British illustrator and comic book artist from Stoke-on-Trent, England.

The guy in the sixpence is a dead giveaway.

Anyway, Jeffrey Morgan did a really fun serial in the Vortex anthology, so I was excited to read this. And it does have a lot of the Mister X mystery and charm: Once again, Mister X wants to fix Radiant City, and this time he’s being offered money to do just that, which is a logical development, plot-wise.

Oakley’s artwork is really all over the place. I love these bits, both the ultra-stylised Mister X and the rough-hewn mask-like face of the villain (oops spoilers), but coming a few pages after that guy in the sixpence, it’s… odd? And those shoulders? That’s not a good design.

And then, of course, after a pleasant issue of mysteries and strange developments, the villains outright state their evil plans at each other for the convenience of the reader, and that’s just boring.

Oh! I remember reading Futurama… Holewczynski did some really stylish artwork on that one, I seem to remember.

Almost all the covers are from somebody otherwise not involved with Mister X, which was a sore point with some of the interior artists involved, I seem to recall from an interview or two. Here we have Bill Sienkiewicz, for instance. I do like how unafraid they are of befuddling the readers — this doesn’t really scream “Mister X” in big letters, does it?

OK, here Oakley is onto something. We’ve got art deco, we’ve got a Louise Brooks hairdo, and … er… then we have a Kevin O’Neill-a-like guy with huge ears. Well, almost!

The pages work better when Oakley doesn’t try so hard.

But, yes, the exposition is a bit hard to take. But, really, the first six-part story is fine: It’s an entertaining read.

Lloyd Llewellyn! Tor! Of course they’d live in Radiant City.

After the first story arc, Oakley leaves and D’Israeli starts doing the pencils. Let’s read his first pages:

Hey! This looks great! It’s much more in tune with Dean Motter’s original Somnopolis designs.

And I’m guessing D’Israeli is also British? Those are good punks. Right again:

Matt Brooker, whose work most often appears under the pseudonym D’Israeli (sometimes “D’Israeli D’Emon D’Raughtsman”), is a British comic artist, colorist, writer and letterer.

I’m so observant.

Unfortunately, I think Morgan lost interest in Mister X after the first story. The second storyline is a two-parter where Mister X talks to God, and it’s as boring as that sounds.

Then we get a four-part story where a guy who may or may not be Mister X meets Mercedes (from the Hernandez Bros incarnation of Mister X).

And basically nothing happens, except people wondering whether this really is Mister X and not. For four issues. And I think D’Israeli started losing interest, too, because his first two issues looked striking and imaginative (both the cityscapes and heaven), while this is just a scenes from a hospital. I mean, it’s well-told and well-drawn and everything, but it’s not interesting.

And then Morgan signs off with a kinda bitter-sweet half issue, which kinda works.

Oh, I remember that one… Precious Metal from Arts Industria? I wonder why there’s an ad for this in Mister X — it’s the only ad that’s not either a house ad or a project from somebody involved with Mister X. It’s apparently the only thing released by Arts Industria. Was this a front for Vortex or something?

Mister X was probably more famous for the posters than for the actual comic books, but this “Photographics” poster looks a bit naff.

But! It isn’t over! Issue 13 starts a new sequence with new writer Wilbur R. Webb. And it’s an origin story: The origin of Radiant City, so we get the background on the other architect (I mean, the guy who’s not Eichmann/Mister X).

It’s pretty good! It’s a pretty thankless task, since we’ve been over the same story so many times by now, but Webb manages to give us a new angle.

But then the series got cancelled. The only thing surprising about that is that publisher Bill Marks managed to keep the series going for as long as he did. And with excellent cover/inside cover designs.

Somebody writes in Amazing Heroes #157, page 150:

Issues to 17 of Mister X will consist
of a mini-series within the series.
Entitled “The Radiant City Story,” the
series will explore the origins of the city
and its many denizens. Shock, surprise
and dismay may ensue,
One thing is certain, by the conclusion
of “The Radiant City Story,” we will
knmv the answers to some surprising and
intriguing questions concerning both the
city and its mysterious, bald, bespect-
acled little protagonist.
Following the completion of the three-
part “Radiant City Story,” the book will
undergo a complete revamping.
As a symbol of the restructuring of the
book, numbering will begin again with
Volume 2, #1.

The three Seth-penned issues described here never happened. Or rather, the 13th issue of Vol 2 is what’s described here:

Although a 13th issue of Volume II was published, beginning a story by Seth (writing as “Wilbur Webb”) the rest of the story remained unpublished until it appeared in New Worlds Anthology.

Publisher Bill Marks assures us that
the book will be “completely different
and completely the same. Something you
could only say about Mister X!”
This new series will feature a much
more in-depth look into the character of
Mister X gets yet another new artist (Shane Oakley),
as well as a new writer, a
new inker, a new frequency, and a new #1.
Mister X and will show us pans of
Radiant City we’ve never seen before
(and may not want to see again).
Marks says that new scripter Jeffrey
Morgan has a wealth of great ideas for
the book and everyone involved is real-
ly excited by the new direction.
Marks also adds that the proposed
monthly schedule for Mister X is no
joke. He feels thit he has a team that can
produce the book on a monthly basis and
that this can only be good for the book.
“It’s not that people don’t love the
book,” he says, “it’s just that they hard-
ly ever see it on their racks. We want to
change that.”

The first twelve issues were collected and reprinted by Dark Horse some years back.

No really:

For the second volume in 1989, the bulk of The Brides of Mister X, Motter recruited stark, black-and-white art from highly overlooked Shane Oakley and another singularly named indie luminary, D’Israeli. The twelve-issue story was scripted by Jeffrey Morgan, a writer whose main experience took place in the much cooler area of rock and roll journalism. As a writer and editor for CREEM, Morgan hung out with the likes of The Stooges while learning from the most accomplished prose stylist of the magazine trade, Lester Bangs. Overall, it’s a much darker take on the themes and characters than the first volume, carried off in a style that’s strangely reminiscent of the music of the Berlin period of David Bowie, Lou Reed, and Iggy Pop. No, really.

No. Really.

This blog post is part of the Into the Vortex series.