With half the nation still recovering from last week’s events, Gotham Calling would humbly like to draw readers’ attention to the fact that not everything is terrible and depressing in the world – through our latest celebration of non-Batman zany adventure comics!
Here are six titles that, while not necessarily masterpieces, are all neat examples of explosive pulp and thrilling escapism (the highest form of art) and way more fun than any of the blockbusters playing in theaters at the moment:
AURORA WEST
While Paul Pope doesn’t finish the second volume of the visual feast of delirious fights that is Battling Boy, he has written a couple of black & white prequels also set on Arcopolis, a sprawling, surreal city under constant attack by organized gangs of child-snatching ghouls. These spin-offs focus on Aurora, daughter of the square-jawed science hero Haggard West.
Aurora is herself training to be a monster hunter, alternating between classes on chemistry and martial arts as well as strange missions with her father. In The Rise of Aurora West, she investigates the mystery of her mother’s death and begins to suspect her childhood imaginary friend may have been behind it. In The Fall of the House of West, Aurora goes in search of vengeance and ends up unraveling her family’s darkest secret. These stories aren’t just fast-paced and imaginative, but also surprisingly touching in their depiction of the part of growing up that involves realizing that, no matter how heroic they may seem, your parents can be flawed after all.
The Aurora West books are co-written by JT Petty and frenetically drawn by David Rubín, who captures Pope’s flair for outlandish creatures and action-packed mayhem.
CHRONONAUTS
When I feel like a heady time travel tale, I re-read Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe or Michael Moorcock’s Behold the Man. If I’m in the mood for a more adventure-driven page-turner, I may settle for Ben Elton’s Time and Time Again or Chuck Dixon’s Bad Times novels. But when I want an absolute sensory overload, then I crack open my copy of Chrononauts and dive right in. This gorgeous comic about two douchey explorers on humanity’s first journey to the past is all about disregarding the mind-bending paradoxes and just taking in spectacular, temporally disjointed sights.
Sure, I could tell you about the slick character work and the countless amusing gags but, honestly, at the end of the day this high-energy extravaganza looks like little more than an excuse for Sean Murphy to draw the most epic chase scene ever, involving a sports car, gangsters, Roman chariots, tanks, dinosaurs, Victorian London, the Second World War, the Great Wall of China, and whatever else came to Mark Millar’s mind. Me, I’m fine with that.
HELEN KILLER
Given how amazing Helen Keller’s actual life was, what is the point of coming up with crazy ‘untold’ tales about her? Did we really need a comic about a deaf-blind secret agent with deadly instincts going up against anarchists and deranged scientists at the turn of the nineteenth century? Well, it turns out we did, if nothing else because Helen Killer was too good a title to pass up… I admit I have a soft spot for pun-driven high concepts (yep, I did dig Ronin Hood of the 47 Samurai), although of course they’re not always enough to carry a story. This one is a blast, though!
Between the plot twists and the electrifying fight scenes, Andrew Kreisberg and Matthew JLD Rice have crafted something that works beyond just a goofy title and premise. If the thought of treating Helen Keller as a steampunk amalgam of Daredevil and Black Widow – with a little bit of Hulk thrown in for good measure (‘You wouldn’t like me when I’m irate.’) – doesn’t automatically put you off, then give this mini-series a chance because it sure is the coolest possible take on that idea.
MYSTERIUS THE UNFATHOMABLE
If you found yourself disappointed over the fact that the Doctor Strange movie is mostly a bland, grimdark action flick with uninspired villains and a bad case of originitis, then Mysterius the Unfathomable is just the thing you need. Genuinely funny and inventive, with no time wasted on pointless origins, this mini-series also revolves around an arrogant sorcerer battling occult forces from other dimensions, but instead of Mads Mikkelsen with lame makeup and confusing CGI, Mysterius faces bizarre demons conjured by the rhymes of an ersatz Dr. Seuss, culminating in a manic magical showdown at a Burning Man mud orgy.
As always, you can count on writer Jeff Parker to keeps things witty (including in a delicious bonus prose story). Meanwhile, artist Tom Fowler and colorist Dave McCaig give the book a cartoony look reminiscent of classic Eurocomics, which really works for this kind of material. The overall tone is not unlike Terry Pratchett’s screwball fantasy novels – lighthearted yet peppered with dark, naughty comedy and some damn exciting set pieces.
SILENT DRAGON
It’s 2063 AD. After a global economic meltdown, communist military machines took over Japan. Now it’s up to Renjiro – a cyborg enforcer back from the dead – and Suki Suziki – a terrorist biker from a gang called Super-Sexy Razor-Happy Girls – to choose whether to side with the regime’s techno-ghosts or with a powerful yakuza clan as they go to war armed with samurai androids.
Silent Dragon is junk fiction at its most riveting. Andy Diggle’s script merges a dozen influences from manga and cyberpunk into a serpentine tale, with snappy dialogue that lets the reader steadily figure out this odd sci-fi future and its slang (‘tarantulas’, ‘mil-cops’, ‘cyb-aug’), while Leinil Yu’s pencils make the whole thing jump off the page!
WOLFSKIN
Take your favorite sword & sorcery epic, whether it’s Lord of the Rings, Conan the Barbarian, Michael Powell’s The Thief of Badgad, or Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments. Now imagine it plastered with extravagant profanity, nudity, and hardcore ultra-violence – and you’ll begin to approach the glorious excess that is Wolfskin.
OK, because it’s a product of the warped mind of Warren Ellis, it’s not as dumb as I make it sound… Ellis manages to quickly establish a fantastical world and an intricate mythology by borrowing from recognizable tropes in fiction and history while enlivening each exchange with quaint turns of phrase. Set at a time of magic, when ‘man still conversed with the gods,’ Wolfskin is an original way to revisit Ellis’ recurring debates about humanity’s relationship with technology. Also, because they are drawn by Juan Jose Ryp and Gianluca Pagliarani, these comics are an absolute wonder to look at, full of shameless gore and elaborate designs.
The first mini-series, which saw the titular barbarian wander into a Yojimbo-esque adventure, was an uproarious celebration of what the folks at the Radio vs. the Martians podcast call ‘absurd macho bullshit’ (the last line in the first issue: ‘I will eat my enemy’s flesh and consider your problem.’). This was followed by an annual and a six-issue sequel – both written by Mike Wolfer, from a story by Warren Ellis – that kept the same bodacious spirit as they expanded Wolfskin’s fascinating version of Earth.