Author: larsmagne23

Star Blazers (1987) #1-4 by Phil Foglio, Doug Rice, Mike Chen et al

I’m wholly unaware of what “Star Blazers” is — but I quite like Phil Foglio’s comics, so I have some hopes for this being a good comic book.

*jaws theme starts playing in the background*

We get an introduction by some guy who seems to do a recap of … something? What’s this a recap of? What we’re not being told what we’re reading: Is this Star Blazers mini-series an adaptation? And if so, an adaptation of what? Or is it a continuation of the plot that’s recapped here? Or is it a freestanding, new story set in this universe? WHAT?

It’s a pet peeve of mine — people who are so into their thing that they assume that everybody else knows everything, too… but then they go on to do plot recaps that make no sense unless you know what’s being recapped, but if that’s the audience you’re attempting to reach, the recap is worthless, because the audience already knows the plot.

So… *slow clap*.

“Around this stellar ember slowly swing cold and dusty worlds”…

“Half-heard prayers transversing eternity”… The grammar checks out, but man — that’s some leaden prose.

Well, OK — this doesn’t look half bad. But after the excessive plot recap on the inside front page, the characters here continue recapping, which seems a bit odd.

I like the bad guy. He seems fun.

Well, OK… but he didn’t claim you could see a black hole — he was talking about watching a ship spiral into a black hole. YES I”M NITPICKING A JOKE GO AHEAD AND SUE ME.

OK, so Star Blazers seems like it is indeed a Japanese animated series, and there’s been several adaptations done in book form? Hm… Oh! Space Cruiser Yamato!? Star Blazers is Space Cruiser Yamato!? I know that name, but I haven’t seen the series.

Why didn’t you say so in the first place?!

As leaden with exposition this book is, there’s little room for character building, but even worse — there’s little room to have a plot that makes any sense. I think I understand what happens here in broad terms, but I er have no idea what’s going on, really.

Foglio is credited as co-plotter and writer, but some of these drawings look awfully like Foglio drawings. Perhaps he also did layouts?

… wat

This book is a papery migraine. Things just seem to happen randomly, and nothing makes much sense. There’s several dozen characters, many of whom look awfully similar, and… wat…

There’s also a cat all of a sudden!? Were we introduced to that cat before it showed up to attack the bad guy!? WHAT?!

There’s many different ways to do adaptations — some try to make something that can be understood on its own, while others make something strongly tied in to what’s being adapted. And then there’s some people who make what I’d call a “Souvenir”, where you depict some key scenes from the original work. The idea is that the fans of the original work will buy the adaptation, and when they see scenes they like, they’ll go “hah, I remember that scene”, and leave satisfied.

I’m starting to wonder whether this is that kind of adaptation. And I still don’t know whether it’s actually an adaptation or not.

In the final issue, that guy finally deigns to explain to us what Star Blazers is. Sort of. This series has been made to “test the waters” for whether it makes sense to translate further seasons of the Japanese TV show.

And… the mini-series ends with a literal Deus not literally ex machina — the god of the evil aliens shows up and takes the invaders home. The end.

So… nothing the protagonists did during this series made any difference whatsoever.

Man, that’s a disappointing series. I guess it must have been a success of some kind, though, because Comico went on to do another mini-series two years later.

This series has never been reprinted or collected.

Back Issue #59, page #74:

THE COMICO YEARS (1987-1989)
It would be awhile before Star Blazers made its official
comic-book debut, this time as a four-part miniseries
by Comico in 1987. Comico was already publishing
Robotech, another Americanized version of a Japanese
anime, so Star Blazers probably seemed like a logical next
choice. Writer Phil Foglio and artist Doug Rice were
selected to work on the miniseries, since both were
known for being huge anime fans. Rice’s first exposure
to anime was a giant robot series called Raideen.
“It got me excited about giant robots and
anime,” Rice says. “Eventually I discovered
manga-the artwork was so dynamic
and crazy. I just fell in love with the
whole thing!” Rice adds, “I was
contacted by Comico. When I learned
they were doing a Star Blazers comic,
I went, ‘Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!'” Surprisingly,
Foglio had never seen Star Blazers at
the time, but Rice brought him up to
speed. “Doug was a lot more familiar
with the Star Blazers mythos,” Foglio
says. “He knew the setup and had
the [story] structure in mind.” Foglio
had previously worked with Rice on
Dynamo Joe, an anime-style comic about a giant robot,
for First Comics. “That was very much Doug,” Foglio
says. “I just had to come in and make it sound nice.
He was pretty much the man in charge of that, but I
had a little more creative input on Star Blazers.”
The story takes place right after the end of the Comet
from Zordar’s attack. “We wanted to wrap up the Comet
Empire story in a way that seemed logical,” Rice says. Earth
is depicted as still suffering from the aftereffects–with
many having been killed by Zordar’s dreadnaught, Earth’s
gravity being upset by the presence of the Comet Empire
city, and fragments of the moon raining down upon the
planet-while everything seems to be back to normal in
New Voyage. “When it comes to science fiction, we try to
take the science a little more seriously,” Foglio says. “It
gives you more scope to the disaster.” It turns out that
there is more to the Comet Empire, as an entire fleet led
by the fanatical General Radnar attacks Earth while it’s
vulnerable. “The Comet Empire that was destroyed in the
series was just the center of the Empire,” Rice explains.
“If it’s an empire, there has to be a lot more of them out
there.” Radnar is a devoted follower of the Empire’s
goddess, Arishna, and intends to avenge Zordar’s defeat
by offering Earth as a sacrifice to her. Radnar manages to
take over the Argo while it is being repaired and takes
Desslok prisoner on his way back to Gamilon, so Wildstar
must work with the Gamilons to reclaim both him and the
Argo. Radnar’s plan to use the Argo’s Wave-Motion Gun
to destroy the Earth is halted by Arishna herself. She
reveals that she is displeased with the Empire’s evil ways,
so she destroys Radnar’s fleet and recreates Earth’s moon.

Back Issue #59, page #74:

Fans generally enjoyed the story, although the art-
work-particularly the coloring-was not as well received,
especially by Rice. “[Comico] promised me the moon to
make it look good,” he says. “We talked about it at length
… I sent them copies of the manga pages to show them
how to get the anime-style to look … authentic.” Instead,
the first issue featured the blue-skinned Gamilons being
colored green. “When I saw the first issue, I almost died!
I was actually ashamed to have my name on it,” Rice
laments. “It was the first major assignment of my career,
and I couldn’t get over how bad it was.” When asked to
comment, former Comico administrator Bob Schreck
says, “I really don’t recall much about that series other
than we did publish it and were very proud of the job the
creative team did and how the books looked and read
once released.” Rice sums up the experience by saying,
“I learned a bitter lesson about maintaining creative
control on a project with people you don’t know.”

Oh yeah, I noticed that the aliens had different coloured skin, but I just assumed that that was part of the plot somehow. 🤷

Back Issue #59, page #76:

The first Star Blazers miniseries sold beyond Comico’s expectations,
but a follow-up series was not released for two years. No one seems to
know the reason for such a long delay, although it is possible that
Comico may have only negotiated the rights to produce one miniseries
and had to re-negotiate a new deal for a second one. Whatever the case
may be, Foglio and Rice were not asked to return … at least, not at first.
“We turned in the first one and heard absolutely nothing—good,
bad, or indifferent,” Foglio says. “It was a big surprise to us when
Comico announced another one. They didn’t tell us anything.”
The second miniseries ran for five issues and was to be written by
Markalan Joplin with art by Harrison Fong and Bill Anderson. However,
Joplin died of AIDS complications after writing the first issue. “Markalan
Joplin was entrenched in the Star Blazers and Robotech camp at Comico
when I came on board,” says Star Blazers (and BACK ISSUE) editor
Michael Eury. “I remember him fondly. He understood the material and
universe, which helped me as editor, since I was unfamiliar with the
concept. As his condition worsened, his pace slowed down, but he kept
the lines of communication going. A professional until the end.” With
Joplin gone, Comico asked Foglio to replace him. “I said, ‘Sure, if I can
work with Doug!” Foglio explains. “I enjoyed the series and the
characters, but Doug was very much the expert on Star Blazers.” Rice adds,
“I had voiced my ire to the Comico people and they didn’t appreciate it.
So, as far as I was concerned, I was never going to hear from them
again-that was the end of it. But then, they contacted Phil to do the
second series … and he got me involved. I’ll work with Phil on anything!”

The Comics Buyer’s Guide #687, page #2:

The first issue of Comico’s
Star Blazers mini-series will
ship April 17, said Administra-
tive Director Bob Schreck.
The full-color, four-issue
series will contain new stories
written by Phil Foglio, pencilled
by Doug Rice, and inked Mike
Chen. The full-process color will
be painted by Tom Reilly.
Foglio and Rice work on
Dynamo Joe, Chen inks Robo-
tech The Macross Saga, and
Reilly does coloring on Jonny
Quest.
Based upon the animated TV
series of the same name, this
mini-series will utilize the show’s
characters in a never-before-told
story conceived by Foglio and
Rice exclusively for Comico.

I’m unable to find any reviews of this mini-series — not on kwakk.info and not on the intertubes. So I guess it’s not really fondly remembered by anybody? Which is slightly odd, since these things usually have fans…

You can pick up the series moderately cheaply, but not as cheap as some Comico series.

Justice Machine (1987) #1-29, Justice Machine Annual (1989) #1 by Mike Gustovich, Tony Isabella, Doug Murray et al

I guess by the time this blog post is published, it’s going to have been quite a while since the previous post on this blog? I’m typing this after reading the first four issues, and boy… It’s going to take me a while to get through these 29 issues.

Because this post is probably going to turn into one of those “old man shouts at forty year old comics” posts. I’m sorry! I dislike writing those as much as you dislike reading them.

Anyway, I guess we’ll just have to get started.

Previous Justice Machine issues had been written by Gustovich or Bill Willingham, but we now have a new, regular writer: Tony Isabella. So I thought we’d be in safe hands, because while I’m not familiar with Isabella’s work (I think?), Isabella is a professional with a long career. So at least this should be… painless?… to get through.

The book is about a super-hero team from a different planet (well, a planet in a different dimension), Georwell (very clever name)…

… and we establish the setting in a pretty economical way, without any recapping of previous adventures. Which is good.

But it does feel clunky. We’ve got these six heroes, and the book insists on giving them all solo scenes, so not a lot of stuff actually has a chance to happen.

Isabella lays down some rules.

Er… is that a PSA? I guess they just don’t like smoking?

I quite like Gustovich’s line and his rendering, but he certainly has some deficiencies — mostly to do with drawing heads. Particularly from some angles, where everybody turns into some kind of monster.

The writing feels very old-fashioned. Remember, this was in 1987, where there were all these new storytelling styles swirling around. Here we get a very verbiage laden style, with an omniscient storyteller dropping thrilling stuff like the above in the captions. It feels very amateurish.

Oh, those heads and angles…

It’s not just that the captions are unnecessary, but they’re so dull — it’s like Isabella is trying to emulate the deadliest of the dead boring old DC comics, right?

Isabella gives us the Superhero Comics Philosophy. Which makes me wonder — just how old is Isabella? My guess, based on this, is 24. Let’s check! Oh deer — born in 1951, so unless my university maths education fails me, Isabella was 36 when this was written. But, ahh — a columnist for The Comics Buyer’s Guide! I guess that explains things…

Oh:

The ongoing book became one of Comico’s best-selling series, selling upwards of 70,000 copies of each issue at its peak. Isabella wrote the first 11 issues of the Comico series before moving on to other projects.[

OK, the book was a smash hit? Huh.

Perhaps everybody just went wild for the profound narration above?

And then, at random, we get a short Danger Room story.

Write what you know, I guess? So the heroes are now on Earth, and are attending a comics convention. Why not.

That’s a gay joke!

“Rescued from the fire’s ravenous maw”… This isn’t the same narrator as before, but one of the heroes.

OK, this is where I take a break — perhaps to continue tomorrow. Perhaps I could just start reading faster, and then the rest of this blog post won’t be as painful. I’m curious to find out who takes over after Isabella.

Gustovich has found a clever way to do the art faster. For one page.

There’s so many scenes that are just … weird. So Demon saved the beardy guy’s life, and then… gave him the heart of that shark that we’re not actually shown being killed? Well, OK?

There’s the classic super-hero bickering stuff, and then there’s Justice Machine. Which seems to tip over into psychosis every other page.

Rob Ingersoll takes over writing for one issue, and it’s a flashback issue, which makes sense. What doesn’t make sense is that we’re sort of re-introduced to all the characters again. Like, why?

I think perhaps much of the problem the series has is that Gustovich just isn’t very good at drawing anything but super-hero poses. Like in the scene above — just what is it that she’s dropping into beardy guy’s glass? Is it a toy car? A canape? What?

Err… OK…

c

Well, if you’ve just finished the script on the story, I’d hope you haven’t forgotten it already. Probably forgotten it by now, though.

It’s such a hard-hitting story that the issue has a parental guide warning.

So what’s the hard-hittingness, then? Yes, Demon is going through drug withdrawal, and that makes him hallucinate and beat up beardy guy. KIDS! TALK TO YOUR PARENTS ABOUT BEATING UP BEARDY GUYS WHILE GOING THROUGH WITHDRAWAL!

This feels more like concern baiting than anything else — Comico had tried to get press attention before with a couple “worthy” projects, and failed miserably — because they were totally ridiculous. This fits into that pattern, I guess.

And it turns out that Isabella left in the middle on the 11th issue? Between plotting it and scripting it, so that sounds sudden. I wonder what the story is?

They didn’t even have a new writer lined up, so they’re going to do fill-in issues until the new writer is on board. So… not a planned exit.

Markalan’s scripting is better than Isabella’s, I guess, but it’s still a pretty nonsensical issue. (Inked by Sam Kieth.)

Amazing Heroes Preview Special #3, page #67:

“Our goal for the first six issues is to
define the characters clearly so that
everybody knows what their powers are,
and who they are. We want to get them
established on Earth and set up their
relationship to Georwell; what used to
be called New Haven and is now called
New Atlantis and is under the ocean;
and with Maxinor, who is basically the
Dr. Doom of Georwell. Then we go into
what the book is really going to be all
about-immigrant super-heroes making
their way in the new world. That’s going
to be the basic theme of Justice
Machine. Most of the old super-heroes
and super-villains will be reappearing in
the book, though not necessarily look-
ing or acting the way they did before.”

Amazing Heroes Preview Special #5, page #67:

As you may recall, the last time AH
Preview spoke to Mr. Isabella, he said
(and we quote from issue #4), “Homina,
homina, homina.” We decided to give him
another chance, and this time we got a
couple more facts.
With issue #8 Isabella will take over the
layout of the covers as well. The first thing
he’ll do is get rid of the wraparound
covers, replacing the back cover with pin-
ups of various characters. Bill Anderson
will ink this issue. The issue itself will deal
with Demon’s addiction to the drug Edge.
Demon is being driven to madness by his
dependency on this Georwellian drug,
and the story will deal with the realities
and the horrors of drug addiction. “It will
have some very strong and ugly language
and the story will carry a ‘Mature Readers’
guideline note on the cover.”
Although Isabelal requested that the
warning be placed on the cover, he
insisted that as a retailer, he would have
no trouble selling the book to kids,
because he feels that it is a story that
needs to be told to kids. “The story is as
rough and ugly as it can be,” he said, “But
the language isn’t anything they haven’t
heard in the schoolyard already.” Isabella
thinks this is his best issue of the series
to date.
Issue #9 will be titled “Seven Days”
and will contain seven short connected
stories. Among them will be Youthquake
joining the team, while other members of
the Machine track down the lead on the
Edge pipeline from Georwell to Earth.
Also in this issue, Challenger finally
discovers that Blazer is his daughter. This
discovery segues directly into #10, entitled
“Father’s Day.” Here, we are treated to a
flashback of the original Justice
Machine’s last case and Challenger’s
relationship with The Flame (Blazer’s
mother). The story deals in part with the
Rim Wars, which was sort of Georwell’s
version of WWII, except that it took place
in outer space. There is also a partial
resolution between Challenger and
Deviner, his ex-wife.
In issue #11, Talisman, Titan, and
Youthquake continue to track down the
source of Edge on Earth. Then in #12,
some of the characters return to Georwell
to rescue Deviner’s kids. Blazer will
receive an operation that will help her
control her powers-at least to the point
where she can take off her uniform.

The Slings and Arrows Comic Guide #2, page #365:

The Justice Machine was and is artist Mike Gustovich’s
baby. The original series in magazine size proved popular
enough to spawn a role-playing game and accompanying
sourcebook, but issues are so difficult to find that when the
series was picked up by Comico in 1987 Gustovich
decided to ignore past continuity and start again from
scratch, with Tony Isabella handling the script.
The Justice Machine are the government enforcers of the
unsubtly named planet Georwell. After meeting up with
Earth’s Elementals (who débuted in the Texas annual) in
issue 4, Justice Machine vs The Elementals (1986), they begin
to question their orders and when they push too far find
themselves framed for treason. After that, it’s time to team
up with their former enemy, Maxinor, for Justice Machine
vs the evil regime, via Earth, where the rebels have allies.
The basic idea might not be the most original, but along
the way the comic addresses issues of where you draw the
line between heroic freedom fighters and evil terrorists. It
also tackles drug addiction (Justice Machiner Demon’s
powers are derived from drugs to which he is addicted),
albeit in a way which makes you feel you’re being
preached at rather than offering much advancement to the
plot. Mostly, though, the Comico issues are a competent
superhero romp, nothing special but a satisfying, easy
read. The Innovation miniseries and subsequent seven
issues, and Millennium’s miniseries, are poorer quality
and best avoided.~JC.

Back Issue #94, page #26:

Then comes Justice Machine #8. The issue carries a
“Parental Guidance Suggested” banner at the request
of author Tony Isabella. He requested it due to the subject
matter of the story, and remembers, “The only feedback
I ever received was from the publishers and they were
upset with me for requesting the advisory, though I never
made it a ‘my way or the highway’ situation. I felt that
the depiction of drug use and sex in the issue, as well
as the multiple occurrences of more extreme than usual
for a superhero profanities, required the advisory.”
The issue focuses on Demon. Since the series started,
he had been using a drug called Edge to enhance his
speed and agility. Unfortunately, the team used the last
of his supply to defeat Killgore in issue #6.
Issue #8 is a frank depiction of Demon’s withdrawal
from the use of the drug and ends with him, unknown
to anyone, setting off to prove to his teammates that
he no longer needs chemical assistance by swimming
the 2,000 miles from New Atlantis to New York City.
He doesn’t get very far before his body fails him and he
sinks beneath the waves. Here the issue ends.
As we will see, the character would take a very
convoluted path from here. But did Tony Isabella mean
this to be the finale for Demon when he wrote the story?
“No,” says Isabella. “I knew Gustovich liked the character,
so it was always my intention to bring him back.”
He also feels that “Demon was cut from the same vicious
cloth as the bullies I have dealt with my entire life. It was
easy to write him and joyful to abuse him. The only
difficulty in writing him was figuring out how to turn him
into a good man and redeem him. I had a long-range plan
for that, though I was never able to follow through on it.”

[…]

The editorial in the following issue tells us that the Machine is in
for a major change. That change being the departure of Tony Isabella.
No reason is given for his leaving, but issue #10 was his last full script,
while he supplied the plot for #11.
In his 11 issues, Isabella introduced a number of ideas that were never
followed through with, Hamilton’s daughter being one example. Rather
than having specific plans for them, though, he reveals, “If I was ever
stuck for a plot, I planned to turn to these plot elements in waiting.”
As it is, issues #11 through 13 deal with the clean-up of some of
the major plot points plus a flashback to an earlier tale of the
team from their security force days on Georwell.

Can’t find anything about why Isabella left…

Gene Phillips writes in The Comics Journal #74, page #45:

Intellectually, I know that Justice
Machine must be an indirect spawn of
Marvel’s X-Men and similar books.
Witness the flashy costumes and powers of
the heroic team, the pure action plot, the
characters’ attendant neuroses, and so on.
But in a perverse way, it’s hard to believe
that Justice Machine could even share kin-
ship with Tony Isabella’s Champions: it’s
too estranged from the very aspects that
made the formula so appealing.
The plot is naturally threadbare: the
Justice Machine, formerly law enforcers on
the planet “Georwell” (the closest the
script evergets to wit, lacklustre though it
is), find themselves hounded by “the cor-
rupt Georwellian government.” They
return to that wittily-named world “to
destroy their government’s only means of
tracing them-the dimensional-lock.”
They encounter another super-group, and
whup ass on them. It seems that it would be
hard to go wrong with such a basic, paint-
by-the-numbers setup, but writer/artist
Gustovich managed to get just about every
facet of the formula wrong, which is sort of
an achievement in itself.
First, the names of the superdudes. Such
names should have a dramatic ring, des-
cribing both the powers and characters of
the heroes, i.e., Storm, the Thing, the Vi-
sion. Only one of Gustovich’s cognomens
is passable; a hero named Talisman (who,
despite the mystical name, wears plain-
clothes). The other names are blandly des-
criptive: Titan, Blazer, Challenger,
Diviner, and Demon (who doesn’t look at
all demonic). The Guardians are even
worse, including a tough female named,
of all things, “Male-Factor,” and two
Marvel ripoffs, the shield-slinging “Crusader” and
the brutish “Hunk”(!).
The powers: Chris Claremont has re-
peatedly stressed the inability of fans to
‘establish” the heroes’ powers, if for no
other reason than to set up dramatic ten-
sion. The Justice Machine’s powers are
strictly rabbit-out-of-the-hat; at one point
Challenger uses a gun that bounces his foe
back and forth like a slingshot!
Characters: I didn’t expect the perso-
nalities to be any better than the worst
Marvels, but Gustovich managed to get
even worse than that. It’s one thing to have
one character go back home and discover
the truth of Thomas Wolfe, but to have all
the characters learn the same truth with
minor variations is not characterization,
just scene-shifting. There’s the usual
gratuitous dislike between two members as
well, tossed off with a simple, “O.K., I don’t
like you.” Such complexity makes my head
spin.
Art: costumes are tolerable, which gives
them the highest marks of anything here.
Most of the facial expressions seem borrow-
ed from Byrne or Adams (especially Titan’s
half-lowered, glaring expression on page
33); the fight scenes are static, in which the
heroes spend more time striking dramatic
poses than fighting (pages 10, 32, and 34).
My favorite action-scene is the one in
which Talisman encounters a belligerent
old woman, who assaults him with a left
cross (“WHUMP!”). As for anatomy, well,
page 36 shows that all Georwellians are
made of rubber, so it hardly matters.
Dialogue: “The others are depending on
me.” “Now, give me the gun.” “We’ve got
to rely on surprise.” “Zarren framed us,
made it appear we’d defected!” “Giving up
ish’t in our vocabulary.” What ever hap-
pened to the fans who enjoyed Marvel
because of its grandiose sesquipedalianisms
rather than because of the cliches it recycl-
ed from B-movies?
What more can one say to dissuade
others from investing in this ignoble ven-
ture? Larry Houston! Tim Corrigan!
Where are you when we need you?

That’s a review of the pre-Isabella Justice Machine, though.

So there’s two fill-in issues after Tony Isabella left, and they’re virtually unreadable. I can’t quite put my finger on what makes this series so offputting — the lack of actual characterisation, the tedious bloviation, the way nothing seems to actually happen while there’s chaos everywhere…

But then Doug Murray arrives, and he explains that he’s only taking this job for mercenary reasons. I paraphrase slightly, but I think he wants to establish that he’s not some kinda fanboy?

He also belives that “female super-folk are just as complex and capable”. What do you mean Diviner isn’t a complex character! She dislikes Challenger and that’s her entire character, do you need more? And Blazer… her personality is… er… let me see… Oh, her personality is “I’m 18”. OK, OK, I think Murray has a point here, but it’s not like the other characters have much character, either, beyond a few surface ticks.

So let’s read some pages:

Er… OK, that’s certainly a bit more grounded, I guess? But… Challenger is just beating up some people who tried to stab him? And people stabbing other people is apparently something the cops don’t deal with otherwise?

I see what Murray is going for here, but it’s pretty stupid.

And now Diviner gets character! She’s not only going to be “Oh, I hate Challenger soooo much”, but also “But now I kinda love Challenger, too”? Well, that’s complex characterisation for sure!

Oops spoilers — they bring Demon back. He kinda-sorta was implied to have been dead back in #8, but in super-hero comics, nobody stays dead. And they didn’t even find his body, so it was always meant to be.

Heh heh, you have all these super-heroes, but as soon as somebody pulls out a gun, they all go running. Which makes you wonder why this guy doesn’t just carry a gun regularly. It’s best not to ask these questions.

Murray explains that Gustovich insisted on bringing Demon back from the dead.

And the complex characterisations continue — Murray (over several issues) give us the backgrounds of all the characters, and it turns out *gasp* that they all have sad, traumatic backgrounds. This one became a super-hero at the attempted rape and fridging of his girlfriend… by his brother!!!! Others turn out to have had abusive fathers and all that stuff. So: Totally standard, but it’s certainly better than nothing, which is what we had before.

And Murray’s first storyline — which spans four issues — is good! It’s an actually intriguing mystery sort of thing, and it’s a solid, well-told super-hero mystery thing, with actual surprises and fun things happening.

The book is no longer a chore to read! I’m amazed! And entertained.

Heh heh.

And then we start a seven-part epic Earth/Georwell War series. After that first Murray arc, I’m aboard, even though I don’t quite understand why Georwell is attacking Earth from space when they have that dimensional teleportation device? Space ships are fun anyway.

The series gets a new editor who tells us what a hard, hard job being an editor is. I bet the editor’s the most important person, even!

Murray’s second story arc isn’t as successful as the first. I mean, scenes like this:

C’mon.

Murray writes an editorial about the current comics glut. Which was definitely a thing at the time — DC and Marvel were pumping out comics, trying to drown out all the indies (like this book) — but I guess the editorial means that the Justice Machine sales were in the toilet? That’s what my Secret Comics Editorial Decoder Ring (S.C.E.D.R.) tells me.

And then next issue we get a pretty odd editorial. Murray complains about two types of comics awards at the same time: There’s the CBG awards, which just go to the most popular books, and then there’s the Eisner’s, which go to “cool” books. Using my S.C.E.D.R., I thing this means that Murray is angry that the Justice Machine isn’t getting any awards? I.e., it’s neither popular nor cool, which is accurate, I guess.

Editor Michael Eury (weirdly enough) drops in a column to rebut his own writer, which is just… I mean, it’s understandable, but kinda tacky.

A reader writes in to let us know that he preferred Isabella’s writing, because “he used captions to actually tell a story”, which is the first time I’ve seen somebody clamouring for more leaden verbiage in a super-hero book, I think?

Murray announces that he’s leaving, and mostly says this is mostly down to Gustovich wanting to write the plots himself. Yet again, using my S.C.E.D.R., I think this means that sales are further in the toilet, and they can’t afford to have a writer on board any more — instead Gustovich can just get the entire (now diminished) paycheck. Gustovich also takes does the inking on the final issues, which had also frequently been outsourced previously.

But I wonder whether there’s also tension between Murray and both the editor and the artist — Murray took the book in actually entertaining directions, which was a fundamental break with how the book had been until that point.

Oh, I forgot to say how the Earth/Georwell was went — it was fine, but not as interesting as Murray’s first story arc. But it was OK — it wasn’t annoying or anything.

I haven’t mentioned the colouring on this book, have I? It’s good — Tom Vincent doesn’t shy away from bright colours, but he mostly focuses on darker, but saturated colours. It looks distinctive and appealing.

So now Murray is out, and Gustovich plots on his own, and… the editor takes over the scripting (i.e., writing the actual words) for one issue.

Things rapidly become stupider than before, and leaves the book more exposed to the problems of its razor-thin world building. Georwell is at the same time a super-technocratic world and also a seemingly medieval one, ruled by “Thacolics” (very clever naming again). Oh, and the ruler wears (for no reason) spandex with a collar that’s so high that he can only see straight ahead, I guess.

And Gustovich reverts to old tics — giving each member of the team a page or two emote, thereby killing all momentum while we check in on them, one after another. OH THE DRAMA.

“I’m bzzz… bzzz…” WHAT COULD SHE BE TELLING HER BOYFRIEND

Fortunately, for the rest of the series, veteran writer Len Wein comes in as the scripter. Was he cheap?

He certainly brings more humour to the dialogue — Challenger’s daughter tells him that she’s pregnant, and he suggest first that it’s just gas, and then that she could have an abortion. Is it meant to be funny? I’m not sure, actually.

Man… is that a good ad for Ribit!, though?

The remaining issues deal with various enemies on both worlds, and they’re not as awful as I expected. However, most of the pages deal with the various characters painstakingly working out various plot points — which normally a writer would mostly just do off-stage and then just write some action scenes where the plot points are displayed. But it’s fine.

Some things are just inexplicably amateurish and lazy, like this cannibal giant guy putting all of our super-heroes in a jail box… but then it turns out that the box doesn’t have a roof, because he needs to be able to grab them? But if that’s the case, they can just climb out?

A real writer would have come up with something less cringeworthy.

With so many plot points being hashed out, the final issues are pretty static, and the scripter can’t really help with that.

And then we get to the end of the final issue — but it doesn’t really actually say that it’s been cancelled, but instead we’re told that the story continues in the first Annual.

Which, OK, it’s the traditional wedding issue.

Which is interrupted by the US army attacking their island at random — fortunately they get to kill a lot of soldiers.

Gustovich had been setting up this super duper assassin machine for a few issues. When it attacks it turns out that it’s not water-proof.

*sigh*

THE END.

But we’re told that the series isn’t over — it’s going to continue from Innovation Comics. It only lasted for seven issues, but there were a handful of further specials and stuff published.

This series has never been reprinted, and you can usually pick them up for less than cover price still:

Andy Mangels writes in Amazing Heroes #139, page #66:

I never did understand the appeal
of the Justice Machine, much less the
continued appeal after its numerous
revampings. Hmm. Maybe that’s it.
I’ll get back to that thought in a mo-
ment, but first, the story of the issue.
As the book opens, Demon (whom
many thought died about six issues
ago—and who should have) is attack-
ing Titan, in what is revealed to be a
video-taped encounted being critiqued
by Diviner. Titan is asleep (standing
up no less!), and dreaming of his past
in a sequence that made no sense at
all to me. The meeting is dismissed
with the revelation that Demon is still
loose somewhere in the Machine’s
headquarters, and that they’ll all sleep
with guards to their rooms.
Later, Titan wakes up the mute
Youthquake and launches into his
origin story. Talisman comes to relieve
Youthquake (and the reader of the rest
of Titan’s origin), only to be revealed
as a “duplicate” pages later. He isn’t
the only “duplicate” as it seems
“someone is trying to duplicate the
Justice Machine!”
It really didn’t strike me what it was
about this book that made it so unap-
pealing, besides some of the obvious
points.
Justice Machine is Doug Murray’s
only non-war comic scripting, and if
this is what his original stuff reads
like, I’d rather he stick to adapting real
events. The plot (that term used very
loosely) is poor, and the characters
move through it sluggishly. No help
is given to the reader to discern what’s
going on in the story. For instance,
one main character is not called by
name until the end of the book! Since
Comico never runs “Our Story So
Far” pieces, the reader is left
floundering in what is supposedly a
five-part story!
Murray’s scripting is poor, with
very stiff dialogue, and almost no
character motivation. Titan finds out
that two other Machine members are
“duplicates,” so what does he do?
Does he check what kind of
duplicates? Are they in rubber masks?
Are they surgically altered? Are they
robots? Aliens? Who knows!? Titan
doesn’t check, nor does his team-
mates.
The shoddy script is not helped by
Gustovich’s completely uninspired art.
Gustovich is one of those professionals
that has always been almost there, but
never quite good enough. His work
greatly resembles the early John
Byrne of his Space: 1999 days,
although even that comparison is giv-
ing it more than its due. Anatomical
grotesqueries abound (such as pages
7 and 17). There is not a single
attractive-looking person in the whole
book either. Gustovich has no know-
ledge of sign language—something he
needs when drawing a mute character.
His mute man communicates with
hopeful puppy-dog-like facial expres-
sions, rather than using any kind of
sign. His hands are doing something;
we just don’t understand what.
I said earlier I didn’t understand
why this book was popular, especially
after numerous revampings. What do
you get if you take any number of stan-
dard Marvel or DC writers, put them
with a roughly professional Byrne
clone, and put them on a super-hero
team book with a rotating cast? You
get the Avengers, that’s what! Or any
number of Marvel/DC team books
over the years.
Over its six years, twenty-some
issue run, Justice Machine has had at
least five (seven, I think) different
writers, and another handful of differ-
ent directions. Each new writer that
came onto this book decided to ignore
what the other writers had done, and
establish a “new direction.” Murray
even brought back a man from the
dead, ruining one of the few good
Justice Machine stories ever done (and
writer Tony Isabella’s best). The con-
cept behind Justice Machine seems to
be that behind most every Marvel and
many DC books being produced over
the last 15 years: “It doesn’t matter
who does it, if the characters are
there, it’ll sell.”
Justice Machine is then, the closest
thing to a mainstream comic published
by an independent company. It has
absolutely no single creative vision
(other than regular artist/creator Mike)
Gustovich’s) and the recent addition
of Murray as writer does not help in
the slightest. Amazing Heroes scribe
(and a good friend) Mike Eury has
just been named editor of Justice
Machine, and I hope he can salvage
what is by far the worst of Comico’s
fairly good line. Here’s hoping for
you, Mike. They haven’t given you
much to work with.
If you liked the Defenders (circa
1977) from Marvel, Justice Machine
is your cup of tea. It’s certainly not
mine.
Grade: Poor

I agree with Mangels in general here, but I think he just didn’t understand what Murray was doing in these issues — the seemingly inexplicable things that the characters were doing was eventually explained, and they were left up in the air to build tension — and that worked well, I think.

Back Issue #94, page #27:

ENTER THE MAN FROM THE ‘NAM
With the 14th issue (Feb. 1988), Justice Machine moves
into a significant new phase. Arriving as writer is Doug
Murray. A logical choice for a still-evolving young company,
Murray was at the time the recipient of critical acclaim
for his work on Marvel’s The ‘Nam. His arrival at Comico
also had some to do with the old adage “It’s not what
you know, it’s who you know.” As Murray reveals, “Bob
Schreck (who was administrative director at Comico) and
I were old and dear friends. He wanted me to do a book
for his company and I was happy to have the extra work.
However, there was another reason for bringing me
aboard. For whatever reason (and I really don’t know
why), the book was way behind schedule. Bob knew (as I said, we’re old
friends) that I was a very fast writer and would make it my business to get
the book back on schedule as quickly as I could-which I proceeded to do.”

Did the co-plotting between writer and artist continue with Murray’s
arrival? “It was planned that I would talk to Mike Gustovich to set up
plots and the like-but these were
the days before cellphones and the
Internet (remember them?) and
Mike was in the process of moving,
thus I spoke to him far less often
than I would have liked, but, as I
needed to turn in a lot of scripts
quickly, I had to move ahead with
or without those talks. It’s a shame,
because I would have preferred
having some kind of relationship
with Mike and would have preferred
even more to be going in a direction
he was pleased with (which I am
still not sure was the case).”
On the letters page of a subse-
quent issue, Doug Murray revealed
that Mike Gustovich’s only instruction
to him when he came on board was
that he had to bring Demon back.
Murray welcomed the challenge
of finding a way to do just that.
(However, the best-laid plans….)
Finally, since Tony Isabella was
not familiar with the group before
beginning to write them, what was
Murray’s situation? “I knew nothing
whatsoever about the Justice Machine
before getting the job. Once I knew
I’d be doing the book, I read every
issue that Comico had, including
the Elementals crossover.” Seems to
be a common theme doesn’t it?
Doug Murray’s tenure on the
title encompasses two long-running
storylines, the first of which begins
with Blazer receiving an operation
to help her control her powers.
After the operation, she begins a
relationship with Maxinor’s son,
Youthquake.
This plotline had begun in issue #10 (Oct. 1987), so Tony Isabella
had some definite ideas on how it would have progressed had he
continued writing the book. Tony comments to BACK ISSUE,
“The operation would have been a success. I would have done my best
to redesign her costume without the big circles where her boobs were.
“As for her relationship with Youthquake, it would have been doomed
to end badly. Perhaps not quite Romeo and Juliet badly, but badly.”
The fact that Isabella had begun this plotline worked well for Doug
Murray, as one of his priorities was to increase the roles of the Machine’s
female members. As well as freeing Blazer from the confines of
her costume, Murray also eliminated Diviner’s dependence
on her sensory web. When asked the reasons for these
changes, Murray tells BACK ISSUE, “I have always been
a believer in the power of women-even before the
feminist revolution. I have felt that way (probably due
to the fact that I had a strong mother and an even
stronger wife). I always wanted to show that strength
in my writing. It was pretty much impossible in The
‘Nam, but worked well with Justice Machine. I especially
wanted to do things with Blazer because I felt that a
regarding the Justice Machine. Feeling they will not be able to help him
with his goal of building a new world order, he decides to replace them
with his own custom-made duplicates. This process begins with the
seeming return of Demon, though he is later revealed as a simulacrum.
woman with real feelings who couldn’t even touch
someone she loved was a very sad thing indeed, and
although I know that making the hero unhappy is a
big part of this sort of writing, I wanted to at least
make her more than a background character.”
Murray’s first story details Douglas Hamilton’s change of thinking
Hamilton is revealed to have a
lot of experience with this sort of
thing as we discover his major
lieutenants are themselves created
beings, injected with aspects of his
own personality!
Quite an interesting concept!
Were there any stories from the
past that sparked this? “I’m pretty
sure that was nearly all me,”
comments Murray. “I’m sure I
was influenced by any number of
science-fiction stories, although I
can’t give you a specific one. I know
there are several where someone
removed part of their personality
to try to make themselves a better
person. I think Gordon Dickson’s
stories came into play-he had
mankind broken into several
groups. I probably used some of
that because he had a new book
out around that time.”

Back Issue #94, page #27:

THE DEMON WITHIN
As mentioned, this storyline runs until
issue #25 (Jan. 1989), and there are actually two major
endings in the issue, the war being the first. It was also
the last issue written by Doug Murray.
“I had no idea I was leaving the book when I wrote
that stuff,” Doug reveals. “I was eventually told that
Comico was not going to publish another issue for some
time and that I wasn’t needed. It’s kind of a shame, but
things like that happen and the fact that I still had no
relationship with Mike Gustovich certainly came into play.”
The major reason Murray was replaced was that Mike
Gustovich had expressed the desire to have much more
say in the evolution of his characters and so had decided
to take over the plotting of the series. With a degree of
self-depreciation that comes with hindsight, Gustovich
believes, “Back then I don’t think I was the easiest person
to work with. You’d have to ask others about that. Some-
times I wanted more control, probably because I wasn’t
thrilled with what other writers were doing. Looking
back I can see that they were doing a very good job,
especially with the input I was giving them. There was,
I believe, a bit of an undeserved ego thing on my part.
I thought I was better than I was and others were not.
Age has given me a better perspective on the matter.”
You will notice that nowhere is there any mention of
the circumstances regarding Demon’s return from the
dead. Doug Murray believes, “If I said Mike wanted him
brought back, then Mike certainly wanted him brought back. In my
experience, it’s not that unusual for a creator to kill a character off and
later have second thoughts and decide to bring him back. I did have
plans to explain Demon’s return-but I never got into that for a number
of reasons, the biggest being that the Earth/Georwell War was mandated
to come next, and afterwards, I was off the series pretty quickly.”
Issue #27’s letters page does finally answer a query regarding the
mystery by stating that Mike Gustovich was working on a miniseries
to provide the details.
Those details are provided by Gustovich himself. “Demon’s return
was going to be totally my own story and art,” Mike tells BI, “a four-
issue miniseries. He would be found by a steamer ship and brought
back to the New York ports. There he would basically be homeless for
a short time, and without his Edge and demoralized he became easy
prey for a street gang, until they were run off by an elderly homeless
woman whom they all seemed terrified of.
“Demon wakes in her abandoned warehouse abode to find out first
hand that she doesn’t put up with disrespect. She was a master of the
martial arts before he was born. From there she teaches him the better
path to martial superiority that is not based on drugs or arrogance but
serenity, study, and practice.
“Together they defeat a ganglord and his hold over the community.
Then he goes back to find his teammates in a huge mess. He saves
them, and so on and so on.

[…]

As it turned out, issue #27 introduces that new scripter, industry veteran
Len Wein. How did someone with no previous connection to Comico
come aboard? “I called and asked him!” reveals Eury. “I remember
meeting with Diana Schutz about a new Justice Machine dialogue writer,
and she asked whose work I liked on superhero books. I always found
Len’s dialogue to be crisp and realistic and I thought he could help
make the JM characters more relatable to readers.
“I recall that working with Len was fun, and my first contacts with
him solidified the fact that I was a ‘pro,’ since I was working with
someone whose comics I had enjoyed as a fan.”
Wein’s first issue introduces the team to Ms. Liberty, a circus
performer. Mike Gustovich recalls, “The Ms. Liberty concept came
much earlier to me and I would have added her to the JM lineup. The
storyline didn’t evolve as well as I’d initially thought.”
The reason it did not might be because, unfortunately, this creative
team was only together for a very short time. Issue #29 marks the end
of the regular Comico series, followed by Annual #1, which would be
the last Justice Machine comic the company published.

Amazing Heroes #133, page #98:

Murray felt that things weren’t moving
along fast enough, nor was there enough
internalization to suit him, so he is going
to be working on these aspects of the
book. “This is not to say that I didn’t like
what Tony was doing, I did enjoy the
book under him, but now I’m writing it,
and picking up on different things.” As
stated at the onset, Murray will be
following the major portions of situations
set up by Isabella. “I’m going to be
working on lots of background, charac-
terization, and advancing the storyline.
I also have a couple of stories dealing
with the backgrounds of Titan and
Challenger.” Murray was very excited
about working on the series, and his sole
lament was that since he was working so
far in advance of the actual on-sale date
(about nine months) he was unsure of as
to how the fans were going to react to
the stuff he was currently writing. Still,
he was having a good time with the
characters.

Comics Interview #51, page #37:

PETER: And as for JUSTICE MACHINE?
BOB: JUSTICE MACHINE in its premise
does that, a group of heroes who realized
that the government had sold them the
wrong bill of goods, a Vietnam mentality,
and they were kind of standing there look-
ing like maroons. Tony Isabella, with his
work in the new series, has given them a
lot of depth, a lot of characterization that
they didn’t have before.
DIANA: Tony’s established subplots, inter-
relationships among the characters, motiva-
tions, and he’s given them history and
background, and done it creatively and in
a stimulating fashion. He’s definitely
delivered an above average superhero book.
And I know that when Doug Murray takes
over the book, he’ll do an equally im-
pressive job.
I’m not really against the genre of
superheroes, but to some extent I’ve had
them to the max, you know.

I’m unable to find much in the way of chatter about Justice Machine on the intertubes. Here’s something:

Zack: Which character is your favorite, Steve? Is it the guy in the tan shirt with the bandolier? The guy with a uniform that is just a cowl and Spanx?

Steve: I’m partial to the cringing businessman.

Heh heh.

Here’s a youtube thing…

No doubt:

I have to say, “Justice Machine” is no doubt one of the coolest superhero groups and comics worth reading!

OK, that’s it. This blog post has taken me way too long to write, but after the first dozen issues, it’s not too bad, really.

And after this, there’s only one long series to read. That is, I’ve still got 80% of the posts in this blog series to do, but I’ve read 60% of the issues — the vast majority of the remaining series are pretty short, so I should be able to do them on a more regular schedule. I’ll be aiming for about three posts per week again? Let’s see how that goes.

The World of Ginger Fox (1986) by Mike Baron and Mitch O’Connell

Err… That’s a weird thing to put in your graphic novel. Is Baron asking his previous publishers to save him from his current publishers or something?

Oh, hi! This is a blog post about The World of Ginger Fox, the first original “graphic novel” published by Comico. I mean, I guess you could make the case for the Robotech graphic novel being the first, but that’s a spinoff from the series, so…

Mike Baron is mostly known for his Nexus series with Steve Rude, but I most recently read the Robotech Masters series he wrote, and it was horrible. So I’m approaching this with pretty low expectations. Let’s read the first three pages:

OK, I like the artwork. The name Mitch O’Connell seems really, really familiar to me, but I can’t quite place it. And I’ve got this “method reading” thing going here — I never do any research before reading or writing my take on these comics, so I have to postpone any googling until the end of this blog post.

But I think this artwork looks really British somehow? And, of course, intensely mid-80s.

It’s like John Prentice is drawing figures based on layouts by Patrick Nagel, right? Or perhaps that’s just me. There’s also something very American about it… It’s quite attractive, though, even if it looks kinda wonky in places — like, those two faces on the women up there don’t quite belong on the same page.

The story is also very mid-80s: It’s about a new executive (Ginger Fox) arriving at a declining movie studio, and will she be able to turn the ship around? Or is it bankruptcy time? It’s not very original, but it’s a solid, well-used premise.

The most disturbing thing about the book is the word balloon placement. O’Connell has these rather loose panel arrangements, sometimes with borders and sometimes not, and the word balloons seem to float rather freely.

It seems like they’re hinting at a snakey reading order like this — but that’s wrong, you read these two rows strictly left to right. But then on other pages, snakey is indeed the reading direction meant — and this means that you have to reparse these pages a lot, which is tedious. I wonder whether the letterer came up with the balloon placement, and was just new at it — these things seem pretty amateurish.

Man, O’Connell’s artwork seems so familiar… I feel I’ve seen it a lot, and in conjunction with… Raw-adjacent comics? Perhaps it’s just the Elvis thing.

Baron tries to add humour, as usual, and as usual, it’s not exactly hilarious.

Oooh! Drugs! Oh no!!! At least he’s an efficient multi-tasking multi-user.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the plot — it’s about a secret society of Kung Fu guys who want to shut down a Kung Fu movie. The main guy is called Dusker Hsu. Get it? Get it? (That’s a Hüsker Dü reference.)

There’s also a romantic plot which has such stunning scenes like Ginger Fox fainting when she sees the guy she’s kinda dating at a bar with another woman.

The book is a bit of a mess. There’s plenty of plot going around, but none of it amounts to much. And it ends like you’d expect, with a triply happy ending.

I liked it? It’s got a breezy thing going on that’s really appealing. But it doesn’t quite work.

According to comics.org, it’s never been reprinted, which is… not that unexpected, really, because:

You can pick it up from ebay cheaply.

I was totally wrong about O’Connell. Too bad I can’t go up there and edit what I’ve already written because my “up” key stopped working the other day. I’ll have to live with the shame! And looking over the books he’s done, I don’t think I’ve read many of them at all.

Rob Rodi writes in The Comics Journal #115, page #35:

Comico (“The Comic Company,” as it
rather redundantly subtitles itself) recently
accelerated its slow, careful climb to market
respectability by issuing a highly-touted,
slick-looking graphic album by the popular
and almost ubiquitous Mike Baron. The
World of Ginger Fox is designed to
compete with the Marvel, DC, and First
graphic novels, and it should do the job;
it’s as attractive a package, it’s priced
competitively, and it’s about as effective.
It tells the story of the beautiful new presi-
dent of a failing motion picture company
who comes in swinging and puts everything
to rights. It’s about as dreadful as it sounds,
but it has its moments. From the synopsis
you might think it has as much to do with
movies as Dynasty has with oil or Falcon
Crest with wine, and you’d be right, but
what saves it from that depth of embarrass-
ment is that Baron gives us just enough
accessible “insider” talk to flatter us into
thinking we know a lot. (I don’t know much
about the film industry myself, only what
I read in Final Cut, but then again, that was
enough to convince me I don’t want to
know any more.)
As a fantasy about power and its uses and
abuses, as a high-style flit throught the fast
lane, and as a journal of the ins-and-outs
of corporate entertainment, Ginger Fox is
pretty lame stuff. Baron has demonstrated
before-most notably in Nexus and The
Badger, also his own creations-his unwill-
ingness to be better than his medium. For
him, comic books have an inherently loopy
surreality that tends to throw all serious
intentions into sort of garish, Mack-truck
relief. He glories in the kind of goofball, seat-
of-your-pants sensitivity that, paradoxically,
makes his work seem almost enlightened,
as if he’s beyond all this “comics-as-art” lip-
flapping and just wants to have sort of a
high-profile gas. He’s going to be an awfully
good arbiter of our present culture, I think,
for future sociologists. Ginger Fox is so com-
pletely a product of the 1980s that in 20
years it’s going to seem hilariously quaint.
I doubt this would displease Baron, either.
But you do ache to see more from him.
I’ve complained about his blithe acceptance
of character archetypes before, and Ginger
Fox couldn’t be more archetypal. You know
what you’re in for as soon as you open the
book and find the movie studio’s board of
directors debating whether or not they’re
desperate enough to let “the broad” have
a crack at saving their hides. (The studio
is ripe for a takeover by “the oil boys.”) Of
course, with a set-up like that, “the broad”
has to turn out to be perfect. And Ginger
Fox is perfect. She comes in looking like
Christie Brinkley on one of her best days,
and announces a new plan for saving Pep-
and announces a new plan for saving rep
public! That’s a loser’s game. No more
follow the leader. Peppertree will develop
new concepts, new ideas.” This is some of
the most trite writing Baron has ever done.
You can just hear Heather Locklear reciting
it. (Wouldn’t a real CEO, given only two
months to save a studio’s hash, be talking
about shorter-term, more immediate
solutions-marketing strategies, advertising
gambits, distribution deals with indepen-
dents?)
Ginger goes on to review the list of
“orphaned” projects still in production; she
kills one outright, a cheesy space-opera,
incurring the wrath of its director, and
“adopts” two others. All are over-budget
and late, but she uses her instincts to tell
her which to dump. And of course, her
instincts are perfect. The director of the
space-opera turns out to be a vengeful,
unforgiving type who tries to sabotage the
studio and all of Ginger’s hard work.
Wouldn’t it have been more fun if Ginger
had been more of a self-centered, don’t-fuck-
with-me-I’m-always-right sort-if some of
her rough-riding over her auteurs were
shown to be as fascistic as their work was
masturbatory? If she had a few freakin’ flaws,
for Pete’s sake? But no, she has to be an
ideal-with youth, beauty, guts, savvy, great
clothes-and, hey, she’s sexually active and
a great mom. Saint Ginger of the Corporate
Ladder. (In the midst of her troubles, she
even arranges an audition for her actress
housekeeper; Mary Poppins ain’t got nothin’
on this gal.)
She’s pretty much a cipher as a result. She
falls for one of her actors, a Bruce Lee-type
who’s starring in an action film called Enter
the Cobra (which, from the confusing selec-
tions we’re shown from it, seems to be
autobiographical), and you think it might
render her human; instead, this actor turns
out to be perfect too. But then, he has to
be. Ginger loves him. (However, being a
perfect CEO, she won’t date an employee.
Integrity can be a harsh mistress.)
There are subplots about a drug-addicted
actor who is the key to one of the films
Ginger has inherited, and about a secret
kung fu sect that is out to ruin Enter the
Cobra, so that both films, upon which the
studio’s fate hangs, are in danger; and don’t
forget that pissed-off space-opera director
who’s trying to ruin her, too. So Ginger has
a lot on her mind. I could have lived
without the scene of her fainting from her
exertions and her moral unequivocacy; it
smacks of cheap theatrics. It’s only there to
put the seal on her sainthood. And it’s
sexist, too. (Would a male CEO pass out in
a tough spot? Did Lee Iacocca swoon while
waiting for approval of his federal loan?)
Ginger’s perfect kung fu boyfriend takes
care of everything, which includes kicking
the shit out of an old kung fu master and
helping the addicted actor kick the habit,
and then the story ends with the whole cast
taking in the premiere of Enter the Cobra,
which is a smash hit. Well, of course it is.
Ginger believed in it, didn’t she?
Wouldn’t it have been wittier-and more
modern-if the film had been a failure, but
with the last-minute news that its sound-
track album had sold enough advance units
to save the studio? But Baron insists on
trendy “retro” melodrama. It’s not exactly
a cynical work-Baron is never cynical-
but so much of it is regurgitated from old
Joan Crawford and Ginger Rogers movies,
where the woman at the top is better than
all the men, but so lonely, so misunder-
stood. (Comic book fans will probably be
most reminded of the old Millie the Model
comic-except that it’s 1986 and Millie’s on
the other side of the camera.) It presents the
acceptable, ’80s face of sexism. (You get the
impression that Ginger wouldn’t be as good
an executive if she didn’t dress cool.)
There are also some celebrity “cameos”
that are simply beneath mention, so let’s
not mention them.
The artwork, by Chicago commercial
artist Mitch O’Connell, is pretty, if a trifle
busy; he has a couple of neat tricks-such
as giving us panels with all the characters
shown at midsection, so that we’re aware
of their body language (an untapped source,
given the instant accessibility of facial
expressions). He has a pleasing, confident
rendering style, something like a cross
between Steve Rude and Alex Toth, if you
can even imagine it. Ginger Fox is at least
a treat to look at.
And, to borrow another movie “insider”
term, it may indeed have legs. I think it’ll
work best in about 20 years-the way we
look back at, say, Green Acres today, and
wax nostalgic for the kind of culture that
could have created such a curious thing,
even though we couldn’t stand it at the
time. Until then, file this one next to
Metalzoic and The Sensational She-Hulk.
That seems to be the height to which it
aspires. Congratulations, Comico.

That’s a very fair review — I agree with what Rodi says here, especially the “Ginger Fox is so completely a product of the 1980s that in 20 years it’s going to seem hilariously quaint”.

How bizarre.

Well, Comico certainly got behind the album — lots of ads. And this is just a sample. Are they good ads? Eh…

Gerry Jones writes in Amazing Heroes #112, page #65:

This isn’t real reality. It’s
Hollywood. A glamorized wish-
fulfillment Hollywood at that.
Hyped-up, packaging-oriented, fast,
fluffy, superficial, sexy, fun. It’s also
kung fu, which isn’t real reality
either. Ritualized, baroque, violent,
colorful, predictable but suspense-
ful. It’s a weird combination. It
makes something that isn’t reality
but isn’t fantasy. It isn’t mainstram
but it isn’t genre. I don’t know what
it is. But it’s a blast.
Mike Baron-thanks to the suc-
cess of the funny, startling, chilling,
pseudo-philosophical niftiness of
Nexus-is in the enviable position of
being able to call his own shots. He
can dream up a goofy story aobut
a hot young female Hollywood
studio executive turning a kung fu
movie into a major hit and falling
love with its Chinese star despite the
interference of the deadly Yellow
Lotus secret society, and he can get
it published as a full-color graphic
novel. It’s a silly story, based on a
whole mountain of sillinesses (a
kung fu movie, especially with an
Asian star, becoming a studio-saving
hit in 1986? Who you tryin’ to kid,
Baron?). The characters are pretty
two-dimensional, the emotional de-
velopments pretty quick and conve-
nient. But what the hell. It’s
Hollywood. And it’s fun.
It’s refreshing just to see a slickly-
produced, smoothly-written, all-
color comic book about the big
world outside the concerns of funny-
book folks. Who cares if it’s as pat
and insubstantial as any Hollywood
action-comedy? That makes it a
better reflection of the world it’s por-
traying. Granted, I’d liked to have
seen more romance, more studio
shenanigans, more character stuff,
and not so many fight scenes. But
I don’t think Baron put the fight
scenes in as a concession to the
expectations of comic fans. I think
he put them in there because he’s a
genuine kung fu freak. And maybe
the best thing about reading this
story of his is sharing his own obvi-
ous fun and sense of creative
liberation.
(But Baron does pull one blunder
that should be posted as a warning
to writers everywhere: He tries to
give us a scene full of Good Writing.
The scene is a screening of Pepper-
tree Studio’s movies-in-progress for
new president Fox and her Exec Sec
Maureen. They see part of a lame-
brained space opera and laugh it into
extinction. Then they see a scene
from a “serious” movie in which a
Puerto Rican junkie launches into a
sobbing entreaty to the virgin Mary
to help him turn his life around. It’s
the most mawkish piece of senti-
mental schlock I’ve ever seen. “It
ain’t, it ain’t for me I’m askin’… it’s
for my little girl…It’s for Mary.”
I figured, if Ginger and Maureen
laughed at that other thing, how
they’re going to howl at this one. But
I turned the page to find Ginger say-
ing, “I like it.” Is this a prolonga-
tion of the joke, I wondered? But
then, with horror, I realized that
Baron had meant this slop to be
Serious Writing. It took me about
five pages to get back in synch with
the comic. Challenges like that, no
writer should ever put on himself.)

I thought the same thing! This Gerry Jones must be some kind of genius… let me do a quick google on the name and OH MY GOD

NO CARRIER

Baron does a good, deft, facile job
with a charming story. But the real
star of this comic is Mitch O’ Con-
nell. I don’t know where this guy
came from, but I hope he never goes
back. He’s a minor miracle, an ap-
parent newcomer to the field who
strides in with a dazzling, sophisti-
cated, versatile style of his very
own.
O’Connell’s not just another Mar-
vel/DC-style Hot New Sensation,
finding different ways to combine
George Perez, Jim Starlin, and Neal
Adams. He brings in an enormous
vocabulary of designs, motifs, illus-
trator’s tricks, fascinating faces, and
ingenious compositions. He dedi-
cates the comic to, among others,
Alex Toth, and a better influence for
this kind of work couldn’t have been
found. Toth did some romance com-
ics in the early 1950s that have never
been touched for visual inventive-
ness and sophisticated design (check
out Eclipse’s True Love if you don’t
believe me). O’Connell obviously
learned from those, transformed
what he saw into an Eighties con-
text, and assimilated it into his own
forceful graphic style. Clothes,
backgrounds, page designs, even
figures, are broken down and flat-
tened out into sharply evocative
designs. He uses clever bits of
shorthand—a background of broken
hearts unfurled like wallpaper
behind an unhappy Ginger, the final
scene in film-frame style to blur the
distinction between movie and
reality—with remarkable unobtru-
siveness.
Very design-conscious, very snaz-
zy, very slick, this is cartooning for
the age of music videos and Keith
Haring watches. But because it’s
always evocative and never loses its
narrative flow, it’s also completly
legitimate comic book art. O’Con-
nell and Ginger Fox were made for
each other. I look forward eagerly
to seeing what he can do with some
other—any other—material.

The Comics Journal #115, page #27:

The World of Ginger Fox, a
Comico graphic novel by Mike
Baron and Mitch O’Connell, was
featured in the February 1987
issue of Playboy in the “After
Hours” section. According to
Comico Administrative Director
Bob Schreck, “The article profil-
ing Ginger Fox emphasized how
most of the ‘hot’ new graphic
novels produced for adults were
of a serious nature and indicated
that Ginger was a much-
welcomed departure from that
type of book.’
Schreck added that Playboy’s
national cable TV channel was
interested in the graphic novel as
well. “There is a strong possi-
bility that Ginger will be featured
in an upcoming edition of the
monthly Playboy Video
Magazine,” said Schreck.

Four Color Magazine #1, page #12:

Returning to the topic of Comico
media attention, the new graphic
novel The World of Ginger Fox has
appeared in a graphics magazine and
Philadelphia Magazine.
Schreck added, “So far the few
direct-market retailers and warehouse
managers who’ve seen Ginger have
been very enthusiastic about the pro-
ject. I am certain that once the retailer
puts Ginger on display, it will fly out
of the shops. It is one of the best writ-
ten, most incredibly illustrated graphic
novels you’ll ever read.”

The Comics Journal #110, page #91:

When are you going to do
a non-super-hero strip?
BARON: November of 1986, The World of
Ginger Fox will be out. It’s published by
Comico. Mitch O’Connell will be the art-
ist. It’s my third totally new creation. It’s
pure soap opera set in Hollywood. The en-
tire thing is written. It’s half drawn. I have
the pages here, I’m going to show you in
a little while when we get off this machine.
But I’m tremendously excited about this.
This is my effort to get the romance crowd.
Of course, all I can do is write the story. To
get those ladies who would never dream of
looking at a comic book is going to take
another effort, but I think we have a battle
plan for that too. But the answer is, it’s in
the works.
SMAY: Is it going to be full color?
BARON: Yeah, it’s going to be full color.
It’s going to be a graphic novel, 64 pages
long. It’s gonna blow your mind. Mitch
O’Connell is an artist who lives in Chicago.
He works with my good friend Bill Reinhold
quite a bit. Bill is the artist for the Badger.
Mitch has been inking a lot of Bill’s covers
for the Badger. He does clip art. He does the
most amazing clip art. I see it popping up
everywhere. It’s in our local newspaper. It’s
in a lot of journals I get in the mail-because
his art is so startling and inventive. It’s very
designer oriented. It’s got a lot of deco influ-
ence but it’s very modern.

Ginger Fox returns a year later in a four issue series drawn by the Pander Bros, and I’ll cover that later.

There’s a few reviews on the intertubes:

This might be the most 80s comic I ever read.

Hm:

Sexy, cinematically violent and wickedly tongue-in-cheek, this adult comics caper is markedly different from almost anything you’ve ever seen and thoroughly deserves another bite of the graphic novel cherry.

Hm:

This one is definitely worth tracking down. Fans of Mike Baron’s work on The Badger won’t be surprised at all by the martial arts portion of the story, but both it, the romance, and the film industry portions are handled in very clever fashion.

Right:

The review itself was a bit of a takedown, but this general description of Baron’s work caught my attention at that time…

“For him (Baron), comic books have an inherently loopy surreality [sic] that tends to throw all serious intentions into sort of garish, Mack-truck relief. He glories in the kind of goofball, seat-of-your-pants sensitivity that, paradoxically, makes his work seem almost enlightened, as if he’s beyond all this ‘comics-as-art’ lip-flapping and just wants to have sort of a high-profile gas. He’s going to be an awfully good arbiter of our present culture, I think, for future sociologists.”

Heh:

An 80’s throwback. Mike Barron tries to write Get Shorty, but fails. The Art from Mitch O’Connell is great and really gives those 80’s vibes in the best way.

OK, that’s it. The next blog post in this series may take a few extra days to arrive, because it’s a longer series again: Justice Machine.

Jonny Quest (1986) #1-31 by William Messner-Loebs and a cast of thousands

This blog post has taken a lot of time — not because reading these books has been boring, but because I got busy doing other things, so I’ve just not had the time to read them. So this blog post is probably even more scattered than usual — I may have forgotten what I’ve written at the start when I get to the end…

I know nothing about Jonny Quest. The only time I can remember seeing him mentioned is in connection with this series, really. But it turns out that it was a cartoon that ran for 26 in the 60s — i.e., it was cancelled after one season. So I’m not sure whether Diana Schutz’s introduction here is supposed to be taken at face value — was this really a beloved series that they were finally doing an adaptation of, and everybody’s excited? Or is this more like the Robotech situation, where (apparently) nobody involved had any real passion for the project (until perhaps later in the series when they got some fans aboard) and it’s just a way to make some money?

The first issue isn’t typical — it’s two short stories instead of one longer story. Doug Wildey does the first one — perhaps on his own? It’s not clear.

So… the bad guy is called Dr. Zin, which is nice, and then there’s… two kids? One blond, one in a turban. And there’s a white-haired tough guy? So the series is about these three guys having adventures?

I do like that they don’t infodump at us, but it really feels more like they assume that everybody knows who these guys are.

And… the kid in the turban can do magic!? Or perhaps just magic tricks?

Well, OK, if this is a money grab, it’s done well — that was a solid short story, if you like this kind of thing.

We get two pages of background, and that’s it.

Every issue has a pinup or two.

And… another short story ends.

Well, I think I have the answer to my question at the start there: This doesn’t feel like a money grab. You can feel the enthusiasm everybody has for this project, just oozing from the pages. It’s palpable.

This series doesn’t have a set art team. Messner-Loebs is going to write them all, but having somebody new coming in every issue sounds like it’s going to be a jarring read, perhaps? On the other hand, they seem to be going for a top notch roster of artists… is the deal here that all comic book artists just love Jonny Quest so much that they all want to do an issue?

In the second issue, we do get some background — but it’s not really clear why the adults are willing to put these kids (and their dog) into lethal danger all the time.

Hempel & Wheatley do some interesting things with the colouring.

“We’ll need the boys to act as lookouts.” Well, if they need them, I guess…

Scarred for life!

I know, I know, the concept is “kids go on adventures”, and that’s fun — but when doing this kind of thing, they usually try to formulate some kind of answer as to why it’s fine, and they haven’t been shipped off to live with an aunt or something instead…

A miracle strikes! And it involves Dan Adkins taking ill, but others stepping in to do inking instead.

This sort of thing always makes me wonder why they don’t just delay the issue instead, or swap in another. Especially on a series like this, where they have to have several going at the same time, from different artists.

Here’s Al Williamson (!) inking a random page. The issue looks amazingly consistent, really.

That is some list of artists.

Mitch Shauer’s issue is pretty weak — most of the artists involved are really having fun, but this one’s lazy.

Jonny Quest seems like an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink sort of series. We have archaeology action/adventure as the main entry point, apparently, but then there’s space ships, magic, time travel, dinosaurs, whatever they can come up with that’s fun and cool, I guess? It doesn’t make for much of a consistent world, but eh, what’s the difference. And:

See?

Adam Kubert does everything but the writing — art, colours and lettering. Looks pretty cool.

A reader writes in to… well, pooh-pooh a different reader’s thoughts about putting these kids in school, and Schutz gets really annoyed.

And in the next issue, a social worker drops by to check on the kids!!! Hilarity ensues.

Ken Steacy stops by to paint an issue — which turns out to be a dream issue, looking at a possible future. It’s surprisingly good.

OK, I think I’m now one third in, so here’s what I think so far: This is much, much better than I thought it would be. Every single issue has a solid adventure, and most of the artists are really on form. There’s some slight continuity between the issues, but really, you could read them in random order and not notice.

I’m pretty entertained — I’ve always been a fan of Messner-Loebs, ever since Journey — and this series is solid fun. Let’s hope it continues that way.

Wow — a card insert ad for Four Color Magazine? Weird.

Messner-Loebs casts around widely for plots, so he takes the plot from that Josephine Tey book in an issue. Why not? It’s a time travel/dream issue, of course. I do think if you do too many of these, it’s going to become rather silly after a while.

Readers react to that showdown between that Real American Reader and Diana Schutz.

The dog has to have his solo adventure issue, of course. Well, it’s not totally solo… but it’s a really good issue. Quite moving and exciting. The letters pages some issues later agreed, calling it the best issue of the series.

The obvious way to go with a series like this is to do “character building” instead of just going on one adventure after another. And if you have actual characters instead of blank slates, they may generate stories on their own.

And I think Messner-Loebs manages to do this in an amusing way, while not losing track of having action going on.

Dan Spiegle returns on this issue, and I see that he’s still trying to introduce a new reading pattern. Look at the above…

… and then this: Yes, it’s meant to be read in a “Z” way, and Spiegle does this for about half of the pages. I think it works quite well?

Apparently the book is both a commercial and a critical success.

I may have mentioned this before, but man, the design on these pages… OK, they don’t want to pay to have the colour separations done on these small covers — fine. But then it’s like “well, this is a colour book, right? So wee need colours!” And then you end up with the above, which has to be some of the ugliest design on a thing like this possible…

As the series progresses, you can see the enthusiasm drain from the project. The book settles down to having Hempel/Wheatley as the art team, and now that the book has a monthly schedule, the art grows pretty basic. I mean, it makes sense to try to settle on a smaller roster of artists, and Hempel/Wheatley can do good stuff, but it’s starting to feel phoned in.

The stories are a bit of a random walk — sure, why not do a film noir issue?

It just works better when Messner-Loebs grounds the exploits in the characters, like when the other kid goes looking for a swami. (Art by Ernie Colon.) It’s just funnier and more interesting.

The worst of the issues are the time travel ones — there aren’t that many, really, but they’re not really very inspired.

Jonny Quest didn’t win any of the Kirbys it was nominated for, but it won the It’s a Fanzine Max Award.

It’s fun looking at the different approaches to colouring and separations — they’d mostly figured out how to do this by this time, but you still see a lot of variation from issue to issue. And something like this isn’t something you’d ever see today. (Colours by Joe Matt.)

OK, I wasn’t the only one that reacted to that particularly naff Hempel/Wheatley issue — it was indeed done in a hurry.

Messner-Loebs and Dan Spiegle does an issue about going home — it turns out that whatsisname with the white hair was brought up by an abusive uncle, and when he goes home, he finds out that things were less clear than he remembered them being. But his uncle was still an asshole. Which makes this a pretty nuanced issue.

And then we get an issue with a fixed camera! That can’t have been very entertaining for the Marc/ks to draw, but it’s a very amusing issue.

And another dog solo issue! And again, very touching!

I felt like Messner-Loebs kinda lost his way there for a few issues in the mid-teens, but now he’s on a roll again — every issue having a strong story, and with great variety. The only problem is that we’ve moved pretty far from the Two Kids, A Scientist, James Bond and Their Dog Go On Adventures, which was the setup here…

But then Messner-Loeb’s stories get more and more disconnected from… well, anything — a two-parter where they solve a half-assed mystery out west? Sure, but… It’s such a bad mystery!

We’re coming towards the end of the series, and it was cancelled due to low sales. Why are they then bringing out two Jonny Quest mini-series at this time, then? Hm… Oh, perhaps the licensing agreement with Hanna-Barbera is lapsing, so they’re squeezing some last minute dollars out of it? But that only makes sense if they weren’t losing money on the property in the first place… Or perhaps they don’t pay more, so this gambit makes it possible to avoid losing money the last three months?

The next-to-last issue adapts one of the original stories — the first issue to do this. I think the Jonny Quest Classics series did this, too, but it’s weird dropping in an issue like this at random… Perhaps Messner-Loebs just had run out of stories?

If this is a typical episode of Jonny Quest, I don’t understand why it’s fondly remembered, because it’s easily — easily — the worst issue in the series. The plot makes no sense, and there’s very little excitement: Just random stuff happening until they run out of pages.

Diana Schutz announces the cancellation, and states that they’d been losing money on the title.

Wow. In the final issue, Schutz confirms my speculation about why they chose to release those two mini-series all of a sudden. Right again! I’m so smart S. M. R. T.

In the final issue, the kids go on their most exciting adventure yet — they follow the social worker to work, and get to see old people getting kicked out of their homes and stuff.

And then… Their dad marries the social worker finally! The end!

Schutz fought for the series until the end, it sounds like.

So… Wow, I finally got to the end. I think it took me ten days? But I had other things to do; it’s not like it took me all this time to read these 31 issues. But… it’s also to do with how these issues are structured: After reading a handful, I didn’t really want to read any more.

Reading this series has been like like reading a short story collection. Almost every issue is a one-and-done story, and while there’s some progression plot-wise, it’s very, very slight. But more than that, the stories didn’t really feel grounded in the characters: For many of them, you could have slotted in any characters and it would have been the same story.

Individually, I liked almost all of the issues. Collectively, it was a slog to get through, especially after Hempel and Wheatley took over the artwork. It’s not that they’re bad artists — they’re fine — but it’s hard to get excited about their work here.

And who was this series for? Obviously, at the start they set off with great (and contagious) enthusiasm, but then that dissipated, and we were left with a series that wasn’t really about a family going off on James Bond-like adventures, but just… random stuff. But the people who’d enjoy reading a story about the vicissitudes of social worker like aren’t likely to pick up an issue of something called “Jonny Quest”, are they?

But what did the critics say?

Amazing Heroes #95, page #28:

Diana’s gameplan for Jonny was
twofold. First of all, she received a
lot of response and interest from art-
ists interested in drawing Jonny. This
fit in fine with her plans because the
amount of lead time required for Taft
approval of each book, would have
created a nightmare for any single
artist. With visions of scheduling
dancing in her head, Diana decided
to use a different artist each issue. As
firmly convicted as she was about
multiple artists, she had just as strong
a conviction that there should only
be one writer, to keep a sense of
balance. This prompted a difficult
search for her. “I knew there are
many great artists who could do this,
but there are few great writers,” she
explains.
On the phone with Sam Kieth,
inker of Mage, Diana related her
dilemma to him. As luck would have
it, Kieth had been talking to his good
friend Bill Loebs. William Messner-
Loebs, as many are aware, is the
creative force behind Fantagraphics
Books’ Journey. Loebs had told Keith
that it would be nice to have another
project besides Journey to be work-
ing on. When Sam talked to Diana
the next day, and she told him she
was looking for a writer who would
stay with the book, Sam Kieth sug-
gested that Bill Loebs was available.
Diana thought this was a marvelous
idea because she was a long-time fan
of Journey, and felt that Loebs had a
real strength in character develop-
ment. She called Bill up, and he
thought it sounded like an interesting
project.
By his own admission, originally
Bill would never have considered
such a project, because he was used
to working with his own characters,
and felt it would be difficult to work
with someone else’s. Diana con-
vinced him that the company would
be open to trying new things with
the cast of Quest. As he delved a
little into their pasts and their motiva-
tions, Bill began to notice the
parallels between Jonny Quest and
Terry and the Pirates, in terms of
locales and characters. Another
motivation for him was that he cur-
rently was getting more into Carl
Barks, and the way he had been able
to go in, take an animated cartoon
character, and adapt it for the dif-
ferent needs of a comic book. This
feat fascinated him, and Jonny Quest
presented Loebs with the opportuni-
ty to try something similar. To Diana’s
delight, Bill phoned her and ac-
cepted the assignment.
As they began looking into the pro-
ject, Loebs and Schutz put together
some basic ideals. The continuity
aspect will be minimal. Every issue
has a beginning, middle, and end
which is partly a function of wanting
to have as many artistic interpreta-
tions of Quest as possible, and being
a mirror of the TV show. Diana did
want some elements to carry over. It
will be the kind of continuity in that
the events of a previous issue will
have some kind of effect on a later
issue. “These are concessions to
reality,” says Diana, and as an ex-
ample she cites, “If Jonny breaks his
arm one issue, which I am not say-
ing is going to happen, he will not
suddenly be out of a cast by the
following issue.”

Comics Scene Volume 2 #1, page #60:

Big changes are in store for
Comico’s Jonny Quest, according to
writer William Messner-Loebs. Begin-
ning with issue #14 (on sale now), the
series, which has been illustrated by
rotating artists since its inception, will
settle down to the regular team of Marc
Hempel and Mark Wheatley, formerly
of First Comics’ Mars series, who had
drawn Jonny Quest #3.
Though not a fan of the original
show, Messner-Loebs has decided to
play up two minor characters from the
original series-the mysterious Jezebel
Jade from Race Bannon’s espionage past
and the Eurasian arch-villain, Dr. Zin.
“In talking to my friends who were
big Quest fans,” Messner-Loebs ex-
plains, “they all say, ‘Oh boy, Jade was
in all those episodes and Dr. Zin was
behind all those plots.’ Actually, each
one is only in two episodes. But because
people are so sure there were more, it
seemed logical to carry that through. So,
I’ve built up those two characters.”
Reader reaction to Jade and Dr. Zin
has been overwhelmingly positive and
there are plans to feature them even
more prominently. A three-issue Jade
mini-series is in the planning stages.

Amazing Heroes #103, page #27:

Amazing Heroes: Bill, I understand
the first few issues of Jonny Quest
have sold phenomenally well.
William Messner-Loebs: So I hear.
But in this business, you can never
tell. I remember Dave Sim telling
me once that because everything is
[pre-purchased] all along the line,
there’s no way of finding out exact-
ly what anyone does with those pur-
chases. Theoretically, 19,900 of the
20,000 Cerebus that were selling
could be in plastic bags in some
[retailer’s] boxes, accumulating dust.
I always think about that whenever
we talk about sales figures, because
you really don’t know what’s hap-
pening. But, so far, it looks real
good for Jonny. Certainly I’ve sold
almost as many Jonny Quest # 1 in
one four-day period as I sold of the
first ten issues of Journey. I wonder
what that means.
AH: I assume you’re happy with the
success of the book?
Messner-Loebs: Yeah. It was a
totally different thing to be working
with somebody else’s characters and
trying to bring them to life and bring
something of my own experience to
them, to walk that fine line between
paying homage to an old television
series and just mummifying it.
AH: Did you like the old Jonny
Quest show?
Messner-Loebs: Not much.
[Laughter] I came along at the
wrong time. Almost anybody who
is considered to be nostalgia bait for
it was about 11 when they saw it,
which is about the same age as
Jonny was supposed to be. I was 17
-a very critical and very animation-
conscious 17-so I was never able
to get past the limited nature of the
animation. Also, I was never able to
get past the disappointment left over
from the almost unspeakably heavy
Hanna-Barbara hype that accompa-
nied the show. I took that very
seriously when I was 17, also.

Heidi MacDonald writes in Amazing Heroes #119, page #69:

Bill Loebs is pretty incredible
when you think about it. Look how
bleak the picture is: a spin-off of a
20-year-old cult kid’s cartoon show,
yet another licensed property, and
one that doesn’t even have a steady
artist…you’d expect this to be tol-
erably dopey, at the very best. But
picking Bill Loebs to write this book
has to be one of the smartest moves
that Comico has ever made. We all
know Journey was a fascinating,
magnificent bastion of naturalism
and human drama in the sea of slug-
fests, and we knew that Loebs was
a good writer, but who could have
guessed that he’d turn this spin-off
into a completely entertaining com-
ic, full of allusions to all manner of
High and Low culture, and recall-
ing nothing so much as the Golden
Years of children’s comics?
Loebs’s Quest stories all have one
silly element each, (viz. the mystery
object which everyone was after in
issues #5-7) but he knows exactly
how silly they are, and exactly how
to push each element just far enough
to be entertaining without being
ludicrous. (It’s very much like what
Carl Barks used to do in his long
Uncle Scrooge epics.)
Likewise, despite the somewhat,
um, meandering pacing to which
Journey was often prone, Jonny
Quest proves that Loebs is one of the
few comics writers who can tell
satisfying stories, complete in each
issue, stories which have beginnings,
middles, ends, characters, and even
a theme or two. In literary circles
this is known as writing. In comics
it’s known as a miracle.
For instance, take the Loebs-Ken
Steacy story in #8, “The Curse of
X-7.” Observe first Steacy’s brilli-
antly lurid cover. Hadji, Dr. Quest,
Race, even…(gasp!!) Bandit…
hanged by their necks. Shocking
stuff. Now admittedly, if I saw this
on the cover of, oh, say, The X-Men
I’d have to stifle a yawn. But here,
it’s a wee bit startling.
Inside Loebs plays havoc with one
of the oldest tricks in the book-is
it a dream or not? First we see Jonny
a man of 30 or so, teaching his
science class. Within a few pages,
Bandit has died of an old age, and
Race and Dr. Quest have been mur-
dered by X-7, a robot villain of
dreadful aspect. Then we learn that
his flash-forward is really a dream
flashback, of Jon ten years later, now
seeking a bitter vengeance against
X-7. Suddenly we find out this too
is a flashback from an even older
Jonny, and this turns out to be a final
flashback of a very aged Jonny, es-
tranged from Hadji, even more lost
in his vengeance trip, and still
searching for X-7.
It’s all played out in a perfectly
eerie fashion. Steacy’s angular and
idiosyncratic art sets a surreal tone,
keeping the reader off-balance as to
just what the heck is real here. Of
course, on page 22 we find out that
the real (present day, young) Jonny
was dreaming all these dreams
within dreams, brought on by a tank
full of poisonous insecticide—an
insecticide known as X-7.
On the surface, this could be any
stupid super-hero book—we have a
killer robot, a disastrous vendetta,
a furturistic society, a “Hey it was
all a dream!” ending. But Loebs
uses these overfamiliar elements
masterfully. He gives his stories
contexts and motivations. Notice
such details the older Hadji’s asce-
ticism, or “The Race Bannon Socie-
ty,” a combination of the John Birch
Society and the KGB which snoops
into people’s lives under the pretext
of searching for X-7. It’s a rich con-
cept, and yet one just thrown out in
passing.
The next issue, “A Fire In Green”
Meadows” is just as heady, recall-
ing, in a playful way, both William
Inge and Hayley Mills in its small
town setting. Jezebel Jade’s arrival
in the peaceful town of Green Mea-
dows could spell trouble a la Picnic
or even The Music Man, but when
the gang gets involved with a mys-
terious panther haunting the out-
skirts of town, it reminds me of a
Mills Disney vehicle from the early
60’s. (Damn, these are weird com-
parisons, and they’ve all got the
genders wrong, ‘cuz Jezebel is Wil-
liam Holden and Jonny is Hayley.
Oh well.) Of course, there’s a
pseudo-scientific McGuffin-an
enzyme that turns garbage to
energy—a lost treasure, childhood
friendship, dark secrets from
people’s pasts coming back to haunt
them, and all stirred together into a
hokey but tasty brew.
On the artistic end of things,
Quest is first-rate all the way.
Steacy’s was a standout for flashi-
ness, but the dependable craftsman-
ship of Murphy Anderson in #9 and
Dan Spiegle in #7, is a real pleasure
too. Even artists whose work I usu-
ally have problems with-Mitch
Schauer and Tom Yeates-turn in
sterling jobs. Of course Doug
Wildey’s appearances are the su-
preme treats. All of the artists in the
book take on a deliberately flat, very
objective style—anyone who tries to
give Race’s shock of white hair any
kind of ruffling or volume is mak-
ing a serious mistake—which works
beautifully with Loebs’s straightfor-
ward storytelling. Marc Hempel and
Mark Wheatley are an excellent
choice for regular artists, as their
work in #3 has a blend of objectiv-
ity and stylization.
Jonny, Dr. Quest, race, and Hadji
are far from being rounded charac-
ters in any sense of the word, but
they fill their stereotypical roles to
the utmost. Loebs has also made the
most of the supporting cast from the
animated series—Dr. Zin makes a
dandy villain, and in a few issues
Loebs has turned Jezebel Jade into
one of comics’ premier femmes fa-
tales—and the only one who looks
ravishing in a snood. (Even I must
tip my cap to Dave Stevens’s cover
of #5.) And what can you say about
Bandit, aside from the fact that he’s
corny, and he’s adorable.
On paper, there’s no way Jonny
Quest should be as good as it is. A
great deal of it can only be described
as being hokey, and yet Loebs and
friends make it work. It’s good clean
fun, totally American to the core, as
the Flaming Carrot might say. Like
Mister X, this is a class act, with
first rate coloring and covers. Com-
ico’s put together a damn fine
package. You really get your
money’s worth with this one.

Heidi MacDonald is right as usual.

It looks like Jonny Quest got plenty of attention at the time — which surprises me a bit, because Comico wasn’t able to get any press for their Robotech series. But of course, Japanese animation hadn’t really taken off in comics circles at the time (I mean, compared to what it would be ten years later).

Andy Mangels writes in Amazing Heroes #137, page #87:

Jonny Quest #22, ‘Vantage Point’;

I was not excited to get this book . . . at
first. I kind of flip through Jonny
Quest when it comes into my store,
to see if there’s anything interesting
that catches my eye. So far nothing
has, because I haven’t read a single
issue yet.
I remember (vaguely) the Jonny
Quest cartoon show from my younger
days, and I did kind of like it then,
although it did seem a little weird at
times. My favorite was Race Bannon.
I absolutely despised Hadji. Didn’t
think too much of Bandit the dog
either. So, I settled down on the
carpeted floor of my office and began
to read Jonny Quest, fairly certain I
would not be entertained.
The story begins as Dr. Quest is
installing a camera in his lab, which
will record everything in its sight for
one full week and etch it onto a disk.
This disk and viewer will then be
launched into space for a thousand
years, in the most ambitious time
capsule project yet. Although every-
one at first acts up in front of the
camera, Dr. Quest advises them that
they will soon forget it’s there. In time,
they do.
What follows is an entire story told.
from one single point of view: that of
a stationary camera. A camera only
records exactly what is shown, leaving
nothing to the imagination, nor pro-
viding any other points of view. The
issue is what the camera records over
the course of the week. Dr. Quest
finds himself much too busy and
unorganized, and decides to hire a
secretary. Unfortunately, all of his
prospectives employees are frightened
off at the idea of working with dino-
saurs werewolves, cult attacks, small
arms, and hovercraft! When a secre-
tary is found, Quest finds himself
embroiled in a search for a missing
father, battles with an adopted cat,
mixed-up appointments, and a mad
scientist who thinks Quest has turned
the world against him.
I found myself chuckling many
times during my reading of the issue,
which is something I rarely do when
reading a comic. it was the classic no
win situation for Quest; every time
something seemed solved along came
five other things to complicate mat-
ters. The ending is not quite up to the
rest of the book, but seems predictable
given what has been done before in the
story. My only disappointment with
the story was that it seemed astonish-
ing that such a historical recording
would be so casually treated, but this
is comics, and the motivations do
completely fit into the Jonny Quest
structure as I recall it. I can forgive
that one nitpick, given the highly
enjoyable quality of the book. This is
great family fare, fun for adults and
children alike.
Bill Loeb’s writing is funny, and the
characters are fully fleshed out (even
the incidental ones). His dialogue fits
the way the characters look, and tells
us exactly what we need to know
about that character. The art is com-
petently cartoony, although I’m not
ultra-wild about Hempel and Wheat-
ley’s art style. It suits Jonny Quest
well, interestingly enough looking
better in black and white than in color.
This is not to say that the coloring is
bad (it’s usually well done), but to say
that the art does not seem to be drawn
for color. By the way, there is a great
appearance by a TinTinesque mad
scientist in here, that no TinTin fan
should be without.
I was pleasantly surprised with Jon-
ny Quest, although I can’t really say
I’m going to follow it in the future. I
will do more than flip through future
issues though. Give it a try.
Grade: Mint

Comics Interview #73, page #26:

SCOTT McCLOUD: JONNY QUEST
seems to be quite a special book to a lot of
people. It attracted some big names.
What do you think its special appeal was?
BILL LOEBS: Well, that’s a good ques-
tion. I think largely its appeal was
chronological. You tend to find it more
appealing the younger you were when it
first came on. I was, I guess, in my late
teens when it came on, so I tended to
notice more of its problems. I looked at
it a little more so I tended to notice more
of its problems. I looked at it a little more
technically, in terms of animation and that
sort of thing, than a lot of people seem to
have. And I also think that a lot of the ap-
peal is, even though the kids are treated
like kids and the dog is treated like a dog
– in that no one is particularly precocious
– they are treated as adult members of
the expedition. There’s none of this,
“Gosh, these are ten-year-old kids. We
should leave them at home and go have
the adventure, Race.”
SCOTT: It’s not as condescending as
some other things.
BILL: Yeah. I think there’s a lot of that.
That was something that struck me when
I read the original TOM SWIFT books
also, where even though his father was an
inventor – theoretically pretty clever –
his father was invariably wrong. Tom was
always coming up with things and his
father was invariably wrong. Tom was
always coming up with things and his
father would end up, “Oh, you were right,
Tom. This was just the perfect time to in-
vent an atomic tank.”
SCOTT: . That’s a very ’80s attitude isn’t
it? We’ve seen that a lot in the cinema
recently.
BILL: Yeah, usually with authority
figures that are somehow abstracted once
or twice from being actual parents.
SCOTT: Right. A guardian or an uncle.
BILL: Yeah. As a matter of fact I was
reading a book which was analyzing old
fairy tales in terms of Freudian symbols,
and it said that the reason that you had all
of these evil step-mothers was not that
there were more step-mothers back then
than now, but that it’s a way of hating your
own mother without having to actually
deal with hating your own mother. That’s
also the reason that the witches traditional-
ly have a hood thrown over their features.
They’re really hiding features that you
don’t want to see because it would be too
traumatic to have to realize that that’s who
you’re hating.
SCOTT: So you think on a milder level
that that kind of surrogate character was
showing up in JONNY QUEST?
BILL: Well, yeah.
SCOTT: Obviously not with his…
BILL: We’re actually talking about the
sort of youth exploitation films where the
young people trash the university
presidents or the girlfriend’s father or
something like that — real obvious
avoiding of trashing your own parents.
One of the really neat things about RISKY
BUSINESS, one of the things that makes
it something more than just exploitation,
was that it’s actually dealing with saying
this out loud. The more direct you are the
more it approaches art, even if it’s about
things that may seem exploitative.
SCOTT: Well, getting back to JONNY
QUEST before he gets away…
(Laughter) How was your working relation-
ship with TaftEntertainment? Did you sub-
mit works in progress to them for
approval?
BILL: Yes. Every step along the way is
submitted, not by me but by Diana
Schutz, who acts sort of like a clearing
house for all of this massive amount of in-
formation that goes through.
SCOTT: How deeply involved are they
with the actual production of the stories
and whatnot?
BILL: Well, they haven’t been at all in-
volved up to now except in being real in-
terested. What I essentially did was work
up twelve story ideas and submitted them
and they liked them all, and I submitted
my first script and they liked that one, and
so forth and so on.

Comics Scene Volume 2 #1, page #57:

One of the most welcome revivals of
the 1980s has to be Jonny Quest. A
prime-time animated adventure
show which aired for only one season in
1964, Jonny Quest was a boy’s adventure
book come to life. It featured intelligent
characterizations, fantastic plots, a stir-
ring jazz theme and, although a ratings
disappointment, it has attained cult status
among aficionados of TV animation.
Twenty years later, the children who
thrilled to Jonny Quest are now adults,
and the great JQ revival is in full swing.
Last year, Comico launched its Jonny
Quest comic book, written by William
Messner-Loebs and drawn, so far, by a
battery of talents including Steve Rude,
Wendy Pini, Al Williamson, Dan Spiegle
and many others. Last fall, Hanna-
Barbera aired new Quest episodes as part
of their Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera
syndicated show.
The man who created the series, il-
lustrator Doug Wildey, greets this revival
with a certain detached amusement.
“I hate to blow anybody’s personal illu-
sions out of the water,” he says today,
“but I didn’t think that Jonny Quest was a
very good show.”

Heh heh.

Amazing Heroes #159, page #79:

Jonny, We Hardly Knew Ye Lad
What’s this I hear that as of issue 31
Jonny Quest by Loebs, Hampel and
Wheatley will be discontinued. What
was it’s drawback, poor sales? Had it
ever occurred to them that maybe their
story renditions to the character
weren’t quite up to the level as that of
the founding cartoon. I mean that the
originators went all out to base actual
scientific research around each epi-
sode, stories drawn from evidence of
existing information that made the
stories somewhat believable! Super-
sonic jets, lazers, hydrofoils, moni-
tored walkie-talkies, flying back-
packs, etc…etc!
The best that Comico put out were
the issues based on the “classic”
Jonny Quest television cartoon epi-
sodes, the one’s illustrated by the
genius behind the character, Doug
Wildey. Now if Comico had continued
to bring those episodes to comics form
sales may have generated positive. I
for one would like to see Alex Toth
illustrate three of his favorite episodes
to the series, or maybe if they would
put out a bio-formated 200 page book
about the conception of the original
Jonny Quest series by Hanna-Barbera
with drawings and photos and vital
information, now that would be some
book for all us Quest enthusiasts to
have in our library. How about it?

Arena Magazine #4, page #27:

Top 10 Comics No Longer Being Published
by Jerry Smith

[…]

10. Jonny Quest — I loved the
cartoon as a kid, I loved the
comic book as an adult. This is
where I first discovered the work
of William Messner-Loebs, one
of the finest writers of current
comics. Messner-Loebs took the
concept of the cartoon and to-
tally fleshed out the characters.
He made Professor Quest, Race,
Jonny, Hadji, and even Bandit
three-dimensional, enjoyable
characters. So many of his sto-
ries on JQ will stick with me for
the rest of my life: the ghost story
with references to all kinds of
writers and classic stories hid-
den in the dialogue, the origin of
Hadji, the Bandit solostory where
we see how much the dog loves
his friend Jonny, I could go on
and on about Messner-Loebs’
touching scripts. This is a much
missed book.

OK, that’s enough.

This series has apparently never been reprinted? That’s kinda surprising, isn’t it? But here’s some reviews from the internet:

Overall, Jonny Quest #13 by Messner-Loebs, Infantino, Kubert, and Pinaha is an enjoyable ghost story utilizing key elements of the cartoon’s characters and story elements. It was a favorite when I was a kid and I find it largely holds up even now. The artwork from Infantino and Kubert alone is worth a look.

Here’s another:

Let me admit right here and now that I thoroughly enjoyed Jonny Quest. Messner-Loebs’ story was engaging, with thoughtful character development and just the right amount of humor and action.

Ditto:

Messner-Loebs shows us again what a solid writer he is and how much he understands this world and these characters. Everyone is pitch perfect and feels like they’ve come right out of the show.

OK, I’m out. What’s up next? I hope it’s something shorter… OK, Ginger Fox.. but then there’s Justice Machine! Man, Comico published a lot of long-running series in their early years. But that’s changing drastically in 1987.