Essential Killraven, v. 1

Collects: Amazing Adventures #18-39, Marvel Team-Up #45, Marvel Graphic Novel #7, and Killraven #1 (1973-6, 1983, 2001)

Released: July 2005 (Marvel)

Format: 504 pages / black and white / $16.99 / ISBN: 9780785117773

What is this?: A former gladiator and his companions fight against the Martians who have enslaved Earth.

The culprits: Writer Don McGregor and others and artists P. Craig Russell, Herb Trimpe, and others

The setup for Killraven is one of those sci-fi concepts Marvel came up with in the ‘70s that didn’t survive beyond the Bronze Age. Created by writer Roy Thomas and artist Neal Adams, it has a simple hook: the Martians, after losing the original War of the Worlds, won the rematch in 2001 and subjugated humanity, and only an ex-gladiator named Killraven and his band of Freemen oppose them.

If you’ve ever seen Thundarr the Barbarian — and if you haven’t, I pity you — Essential Killraven, v. 1, might be a little familiar. Killraven fights the Martians (wizards for Thundarr) and lots of monsters. He visits American cities that, despite being ruins, have one distinguishing feature from the pre-war days. Humans have been shaped into weird forms and given superpowers. And then there are the aliens who eat babies …

Wait. That last one wasn’t on TV. And that’s where writer Don McGregor, who took over with Amazing Adventures #21, makes Killraven something other than a needless continuation of a sci-fi classic. His stories have babies eaten as delicacies, forced breeding, and humans tortured, warped, and killed for no real reason. Yes, the casualty rate for Killraven’s band of Freemen is absurdly low, but even they are touched by loss, and why are you complaining? This was a comic book meant for kids, and they’re talking about eating babies because they’re yummy.

The major flaw in Killraven is that the setup lends itself to a lot of repetition. The Freemen head to a new town, fight the weird menace, and then find themselves in a new place at the beginning of the next issue. McGregor does his best to play with that, especially at the end, when he has Freeman Old Skull tell the others his origin story (#37) or has the group run into a fairy-like creature named Mourning Prey in a butterfly-filled Florida swamp (#39), an issue that has the slight tinge of a fever dream about it. But he can’t disguise that repetition, and his comic-booky “man who lives for only one day and must mate” plot (#35) certainly gives that issue the feel of just another Marvel book, despite its trappings. (Bill Mantlo’s fill-in on #33 and his Marvel Team-Up Killraven story only compound the feeling.) Still, McGregor is good for some surprises; when Carmilla Frost joins the Freemen, for instance, it’s Killraven’s friend M’Shulla, not Killraven, who gets the girl.

Additionally, there’s something completely endearing about a comic in which the hero gets so lost that while heading to Yellowstone National Park to find his brother that he travels instead from Indianapolis to Michigan to Chicago to Tennessee to Georgia to Florida. Killraven has no sense of direction, and it appears his cohorts have no desire (or ability) to correct him. To be fair to Killraven, he can’t exactly ask the mutants, collaborators, monsters, and Martians directions on the way, and everyone else they meet is even more clueless than they are. Even more entertaining is that Yellowstone is obviously a trap, and the Martians get so impatient they move the trap to where Killraven is wandering (Cape Canaveral) and don’t bother to disguise it at all. The amusing cherry on top of it all is that Killraven doesn’t question meeting his brother thousands of miles from where each is supposed to be at all. “My brother’s supposed to be in Yellowstone and just runs into me in Florida? Sure, why not?”

That happens in Marvel Graphic Novel #7, and without that issue, this wouldn’t be half as good a book. Without the MGN, Killraven is a meandering story in which McGregor takes his heroes across the eastern U.S. Sure, that gets better as the book goes on, but the story just sort of peters out in Amazing Adventures #39 when the Freemen encounter Mourning Prey. But MGN #7 puts paid to the big motivation for the Freemen’s journey: finding Killraven’s brother. It doesn’t go very well for the characters, but it does end the plot, something that needed to be done.

The obvious way to end the series in MGN #7 would have been with Killraven and the Freemen fighting back against the Martians, leading a revolution. Unfortunately, while that might be a definitive ending, that sort of ending is rarely satisfying: not enough buildup, too many characters, too improbable a plot, or a hundred other problems. Instead, McGregor and artist P. Craig Russell give the readers one reveal, but they do so in a plot much like previous stories. Oh, their ally for the story is more developed and relatable than most of those in the Amazing Adventures run, but it tonally fits with the rest of the story. McGregor even develops Carmilla and M’Shulla’s relationship, as if he expected to write more stories Killraven. (According to McGregor in this interview with Richard Arndt, 50 or so pages of Killraven: Final Lies, Final Truths, Final Battles was written in the late ‘80s, but it was scuttled when Russell couldn’t get assurances it would be published in Marvel’s best format.)

And the art …

Much like Bill Sienkiewicz and Moon Knight, Russell’s art is the biggest selling point for Killraven, and the MGN is where Russell gets the opportunity to show off the most. It’s unfortunate that the size of the art had to be reduced for the Essential’s page dimensions, and for some reason the art isn’t reproduced in the pure black-and-white pencils and inks the rest of the book features. But even the slight muddying can’t hide Russell’s skill or maturation; he was excellent in issues #27-32 and 34-9, but in the years between Amazing Adventures and MGN #7, he’s become something else. The art is polished, fluid, and expressive. His figures all have a litheness about them — even some who shouldn’t, like Old Skull — but his monsters are bizarre, horrific, and most important alien.

Russell wasn’t the first artist on the title. Adams did the first half of the first issue and was followed by one and a half issue by Howard Chaykin; both do good, if brief, work, but we have Adams to blame for the horrible, horrible costume designs. (What the hell did they think the future would be like back then? This is one Essential I was glad had no color, fearing that a ‘70s palette on those ridiculous costumes would sear my eyes.) Although a mismatch of genres, Gene Colan did his usual atmospheric work on one issue (#26). Herb Trimpe (#20-4 and 33) and Rich Buckler (#25) round out the art duties, both doing solid work. Trimpe’s work is similar to the art he produced for the Hulk; Buckler’s work is interesting, more subtle and clear than the other artists.

The book concludes with the Killraven one-shot written and drawn by Joe Lindsor. To call it missable is an understatement of grand proportions; if I had paid for the single issue when it came out in 2001, I would have wanted my money back. There’s nothing in the issue for Killraven fans, except that it advances the timeline without incident by a half year or so. The actual plot, in which Killraven counsels a hippy chick who woke from a cryogenic tube and then promptly wants to go back to sleep when she sees what a hellhole 2020 is, is so light I was afraid it might blow off the page. It was included to fill out the page count, I imagine, but 20 blank pages might have been a better choice.

Essential Killraven is often silly (it is a product of the ‘70s), frequently repetitive, and occasionally stupid (as when McGregor tries to convince us “mud brother” is a term of endearment that Killraven has given M’Shulla instead of the racial slur it so obviously seems to be). But Killraven is worth a glance for some of the details and the P. Craig Russell art.

Rating: (3 of 5)

The Pulse, v. 2: Secret War

Collects: Pulse #6-9 (2005)

Released: Marvel (July 2005)

Format: 96 pages / color / $11.99 / ISBN: 9780785114789

What is this?: Luke Cage is injured and missing, and his girlfriend, Jessica Jones, looks for him.

The culprits: Writer Brian Michael Bendis and pencilers Brent Anderson and Michael Lark

I enjoyed writer Brian Michael Bendis’s work for a long time, although looking back on my reviews of his work, it sure as hell hasn’t seemed like it.

Still, the last Bendis book I reviewed, Daredevil, v. 13: The Murdock Papers, was a definite step up from some of his other work. Plus, I had read the first volume of The Pulse and enjoyed it enough to keep an eye out for it. So when I saw the book cheap at Edward R. Hamilton, I decided to pick up The Pulse, v. 2: Secret War.

This is what is known, in technical terms, as a big f@&$& mistake. Secret War is a four-issue deluxe decompression crapfest.

The Pulse was Bendis’s successor title to Alias. In Alias, former superhero Jessica Jones worked as a private investigator. It was a great concept with an engaging character and strong plots. In The Pulse, Jessica works the superhero beat for The Daily Bugle — a sensible plot idea, but what is the actual plot?

Jessica and Luke are blown up, then taken to the hospital. Luke is kidnapped? Maybe. Jessica looks for him, gets kidnapped by Hydra … why? Who knows. The Bugle’s crack staff is nearly useless. Nick Fury is to blame, because he’s done bad things. What kind of bad things? Bendis won’t tell us. Wolverine cries like an automated mutated crying machine to a woman he doesn’t know. Evidently it’s all gotten to be too much for him, what with starring in five or six books rather than the three he headlined in the ‘90s. Iron Fist is a bit of an ass to Jessica because … because he doesn’t keep in contact with Luke Cage? That’s what he says, but that sounds half witted, and Misty Knight later tells him so.

I’m sure this would make more sense if I had read Bendis’s five-issue Secret War miniseries, which started before the issues in this volume were published but ended after this TPB came out. The story involves a covert, unapproved invasion of superheroes into Latveria, led by Nick Fury; Fury wipes the memories of the heroes involved. This volume describes part of the Latverian counterattack. Not having read Secret War, I can’t say why an invasion of Latveria is a big deal; the Fantastic Four used to do it every week in the Silver Age (twice a week in months in which oysters were unsafe to eat). The Avengers invaded Latveria. Cloak and Dagger, for God’s sake, invaded Latveria. And there have always been counterattacks by villains for what the heroes do, but until Bendis started plotting Marvel’s books, it was an accepted fact. I can’t get worked up by it, even though Bendis asks me to do so without telling me why I should get worked up.

I can get worked up by his dialogue, which seems, for most of the book to be expressly designed not to actually reveal information. It’s all false starts and stammers and ostensibly witty comments that fall as flat as the page they’re printed on. Information comes out in dribs and drabs, with actual communication between human beings seeming like an accident rather than the way the story is designed. For instance, it takes three pages to deliver the information that Nick Fury and SHIELD can quash any story in any newspaper, like the Bugle. Keeping in mind that Jameson continually knuckling under to that sort of pressure is asinine, that’s still a lot of time required to get across a simple piece of information. (Also: in the exchange, Robbie Robertson sounds less like a veteran newsman of a previous generation and more like Brian Michael Bendis.) This is not uncommon from Bendis, of course; in fact, it’s the hallmark of his worst work.

Art is supplied by Brent Anderson (#6-7) and Michael Lark (#8-9). I like Lark’s work, although I don’t think it’s his best; it’s gritty, its rough look is appropriate for a book in which people are supposed to be hitting the streets and investigating crimes, and it’s reminiscent of the work of Michael Gaydos, who was the artist on Alias. His combat scenes — especially the SHIELD agents rappelling into the Hydra base — are a bit stiff, though. Anderson … I don’t have anything to say about Anderson, really, except that in a few panels he reminded me of Sal Buscema, and that made me smile.

The art is the best thing about this book, but to be fair, any art better than Bart Sears on Captain America and the Falcon was going to be better than the writing. The plot is weak and wandering, the dialogue is straight from Unbearable Bendis Book #3, and people are mysterious about things for no apparent reason. I paid $5 for this, and I think I paid about $6 too much.

Rating: (0.5 of 5)