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This month, I decided to try something different.
I was bouncing around the web, as I sometimes do, looking for
inspiration and I came across a site I haven't visited in awhile. A
few years ago, Lone Star Press was producing some of my favorite
comics, but the market just wasn't there for black and white comics
and so they pretty much closed up shop. With their titles Amazon,
Strange Heroes, Heroic Tales and Pantheon, they broke new ground with
super-hero comics. Many of the best stories were written by Bill
Willingham, and while some of the artists weren't really ready for the
rigors of a monthly comic, others, such and Mike Leeke and Bobby Diaz
were more than up to the task. Also, there were some significant guest
artists appearing from time to time.
Lone Star Press's web site seems to have been kept up to date and I
was pleased to find that most, if not all of their comics are
available for download on Wowio. I had heard of Wowio, but didn't
know what it was until this week when I hopped over there to see what
they have.
I quickly signed up and put all of these comics into my queue.
I chose a sampling of characters from various LSP comics that are the
most interesting to me, starting with Amazon, an alien superwoman who
appeared in Heroic Tales and Force 7. She has more in common with DC's
Big Barda than Wonder Woman and she's one of the influences on my own
HeroBlog heroine, Victoria. Towering over 7 feet tall, she's strong,
tough and carries a big stick. She arrives on Earth, apparently
amnesiac, she is mistaken for a super-hero and later, becomes one. In
Force 7, her people, the K'strell, invade Earth and there's a whole
army of alien amazons. Former Legion of Super-Heroes artist, Jeff Moy,
provided art for the one installment of the K'strell invasion that I
could dig out of my comics cabinet.
The art in Amazon's solo stories was, to my eyes, a bit over-rendered.
I think that had more to do with the pencilers than the inker, but as
with all of LSP's books, the black and white are was good-to-excellent
and was very readable. This is not always the case with black and
white art and it makes the reading a lot easier on the eyes, than
otherwise. After digging these books out, I also have to note the
excellent quality of the printing, paper, etc. After 8 to 10 years,
they hold up very well.
Later, appearing with Amazon in Force Seven, Blackbird is used as a
way to introduce the readers to the new super-team. Blackbird is
interesting, I think, because he has a tasteful, though unusual
costume. The color scheme is dark, and suitable for a night hunter,
but until he joins Force Seven, he's based in Jacksonville, Florida.
Not a hotbed of international intrigue, nor home to many criminal
masterminds.
Pantheon is, more or less, a stand-alone series, set in a world much
like the Marvel or DC universes, where super-heroes are a fact of
life. As usual, Bill Willingham has a somewhat different take on such
a world, than most writers. One of the things I like about Willingham
is that he thinks things through. He looks at a premise and sees the
flaws and glaring omissions that usually go unremarked. I remember, at
a convention back in the 1980s, he was talking about a phenomenon in
Marvel comics (though there are similar instances in DC and others
that make as much, or as little, sense) regarding the super-villain
called "The Wizard" (sometimes the Wingless Wizard, but that's just
stupid). Here's a guy who has cracked the secret of anti-gravity. It's
reliable enough he will trust his life with it, it's cheap enough that
he can afford to throw away anti-grav devices like they're paper
plates, and it obviously uses a very compact power source.
Think about that and what it would mean to, say, fire/rescue workers . . .
A fire truck that can float 60 stories off the ground, a rescue worker
who can step out of the 70th floor window and carry an injured man to
an ambulance waiting just outside, or drop safely to the ground, like
a feather.
Now, think what that would mean for the guy who invented and marketed
the thing . . .
And, yet, the Wizard still goes out and stirs up trouble for the
Fantastic Four every once in awhile, and fire trucks in the Marvel
Universe are still ground-bound.
Pantheon has some more of Willingham's 'outside the box' thinking. It
also has characters with interesting personalities. I just finished
re-reading the series and it was everything I remembered and then
some. One of my favorite characters in the larger universe in which
Pantheon is set is Philadelphia's super-hero, Blackheart.
He's like Batman, but with more personality. His don't-give-a-$#!&
attitude regarding other heroes makes him interesting and he's totally
politically incorrect, sending his teenage sidekick to pick up a pack
of smokes, while talking to the most powerful woman on the planet,
Dynasty.
Blackheart uses high technology and, apparently, magic in his war on
crime. When he catches a criminal, he brands him with the jewel on his
ring, then tells him this is his one chance, leave town and never come
back. A branded perp who comes back to Philadelphia would be detected
by Blackheart's equipment and harsher treatment would then ensue. He
can also use the indelible brand to track criminals.
Dynasty tries to recruit him for the coming superhuman war, in
Pantheon, but he declines to get involved. Pantheon is set in a world
where the heroes have already beaten and imprisoned the worst of the
villains. This leads to some of them deciding it's time to take charge
of the world and make it over to their liking. Of course, there are
those like Dynasty and the Freedom Machine who oppose this plan, hence
the conflict.
Bill Willingham has a knack for creating quirky and intriguing
villains. To represent the villains, I've chosen two who play a role
in the story. Both are teenage boys.
Kid Babylon was 14 years old when he made contact with an ancient god,
locked in a magical box in the back yard of Robert E. Howard's home in
Cross Plains, Texas, in 1965. He's still 14 years old and the box is
linked to his body, by a golden chain that attaches to his abdomen.
Howard, in the story, served as the chronicler for the old god in the
box. The boy makes a much more intimate pact with the god, helping it
feed its hunger.
Integral to the story in another way is the unidentified boy who calls
himself Death Boy. His is the power to disintegrate anything he can
see. He also has a protective field surrounding his body that
disintegrates anything harmful to him.
Death Boy is the ultimate adolescent male power fantasy. He doesn't
use his power for anything good, or useful, he uses it simply to get
what he wants. He also has the worst style sense of any super-villain,
ever, and that's including Baron Blitzkrieg.
There's more to Death Boy than that, but I don't want to spoil it for you.
Another Pantheon hero that I liked was Shadowpax. I always liked the
shadow-casters, for some reason, and I liked some of the things they
did with 'Pax. He is a member of the Freedom Machine and was the one
to capture Death Boy, originally.
In my head, I had a title for this column, but I've never titled them
in the past, so I didn't use it. I was thinking it should be called,
"Some of the Best Comics You Never Read". Lone Star Press and
Wowio.com (and its sponsors) are doing a service to the comics
community. I hope you'll check it out.
Oh, and if anyone knows what Bobby Diaz is working on, now, I'd like
to hear about it. I love that guy's work.
Lone Star Press is at:
www.lonestarpress.com
Wowio is (obviously) at:
www.wowio.com
As always, thanks for reading and I hope you'll take a look at my web
comic, Ad Astra at:
www.adastracomic.com
Copyright © 2008 Joe Singleton
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