"...An infernal machine with a worker on either end." Buck Rogers in the 25th Century#1-4

As a publisher, Hermes Press are best known for the collections of reprints they maintain, such as their volumes of Buck Rogers and the Phantom comic strip collections. However, despite their minute experience in telling newly-published tales, I took interest in their recent 4-issue Buck Rogers series because while they may be novices - writer/artist Howard Chaykin has most certainly been around the block a few times.

Most of my knowledge about Buck comes from the 1970s television series, but Chaykin departs from all previous depictions of the character/property, instead propping up the character in a story first-time readers can follow. He doesn't begin the story with Buck's origin as a time-displaced 20th century man, however - it comes up later in the story, but this is not Buck Rogers Begins, to phrase a coin. It's almost a problem to be acquainted with Buck's history - I know enough to recognize Black Barney as a major antagonist from the comic strips, but Chaykin gives him only a minor role before swiftly killing him off.

There's a trend in popular culture when bringing back characters from previous eras to explore how "backward" (for want of a better term) said characters are when set against our "enlightened" present selves; it's cropped up in products like J. Michael Straczynski's the Twelve and Mark Millar's the Ultimates. Buck Rogers is different in that while Buck is a man from the first half of the 20th century, the people he interacts with are from the 25th century - thus, there's no ego to be had in demonstrating how we're more evolved than he.

Rather, the 25th century Chaykin develops has de-evolved! With much of the Earth depopulated, the remaining factions have formed rigid dogmas to demonize outsiders and thus perpetuate their never-ending warfare. In this scenario, the post-WW I Buck Rogers - a man disillusioned by the so-called "Great War" - is uniquely skeptical about prolonging the fighting and seeking to annihilate his supposed "enemies." While Buck can hold his own in a fight, he really wants the war to end; c'est voila: the 20th century man is more enlightened than latter-day folk!

Chaykin's art has reached a point where you know pretty well what to expect; some find his current style distasteful, others will still give him rope. I wasn't too bothered by the art, instead finding myself constantly distracted by the word balloons. Look at the tiny tails in the panel above! How is the reader supposed to tell which character is speaking when the tails are barely visible and don't point to the speaker? Also, issue#4 mistakenly printed one page sans dialogue - oops! Chaykin is game in this series, but the word balloons suggest Hermes Press are still figuring out how this "comic book" thing works.

Still, Hermes presents the tale uninterrupted by ads and the back material includes an interview with Chaykin, sketches, pin-ups and scripts - pretty good value, all told.

Buck Rogers: human traffic cone

Buck: "They said I was the new air traffic controller, yet I don't see our ships anywhere..."

Twiki: "Biddy-biddy-biddy; take your glamour photos later, Buck."

Wilma: "Who knew there was so much black ice on the runway? Can't you help me push?"

Free Comic Book Day 2013

Another year's Free Comic Book Day has come and gone; I believe I missed 2012's altogether (I think I was in Africa), so it was nice to venture into the managed chaos of FCBD again; I'm glad I brought a book with me to the comic shop because I spent about 8 minutes waiting in line to get inside the store.

One unusual thing about the five comics I chose this year is none of them are from publishers I'm currently following on a monthly basis.

From Red 5 Comics comes Atomic Robo/Bodie Troll, with an original Atomic Robo story by Brian Clevinger & Scott Wegener and a preview of Bodie Troll#1 by Jay Fosgitt. Up until last year I had been a regular follower of Atomic Robo, but I reached a point where I felt the series' stories had become too familiar. This tale, in which Atomic Robo fights a robot, does nothing to change my opinion. Still, for people who haven't tested Atomic Robo before, perhaps it'll be to their liking. The real surprise was the Bodie Troll preview: it's the story of an ADHD troll who wants desperately to be fearsome, but is cursed by his inate cuteness. The jokes throughout the story are well presented (such as news stories being presented via the medium of puppet shows), it's clear Fosgitt has put a lot of effort into finding his voice for the story; I'm interested enough to buy the full comic book when it arrives.

Hermes Press published Buck Rogers 25th Century A.D., featuring two linked stories from 1936-37, meant to advertise their Buck Rogers comic strip collections. Unfortunately, unlike most of the comic strip collections I've purchased, the pages don't identify when each strip originally appeared. I'm not particularly interested in Buck Rogers (if anything, I like Flash Gordon), but these strips were diverting; I got a huge laugh from the sequence above, where in the first panel Buck is assigned his first mission for the American Defense Force to see if an enemy fleet is arriving; flash ahead to the subsequent panel wherein Buck is being blasted out of the sky: "It's the Enemy all right!"

Bonus features in this book include reprints of the first few days of the Buck Rogers strip and pictures of vintage Buck Rogers memorabilia. Finally, there's an ad for a forthcoming Buck Rogers series by Howard Victor Chaykin. Although Chaykin has a bit of science fiction in his docket, I was skeptical about him tackling Buck Rogers at this point in time. Having seen the ads, I'm actually reasonably interested in checking out the product.

Similarly, Fantagraphics offered Hal Foster's Prince Valiant, collecting a series of strips from circa 1949. As with the Buck Rogers book, this is advertising a collection of the comic strips but the original publishing dates of the strips are not provided - in fact, even the introduction omits mention of when they first appeared. I've never warmed up to Prince Valiant, which was told in a fashion nearer to that of an illustrated novel rather than a comic book; there are no speech balloons and seldom any sequential action. Still, Foster's art is admirable.

Debuting a brand-new series is Oni Press with the Strangers#1 by Chris Roberson and Scott Kowalchuk. I'm afraid I haven't read much work by Roberson - my favourite thing he wrote was his statement about leaving DC Comics - it influenced my own decision to leave Marvel Comics. Sadly, I haven't been interested in Roberson's stories as of yet. The art by Kowalchuk is evocative of Bruce Timm/Mike Mignola. The series is set in the 1960s and follows a mysterious trio of operatives called "the Strangers" who possess superhuman powers. It doesn't focus on plot or character, but is instead mostly action - which is kind of refreshing in an age where most super hero books are ashamed to attempt an action scene (because so few of today's artists can render one effectively). There's not much to say in terms of the character or plot, but it's told with considerable skill - this might be one to watch.

Finally, New England Comics presented the Tick with an all-new story by Jeff McClelland & Duane Redhead, with two short back-up tales. Strangely, although I enjoyed the Tick's 1990s animated series, the only Tick comics I own are the various Free Comic Book Day editions. This was a decent enough tale where the Tick's sidekick Arthur is badly sunburned on the beach, but must come to the rescue of the Tick and their friends when lobster-men invade the surface world. As soon as the lobster-men appear, it becomes clear Arthur will be the one to resolve the problem, but it's told with a lot of charm. The brief back-up tales are also fun.

Free Comic Book Day is over; starting tomorrow, we have to pay for them again.