Sorry I’ve
been away for so long. It’s just that I’ve been having some problems lately.
Thankfully they aren’t work-related, but dietary-related. I, and a lot of
others, recently were forced to consume two things which shouldn’t mix together:
However, now
that I’m recovered, I have my first real review to post for the first time in
several months! Enjoy.
~
One of the
great things you can say about comics that you really can’t say about any other
medium is that there are no ideas that aren’t crazy enough to work (The cover
of Action Comics #1, which started
the whole comics biz rolling, was almost vetoed because the publisher thought
the sight of a man in tights lifting a car was too unbelievable). Agents of Atlas by Jeff Parker and Leonard
Kirk might prove this point better than anything else. Now, conceptually, AOA
may not seem too out of the ordinary; it’s about a group of superheroes who
disbanded years ago getting back together to solve a mystery. But there are two
things that push this particular series into “You gotta be fucking kidding me!
They actually tried that?!!!?”
territory.
One is where
exactly these particular heroes came from and what the impetus behind the
creation of this series was. The leads of Agents of Atlas are all obscure
characters from the 40’s and 50’s who weren’t necessarily superheroes (Or in
two cases, even heroes) or even necessarily recurring characters that had been
grouped together for an old issue of What
If? (from 1978) to serve as members of an alternate universe Avengers team,
and barring cameos during several crossover events involving alternate realities, had never been used since.
And then they
got their own prestige format limited series with lots of hype, a computer game
available on the company website that offered clues to the mystery, and even
‘treasure hunts’ at several comic shops.
Let me repeat
that, minor characters from the 50’s, most of them not even superheroes, whose
first (and last) big appearance had been in an out-of-continuity story from the late 70s, were suddenly given
their own mini-series with top talent and heavy promotion that even ‘events’
like Civil War never had. How could
something like that get pitched, let alone made? Let alone given that much
hype? Forget things like One More Day
and Superior Spider-Man; green
lighting this series must surely count as the ballsiest move Marvel has made in
the past decade.
But here’s
the second thing about Agents of Atlas
that truly makes it the supreme example of seemingly insane concepts succeeding
in comics that could succeed in no other medium; it’s actually a very, very good series.
Now I’m not
saying Agents of Atlas is some
modern classic or genre-redefining masterpiece like Watchmen, in fact, based off of the sporadic appearances since then
of the characters, I’d say it probably underperformed in Marvel’s eyes, and
based off of the general dismissal most mainstream comics fans have had towards
the series (the word ‘boring’ is flung around a lot) I’d actually call it
underrated. But for an idea that has ‘disaster’ written all over it, AOA
succeeds astonishingly well, and as a high-flying adventure, succeeds better at
capturing a Silver Age feel of innocent fun better than almost anything I can
think of. For older comics fans who want to read something a bit more like the
optimistic, fun-filled stories of their youth, this is for you.
Years ago
during the 50’s, Jimmy Woo was a Chinese-American FBI agent who opposed the
forces of The Yellow Claw; a Fu Manchu-type super villain who was head of some
sort of cult (The Claw and Woo were stars of a short-lived 50’s series which
used the Dracula/Fu Manchu format of being named after the villain but focusing
on the heroes opposing him. Of these characters, Woo has had the most
visibility since the 50’s, appearing in Steranko’s Nick Fury run). During one
of the Claw’s more ambitious schemes which involved kidnapping the president,
Woo assembled a team of heroes called the G-Men to aid him in defeating the
Claw. They consisted of Venus the Goddess of Love (who had her own comic in the
late 40’s and early 50’s, which ranged from humor, to romance, to superheroics,
to horror all at the drop of a hat. I’ve read the first Masterwork, and believe
me, it’s craaaazy, and totally deserving of a review here someday), Marvel Boy
(an earth boy who had been raised on Uranus and then returned to fight crime on
earth for two issues of his own comic and several truly awful back-up stories
in Astonishing), Gorilla-Man (A man
transformed into a gorilla by a curse who originally appeared in a one-off
horror story in Men’s Adventures)
and The Human Robot (A killer robot from a one-off horror story in Menace #11, rehabilitated to be a hero.
Rather amusingly, he’s referred to as M11 in this series). Eventually however,
they all went their separate ways, with Woo eventually taking a desk job with
S.H.I.E.L.D.
Flash forward
to modern times, desperate to retain some of his old glory, an aging Woo
undertakes an unauthorized mission to investigate a mysterious organization
called Atlas, which ends with all of his men dead and himself disfigured and in
a coma. However, he then ends up being rescued by the combination of Marvel
Boy, M11 and Gorilla Man (who has been acting as an inside man for the other
two). Marvel Boy rehabilitates Woo to full-health using his alien technology,
but because his machines only remember Woo from the 50’s, they end up restoring
his youth as well. This would be a great thing if not for the fact that it also
wipes out all of Woo’s memories after
the 50’s, so our heroes have to start from scratch trying to solve the mystery
behind the Atlas foundation. Meanwhile, they end up pursued both by
S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Derek Khanata (The narrator of the series, who ends up
becoming both the ‘hostage’ of the group and a de facto member) and the Yellow
Claw, while Venus and Namora (Cousin of Namor the Sub-Mariner) join up. But can
they all trust each other?
How could you hate a team like this?
Obviously,
AOA owes a bit to Watchmen in its
plot about retired superheroes coming together to solve a mystery, with one of
them being a traitor, but it works better here than countless other stories
that have copied Watchmen because,
in essence, Agents has much of the
same going for it in terms of story structure that Watchmen had, mainly being that these characters don’t have the
continuity restraints that bog down established characters and series that try
to imitate it. The lead characters of Agents
are all, to most readers, new characters, some having not appeared since the What If? story, and thus, there’s a
great opportunity to play around with them, just as how the characters in Watchmen were all new (Well okay,
extensively inspired by old Charlton characters, but you get my point). And
after all, since these characters are going to need updating and character
establishing moments anyway, what with this being their first real appearance
in the Marvel Universe (The What If?
story is followed very loosely and presumably it takes place in another
alternate universe), why not have the revelations made here about the heroes be
shocking and bizarre? It really works and manages to feel organic, rather than
all of the other times obscure characters are brought back simply for a “shock”
revelation to be made about them before they get killed off or become evil
(Like that Invaders mini-series
where a bunch of public domain super-heroes were brought back and revealed to
be Nazi sympathizers).
Mostly
though, Agents of Atlas succeeds
because all of the characters are likeable and complex. Just about every
character gets a chance to shine and turns out to not quite be what they seem.
Jimmy Woo is an archetypal spy hero from just about every Cold War thriller
ever (Except for the fact that he’s half-Chinese, of course), but here he has
to deal with the dilemma of being a man out of his time twice over. He peaked
in the 50’s and spent the rest of his life pathetically longing for his glory
days commanding superheroes and battling the Yellow Claw, but upon being
returned to his youthful state and surrounded by all his old friends as he
battles the Yellow Claw once more, he finds he can’t adjust to things any
better and has lost all of the knowledge that came with age; knowledge he
desperately needs. It’s a fascinating
twist on the Rip Van Winkle theme, and also leads to some very funny moments
such as when he realizes how much prices have changed since the 50’s. Venus, apparently
the goddess of love and beauty and whose powers involves making people reject
violence and feel only love, could apparently do all sorts of great things with
her powers, but why doesn’t she? The answer is both frightening and strangely
poignant for a character whose function is basically to be the most
stereotypically girly-girl imaginable. Marvel Boy, who was never much of a
super-hero on earth, came to embrace his adopted alien home world only to be
rejected by them when he chose to return to earth for this latest mission, and
when he finds out that he’s basically being used as a pawn, not belonging to
either world, it drives him almost to madness.
Gorilla-Man is the stand-out though; he has grown so
resigned to his condition that he views everything with a sense of humor and
has even come to embrace his curse (His wife left him when he became a gorilla,
but rather than wish he could be human so they could get back together, he
wishes that she was a gorilla). It’s a pretty stark contrast to his surly,
self-loathing personality seen in the What
If? story, as well as to the character he’s obviously patterned after; Ben
Grimm. He gets many of the book’s funniest lines.
The other
characters aren’t so well-defined, but they work well in context. Khanata is a
cipher, coming from the fictitious African nation of Wakanda (Where blacks are
dominant and which is also the most technologically advanced place on Earth.
Basically, it’s Marvel’s apology for every time they do something that offends
black readers), he’s characterized as a do-no-wrong good guy who is smarter
than everyone else except for the heroes,, who consistently call him a narc.
However, since it’s his eyes who the reader sees the story through as all these
characters are introduced, well; I guess it’s okay for him to be a cipher. After
all, these are some very obscure
characters here and someone needs to be around for exposition to be fed
through. Namora is basically a female version of her cousin, just like the name
implies. Heroic one minute, then going full-on murderous vengeful
super-villain(ess) at the slightest provocation. Namora only had a brief cameo
in the original What If? story and
wasn’t a team member, but this works because, problems aside, she’s a heck of a
lot more interesting than the other member of the team in that story, 3D-Man, a
retcon character whose adventures were set in the 50’s but wasn’t actually
created in that era. The biggest problem with Namora isn’t really her
characterization, but just that she feels somewhat clumsily inserted into the
plot. She’s barely been with the team at all before the inevitable “big fight”
when everyone turns on each other, so her anger at her teammates has less
resonance. As for the Human Robot, well, he’s a robot. Non-speaking, possibly
non-thinking, he’s an enigmatic figure, but like Venus, he has a surprisingly
poignant sub-plot, and the revelation of why exactly he’s called “The Human
Robot” brilliantly turns the Menace
story on its head.
It’s a series
full of twists and turns, and in yet another similarity to Watchmen, it sometimes becomes so complex that text pieces are used
to provide some background (as well as to smooth out a few continuity holes for the few characters
that have been used since the What If? story). I can see why some
readers, raised on Image comics and massive crossovers which are little more
than slug-fests, might find it boring. But patience is a virtue well-worth
having when it comes to this series. Many of the in-jokes are brilliant, such
as references to Little Shop of Horrors, Jurassic Park and Village of the Damned, and several
throw-away sequences which could have made for entertaining stories all on
their own. I do have to admit though that I miss some of the touches the What If? story had, such as all of the
obscure villains cribbed from Atlas’s short-lived 50’s hero revival and horror
comics that popped up as henchmen for the Claw.
The biggest
problem with Agents of Atlas,
however, comes not from pacing, but from the twist.
*SPOILERS*
It turns out
that the Yellow Claw is nothing more than an actor who is a member of a cult
led by a dragon that has been a mentor to various Khans throughout the ages,
and that their purpose was to set up a stereotypical ‘yellow peril’ menace for
Woo to defeat so that he could present a positive image for Asians, and then
become the next Khan under their tutelage after he was rewarded with a position
of power. While on one hand this comes off as an unexpected twist and turns the
title ‘Agents of Atlas” into a fantastically twisted joke, it also makes no
sense. The Claw has been shown engaging in criminal practices in the Marvel
universe for decades without Woo’s intervention, clearly showing him to be more
than just a pawn. Trying to create a positive image for Asians by setting up a
ridiculously stereotypical villain for one to defeat also seems incredibly
counter-intuitive (and as the story points out, it didn’t work since Woo was
never offered a position of power). It may be a thoughtful commentary on the yellow
peril aspects of characters like the Yellow Claw, and stories where the
villains were secretly trying to support the hero are certainly welcome, but it
ultimately comes off as a very forced bid for political correctness and
contradicts decades of continuity. This isn’t a problem for the other
characters in AOA who have never really been used since the 50’s, but Woo and
the Claw have. The attempts to tie in Gorilla-Man’s origin and even Khanata’s
family is also weak.
"Our centuries old scheme goofed. My bad."
Still, Agents is a fun little mystery with very
likeable characters, lots of humor, and it never forgets to have fun and play
around with its concepts. How could you not have fun with a series starring a
Spy, a Spaceman, a Goddess, a Gorilla and a Robot? Comics really would be the
hopelessly negative world critics make them out to be if someone couldn’t wring
fun out of that, and thankfully, Jeff Parker knows how to have that kind of
fun. Kirk also does an admirable job on the art, particularly with little
details such as men’s reactions to Venus, a distorted image of Marvel Boy that
resembles the alien from the movie The
Man from Planet X, or a glance at FBI files showing obscure Timely comics
heroes. I've re-read this book several times and noticed new things.
I also have
to give praises to the people who put together the Hardcover edition collecting
the series. Not only do they include bonus materials such as sketches, creator
interviews, ads, but also reprints of the What
If? story and the first appearances of all the key players. The coloring
leaves something to be desired, but the art thankfully isn’t obscured except
for the Namora story, which looks to have had crappy art anyway. The best of
these stories are Gorilla-Man’s “debut”, which was very clearly the inspiration
for the Frank Frazetta-illustrated story “Werewolf” in Creepy #1. The debut of the Yellow Claw and Jimmy Woo also has some
fantastic Joe Maneely art going for it.
Agents of Atlas may not be everyone’s
cup of tea, but it’s something I personally don’t hesitate to give a full 5/5 to. Even with the ending, because
you see, Hollywood has shown me that the plot twist of a stereotypical Asian
villain being a decoy could have been executed much, much worse:
