Slaughterman (1983) #1-2 by Gerry Giovinco
I think this is one of the few Comico comics I had as a teenager. I had a “policy” — I’d try one comic from all new independent publishers just to see whether they had good taste or not. (This stopped when the Black & White Explosion got underway, because it just became impossible then.) And I don’t remember anything about this book, but I can’t have been very impressed, because I didn’t buy anything from Comico for a while after that. I think the next book I bought was Mage #7 or something? And even after that, I mostly just skipped the Comico solicitations — I picked up things like the Jam Color Special, but…
So now I’m kinda excited to read this again to see whether I agree with my… 14 year old? self.
Oh wow. “Segment them into a progression of dichotomous choices”. Perhaps I just fell off my reading chair laughing back then?
And then it gets worse — we get a hard sell with “our first dynamic professional line of four great books […] in the midst of a creative explosion”. Yeah, I can feel the breeze from my eyes rolling, reaching me from four and a half decades ago.
But hey! This doesn’t look bad! It’s much, much better than the artwork in Primer #1, which was published just some months earlier. (But I guess the artwork may have been older than that.)
We pick up from where we left off. The piece in Primer #1 ended with Slaughterman apparently being killed — a traditional cliffhanger ending. But then it turns out that he’s really dead after all!
Well, that’s certainly an original way to open a series — with the protagonist dead (and with a feeling that you should have picked up Primer #1).
It’s pretty jarring — the bad guy is appropriately cartoonishly evil, but when you couple that with a gang rape, it’s a bit… what’s the word I’m looking for… disgusting?
OK, the setting is on a primitive-ish planet, but there’s mysterious aliens (perhaps) that are dropping weapons there. To have fun, perhaps? Could be leading up to something meta?
I guess having a villain this cartoonish allows you to skip having to actually write a coherent plot.
Giovinco is pretty ambitious, really — he tries lots of different storytelling approaches, and I have to say that it’s pretty successful on that level.
But it doesn’t really seem to be going anywhere? So we get lots of flashbacks instead.
And of course a whole lot of fighting.
But it seems like the status quo that Giovinco is aiming for is that Slaughterman’s wife is the new Slaughterman, but she has to hide who she is because… er… probably patriarchal reasons.
So you have a medieval setting, with sci fi weapons, and a mad evil villain, concealed identities, and possible humour from gender swapping, and… it’s not a bad setup, really? There’s certainly lots of possibilities for carrying on. Up the Khyber.
But are these two issues good? No, not really. But they’re better than I thought they’d be. Especially the artwork. How old was the artist at this point? 23? Well, OK.
The series ends the traditional way indie comics series end: With an announcement of the next issue, soon to follow.
Comics Interview #5, page #15:
PHIL: You did that in THE COMIC
BUYER’S GUIDE. Gerry sent a press
release to tell them about the upcoming
issues of SLAUGHTERMAN, SKROG,
AZ and GRENDEL. The press release
even revealed the surprise ending of
SLAUGHTERMAN. I said, “Gerry,
you shouldn’t do that.” He said, “Oh,
they won’t print that.” (Laughter.) But
we got a big response from California,
when it came out that Slaughterman was
a transvestite superhero, so that was neat.[…]
DAK: What struck me as unusual was
killing the title character in the first issue
of SLAUGHTERMAN.
PHIL: People are often put off by the
unusual quality of our books, but just as
often that offbeat quality grabs ’em. A
friend of ours, Reggie Buyers, a fan and
an artist, told us this story: He was in Fat
Jack’s Comic Store in Philidelphia, and a
kid comes in and picks up AZ #1. He
says, “What is this crap? And he starts
cutting it up – verbally, that is. He flips
through it and says, “Who would buy
this?” Then he keeps looking through it,
all the way to the end – and buys it! It’s
funny, but it happens. I think if people
pick up the books, read them, and find we
have something special to say, we’re
going to catch them. I know it!
The Comics Journal #75, page #19:
Az, Morgan Slaughterman, and
Skrog: Another independent
comic book company aiming at
eventual four-color, nationally
distributed publication is
Comico of Norristown, PA. The
partners behind Comico (Gerry
Giovinco, Phil Lasorda, Bill
Cucinotta) have put together a
promotion package featuring
their characters Az, Morgan
Slaughterman, Mr. Justice, and
Skrog, and are trying to line up
support from distributors.
Further information on their
plans can be obtained by writing
Comico, 1547 Dekalb Street,
Morristown PA 19401.
Reading interviews with the Comico guys, one thing they emphasise is how important it is to get the word out. So there’s an unusual amount of ads for early Comico issues to be found in the comics press, like this from Comics Scene.
GERRY: My character, Slaughterman,
is the so-called “first transvestite super-
hero.” Personally, I am not a transvestite
-(in a high-pitched voice) really. But I
try to put myself in all the different
characters. With me it is sort of a challenge.
SLAUGHTERMAN is more about social
relationships, religions, religious ideals,
things like that, and I try to incorporate
my ideas about them into the strip, using
the character. SLAUGHTERMAN is a
little straight-jacketed by the comics for-
mat – all our characters really go beyond
that. My character is unusual, because it
is a woman in a man’s suit of armor!
Amazing Heroes previews — this didn’t happen. When Comico switched to publishing colour comics, they planned on transitioning all their comics — Slaughterman, Az, Skrog — to colour. Instead they just cancelled them all.
Comico started as a way for these guys to publish their own comics, and they did that for about a year — and then they stopped, and instead concentrated on publishing other people. I guess it’s kinda what happened with Denis Kitchen and Kitchen Sink?
From a Comics Interview quiz…
Comics Interview #5, page #13:
PHIL: The next two books we had plan-
ned were SLAUGHTERMAN and TALE
FEATHERS — we were into a big duck
thing — which was also going to feature
AZ and SKROG.
GERRY: But then we decided, “What
the heck! If one book can make money for
us, we could sell four books and make
four times the money!” We had Dennis
supporting us, so we could put four books
out and make the money back. Which
was the best thing we ever did, because
PRIMER barely met costs, but when we
put out SLAUGHTERMAN, SKROG,
AZ and GRENDEL, sales of each were
four times the sales of the PRIMER.
PHIL: It shocked us. It really did.
GERRY: The books paid for themeslves,
and then we made that much on top of it,
so we were really very happy with them.
We figure, if we are doing all right in black
and white, we will do even better in color.
Capital Comics’ sales jumped consider-
ably when they went from black-and-
white to color.
Yeah, comics anthologies never sell much in the US.
Well, that’s a slogan!
The Comics Buyer’s Guide #498, page #52:
Comico has released the first
issues of Az and Slaughterman.
I understand Slaughterman is
selling fairly well in at least some
stores. That seems just, since
Slaughterman is the better of
the two. Az is too confusing in its
storyline and too difficult to get
into, Slaughterman is more
direct and coherent. The
artwork in both leaves a great
deal to be desired but there are
indications that there is raw tal-
ent underneath the crudities
waiting to be developed. I can’t
recommend these out of hand,
but I do suggest you look them
over; they are not without possi-
bilities. And there will be color
in future issues, I’m told.
DAK: What if one character becomes
ultra-popular, or if a character is very
unpopular?
GERRY: That is a real big question. We
are thinking in terms of flexibility. As
mentioned, GRENDEL is not going to
last forever. I know that Matt already has
another character planned. I don’t want
SLAUGHTERMAN to last forever, either.
My book is pretty well projected, though
– it is going to be out there for a couple of
years, if it is successful. And I think our
characters are loose enough to last as long
as we want and, if they are unsuccessful,
hopefully we are creative enough to come
back with something else.
GONE: Comico’s Slaughterman has been
cancelled. Additionally, the new Comico titles
Az, Skrog, Armageddon Warriors, and Pain
have all been delayed, although the material
intended for Skrog will be showing up in an
early issue of Comico’s Primer anthology
comic.
Oh, that’s the first I’ve heard of Armageddon Warriors and Pain, and it’s a notice that they’ve been cancelled.
Back Issue #2, page #37:
ME: Matt, in your earlier
work, before Diana, was
there an editor?
MW: Uh-uh. Nope. I guess
Gerry Giovinco ostensibly
gave it a shot. The whole
set-up in the early days of
Comico was that we all did
our own books, the four
books. Skrog, Az, Slaughterman,
and Grendel. And they were all
poorly executed. They were all
the thinly disguised Ids of each
of the creators, and you were
just kind of responsible for your
own gig, you know? There was
no editor, there was nobody
correcting artwork, or anything.
DS: This was before I got there, but you got out three
issues of Grendel. And if I’m not mistaken, none of the
others got out more than one issue of their own. You’re
the only one who-
MW: I was the only one who got any response that was,
like, “I want to see more of this.” (laughs) I mean, they
were all scared and that’s why when they made the
decision to go to color, when they hired Bill Willingham
to do The Elementals for them-and as we know, gang-
printing is cheaper so they needed a second book to
print with The Elementals-I was the only one who had
any sort of positive response from any readers, so de facto,
I won the slot. And that’s how I developed Mage.
Yeah, that didn’t happen, either.
I can’t really find any proper reviews of Slaughterman — I guess there wasn’t a lot of enthusiasm.
But! I found a link to Giovinco’s blog (from 2010-2015), and it’s all on archive.org. However, there’s no index there, so I did some downloading.
1983 was our first year attending with a booth and we were quick to realize how easy it was to get lost in the vast auditorium of vendors, publishers and artists. Comico was a small black-and-white publisher at the time featuring five titles: Az by Phil LaSorda, Grendel by Matt Wagner, Slaughterman by myself, Skrog by Bill Cucinotta and our new-talent anthology, Comico Primer. We had our sites set on publishing color books and had begun to promote our intentions.
There’s tons of interesting blog posts there. I’ve scraped archive.org for the ones in the “The Comic Company” category, spent some hours massaging the data, and put the pages here. (If that’s not OK, let me know — but it’s just a cache of articles that you can also find on archive.org. It’s just easier to reference from here, because I can search the articles.)
But, as far as I can tell, he hasn’t written a lot about Slaughterman? But I may just not have found the articles: archive.org is so slow and such a chore to sift through.
Let’s see if anybody else on teh interwebs have reviewed Slaughterman…
Giovinco’s pencils are hit and miss here. Some panels are brilliant, from vultures gnawing on the dead hero, to close-up images of Morgan’s teary eye as she is about to be assaulted by a barrage of brutal henchmen. Yet other panels look rushed, with underdeveloped characters and designs. Still, I see potential here and it’s a shame Giovinco did not continue drawing…but he had many other interests besides art.
Even if the contents of the books could be amateurish and a little crude, the cover designs (and slightly larger dimensions) were on-target and definitely stood out as something different. “These Aren’t Your Daddy’s 1980s Comics!” they almost seem to shout.
And… that seems to be it? Okidoke.