Author: larsmagne23

Red Dragon (1996) #1 by Brian Azzarello, Tony Akins and others

Scoring a cover by Simon Bisley must have been quite a win for the Comico guys. But… “Comico’s new smash mouth comic”? “1st smash collector’s issue”? I know there’s a band called Smash Mouth, but I didn’t know it was, like, an expression… Oh, it’s a sports term. Never mind.

The editor certainly sounds enthusiastic.

And… Red Dragon is an Elementals spin-off!? I though we were going to get an original concept for once. I can’t say that I remember any Elementals-related character called Red Dragon, though.

Hey! This looks kinda interesting?

Yeah, it’s one of those 90s hyperviolence books.

The artwork looks like a cross between 2000 AD artwork and Japanese comics of the Akira kind, doesn’t it?

But we’re also in the Age of Image.

Yeah, OK, Akins has totally been reading Japanese comics — most of the character designs, layouts and action sequences seem cribbed.

Hyper violence!

So, the plot of the book: Red Dragon stops a… hostage situation. It’s not quite clear why they were hostaging so much, until…

… twist ending! It was all a gummint conspiracy to secure people to do dastardly experiments on! Because the Chinese gummint surely can’t just kidnap a bunch of people willy nilly but have to arrange a huge televised hostage situation where the hostages are then… carried off into a lab instead of being reunited with their families.

On a This Plot Makes Sense scale from one to ten, this scores a “Stop Drinking, Son” rating.

But this book is a lot better than the rest of the dreck that Comico had been publishing over the past few months. It’s very… lively. Even if it’s all copied from Japanese comics.

Wizard Magazine #51, page #24:

Revitalized publisher Comico continues its
resurgence into mainstream comics with Red Dragon,
a superhero book inspired by Hong Kong cinema,
Eastern mysticism, quantum physics and manga.
Red Dragon is the story of the most powerful
being on the planet, a man who is possessed by the
spirit of an ancient Chinese dragon. When the story
begins, he is the secret weapon of communist China.
Once the Dragon realizes he’s been duped and
manipulated by the reds, however, he goes
independent and moves to Hong Kong where he
battles local villains.
The series will be written by Brian Azzarello, with
interior art by Tony Akins (Star Wars: Tales of the
Jedi-The Freedom Nadd Uprising) and covers by
painter Simon Bisley. “Red Dragon is the Chinese
Superman,” said Azzarello. “My hope is that people
who don’t normally buy independents or superhero
comics will give Red Dragon a shot.”
Akins’ art can best be described as a hybrid of
manga and American-style superhero comics.
Red Dragon hits the stands this October with a
cover price of $2.50. Christopher Griffen

Hero Illustrated #22, page #89:

John Woo Meets
Akira
One of the more ‘esoteric’ Elementals
characters will appear totally revamped
this August, courtesy of Brian Azzarello
and Tony Akins. Red Dragon will find
himself cast into a more modern
mold-in fact, one the writer describes
as kind of “Quentin Tarantino meets
Superman and Hunter S. Thompson.”
Appropriately enough, the first issue will
sport a cover by the Gonzo-like Simon
Bisley.
“It’s certainly got a Gonzo sensibility
to it for a superhero book,” Azzarello
says. “The thing’s pretty nuts. [And]
both of us have a real strong affection
for a lot of the Hong Kong movies [like]
John Woo, that type of stuff. We’re
working a lot of that … beautifully
choreographed violence into this book.
That’s also something that I think a lot
of comic fans share with us. But it’s
never really been addressed, I don’t
think, effectively in comics, outside of
manga-which is something that unfor-
tunately a lot of buyers of traditional
mainstream comics don’t see.
They cringe when they hear
‘manga,’ but they’ll eat up the
videos. It’s never really seemed to
translate well in panel-to-panel
storytelling, other than Akira … up
until now with Red Dragon.”
Who?!?
“He’s certainly been a back-
ground character,” Akins admits.
“On one of the first covers I drew
for Comico I remember having to
find his image to put him in the art,
and thought, ‘This was kind of a
cool character. I don’t know what
he does.’
“I found out he does virtually
nothing,” he laughs. “The
Elemental bible is fairly large, but
[a lot of the] characters either got
killed off or were just window
dressing. Brian was asking in the
course of the last two years, ‘If
you had a character, which one
would it be that you would try to
revamp?’ Bloody Mary was one, I
got to redesign her for the
Elementals graphic novel. Before,
it looked like she shopped at T.J.
Maxx. That was her costume. So I
got to do some work with her.
Devil Dog was another one I
would have liked to revamp, but
Red Dragon kept crossing my
mind.”
So just who is this newly defined
character?
“In the Elementals Universe.”
Azzarello says, “he would be the
equivalent of Superman, power-
wise. But he’s not America’s
Superman, he belongs to the Red
Chinese. So he’s controlled by a com-
munist government, and he’s essential-
ly a super soldier. The way we’re
approaching it now is, he’s a man who
has an immense amount of pride and
his pride is what’s blinding him to the
fact that he’s pretty much just an over-
stuffed puppet. And the government just
sort of placates him to keep him in line,
and happy.”
Very Good,
Children-But What
Does It Mean?
As editor in chief, Azzarello
receives the task of summing up the
overall focus of Comico’s return.
“What we’ve been really attempting to
do-and I think we’ve pulled it off-is
create some books that are exciting
to read, and when people are done
reading them, they’ll smile and they’ll
look forward to reading the next
issue. I hope.” ▲

Overstreet’s FAN #1, page #75:

What Is Red Dragon? Well on the surface it’s a
super hero book. This surface, however, is a web that
covers a hyperkinetic amalgamation, complete with
philosophical overtones, Eastern mysticism, and
quantum physics. Throw in the extremes of Quentin
Tarantino, the weirdness of David Lynch, the mayhem
of Hong Kong cinema, the skewed sensibilities of
Hunter S. Thompson, and the adrenaline rush of the
arcade action games, and you’ve got one seamless
whole that Comico describes as “Smash Mouth
Comics.”
“Red Dragon is a super hero. In fact, [he’s] the
most immensely powerful being on the planet. He’s
also under the control of the Red Chinese, which
means he works for what we may not consider to be
the good guys,” states series writer Brian Azzarello.
“So, we’ve got this superman who doesn’t share your
values, and who may be misdirected as far as his
abilities go. It’s like trying to keep a nuclear bomb
happy. You’d never want it to find out the real extent
of what it can do, because if this bomb realized how
powerful it was, it may use this power against you.
Keep it happy and distracted, and never, never, never
let it find out it can blow the place to kingdom
come. Did 1 mention he’s also a reincarnated dragon
spirit?
ATHE CHRYSALIS
These books only comprise Comico’s first wave.
“What we’re out to do initially is establish our place
in the comic market,” comments Allen. “With these
first titles leading the charge, we feel we’re in good
hands. Good hands, holding big guns!”
As for the future, Comico has a number of projects
along in development which will expand and diversify
the company’s title line. Look for the collectable card
game Chrysalis: Born of the Supernature, of
which a very limited number of prototype cards will
be available this June. Comico promises to turn up
the heat this summer with plenty of cool promotions
as well.
Adds an enthusiastic Allen, “I know everybody
involved are as proud of these titles as I am. We’ve
really created something to get excited about. Watch
out comic fans, get ready, Comico’s back!”

Sure, sure… in other news, I only have two more posts in this blog series to do, because Comico went under again a couple months after Red Dragon was published.

I could find no reviews of this book.

Elementals: The Vampire’s Revenge (1996) #1-2 by Bill Willingham, Kelly McQuain, Neil E. Trais, Marat Mychaels and others

Heh, if I had a dollar for every time the post-bankruptcy Comico editorials promised that they were now going to release comics on time, I’d have… enough money for a couple of ice-creams at least.

Anyway, Willingham is credited with “story” on this series, which is pretty unusual. My guess would be that this means that Comico cribbed this series from the “bible” that Willingham wrote for them when he got out of his contract with Comico. But that may be totally wrong, and perhaps he really wrote this? (There’s nobody credited with “script” or anything like that on this…)

But what’s it all about? Yes, the Elementals had killed a bunch of vampires, and they’re now at a vampire tribunal to answer for their crimes. But… didn’t this already happen in the main Elementals series? Or perhaps the tribunal had just started when Comico went on hiatus, and these are the issues that were supposed to cover that?

No, that can’t be right… they were in the middle of the Oblivion War when that happened.

OK, I can’t be bothered to go back and do research — I’m just saying that this is a confusing series to be releasing at this point.

The artwork is pretty professional, but I’m wondering what they were using as reference material!

Oh, OK, so the plot here is that Ratman is going to have to travel all over the world to gather four magical objects to vanquish the vampire tribunal? Well, that’s a classic plot for sure.

Oh oh oh! Back before Comico went on hiatus, there was a Ratman mini-series promised, written by Bill Willingham! This must be that mini-series, just rebranded! OK, so now it makes a bit more sense.

Heh, the second issue mistakenly has the inside front cover from Elementals: How The War Was Won. Well, you can’t pay attention to all these details.

But anyway, how is this mini-series? Besides being confused, it’s kinda boring.

I guess Willingham really did write this book?

And this is how it ends. There was supposed to be four issues, but Comico went AWOL without saying anything once again in August 1996, so the rest of the series was never published.

This series got zero press at the time. Zilch. And I can find nobody talking about this series on the intertubes, either, so I guess it’s one of those books that have been lost in time, and for good reasons.

Elementals: How the War Was Won (1996) #1-2 by Jack Herman, Tony Daniel and others

Heh. “Art by ‘SPAWN’ artist Tony Daniel” on the cover. The story here is (if I understand things correctly) that during the years Comico went on a hiatus, publisher Andrew Rev continued getting Elementals comics produced. In an interview, Daniel explained what the setup — he got scripts, drew the pages, sent them in and got paid — but since nothing was actually published, it apparently felt a bit like working in a void.

So when he got the opportunity to jump ship to Image, he took it immediately, so his Spawn comics (drawn in a more Image-like style) were published before his Elementals comics.

And… this comic, man. OK, before Comico’s hiatus, Bill Willingham had been gearing up for years for “The Oblivion War”. Then when Comico returned, all the Elementals books took place after the war had been finished, and I started to assume that I had just completely blanked on everything (not unlikely when it comes to these comic books) and that the Oblivion War had already been completed. I’d just forgotten.

But instead the explanation appears to be something completely different: After returning from the hiatus, apparently Comico thought it would be better to publish comics that took place after the end of the war, so that new readers could get some good jumping on #1s (instead of having the new #1 being the end of a long storyline).

So it appears (I use that word a lot here because I can’t actually find anybody from Comico saying this directly) that they just shelved publishing the issues that were going to be the end of the original Elementals v2 series… but they had indeed been made. And now they’re being published as a four issue mini-series.

I guess this approach makes sense? But also: WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING

So this would appear to have originally have been planned as Elementals v2 #27:

As indeed this 1990 ad says.

So if you haven’t been engrossed in the Elementals storyline, this issue probably wouldn’t make that much sense to you. We’re not really told (in story) who these people are, or who they’re fighting — I’d forgotten that the woman in purple is the villain, for instance…

Heh, there was going to be an Oblivion II mini-series? This never happened.

The evil Oblivion evil guys explain their dastardly plot to entrap Monolith…

… but forget that he has ears and can easily kill them and stuff. Oops! Those evil hench guys sure are stupid, eh? Eh? EH!?

Such drama! But… how did he manage to cut off his lower half in that doorway without cutting off his own arm? His hand is clearly on his ass…

HEY! I FOUND A LOGICAL INCONSISTENCY IN THIS ELEMENTALS ISSUE DO I GET A PRIZE WHOOO

War is hell! But involves a lot of people lounging around in porn poses, though.

Eeek! Well, he survived that portal incident…

Lady Bathory’s series never happened…

The Elementals vs. The Charnal Priests (!) series never happened… But I wonder whether that, too, had been made, and is still in Rev’s archives, unpublished?

So this issue first sorta ends with a lead-in to the aforementioned mini-series…

… and then ends for real in this kinda mysterious way. But there were going to be four more issues — both presumably already made, but they remain unpublished.

But! If you call Andrew Rev, he might license you the rights! Elementals™, Cold Blooded™ (never heard of) and many more. “Proven Wide-Audience Market Appeal”! Wow! Call him now!

These two issues aren’t all that bad, really. If they had been published as #27 and #28, as originally planned, there wouldn’t have been much to say about them… and I still don’t, I guess? As super hero war issues go, they’re… there.

But as a mini-series, they’re pretty weird.

This series got no publicity at the time, apparently, and nobody has written about it afterwards either, according to Google.

Elementals Swimsuit Spectacular 1996 (1996) by a whole bunch of people

Yes, it’s yet another Elementals special.

It’s a bunch of pinups by all the people above.

And… it’s not as bad as the other Elementals specials, really. There’s some interesting artwork here.

Some of it’s rather odd for a book that’s designed to appeal to horny teenagers, I must say.

But there’s more traditional stuff in here… but even that is often pretty odd. Not just the very strange anatomies depicted, but also just the general vibe.

Heh, “Elementals Babes” fortunately never actually happened.

Did this dice game ever happen? I dunno.

Anyway, I’d say that this is the best of the Elementals Sexy/Lingerie/Swimsuit specials? It’s so wonky that it becomes interesting.

Heh, this was among the last things Comico published. After being on a hiatus, they tried to get started again in 1995. But then foundered again before making a last ditch attempt the summer of 1996:

So they pumped out seven new titles over the summer, and then went silent again until a year later, when they dribbled out a final Elementals Sex Special.

I could find no reviews of this book anywhere.

You can pick up copies pretty cheaply, if you should feel the urge.