Monday, August 17, 2009

Those Smaller Comic Universes Can be Fun

Middle of last week, I picked up a set of Impact Comics' Who's Who online. Impact was the line in the '90s DC set up for the Archie Heroes that are starting to show up in the DC Universe proper these days (the Shield, for example), but who were originally published by Archie Comics back in the Golden Age. I wasn't a big reader of the Impact line back in the day, though I had a couple of first issues that I picked up in those grab bag collections that also account for the Knightfall-era Batman issues I own. I think I eventually passed those Impact issues to Alex, so in a roundabout way they might have made their way back to me, since I'm currently holding onto his collection for him, due to space limitations*.

Still, the idea of a fairly small superhero universe is apparently more appealing to me these days, and the Who's Who seemed a relatively easy way to get caught up. Now, if I'm so inclined I have a decent idea about what might appeal to me. Interestingly, the comics came to me, not as comics, but as a series of sheets collected in a 3-ring binder. Maybe that's one of the ways they were originally released, though I know it was also a 3-issue collection, which I assume were your standard American comics. I don't have a problem with this format; I like to keep stuff in 3-ring binders sometimes anyway, it just surprised me a bit. 

I can't find the name of the person (or persons) who did the bios on the characters, but I'd say they're well done. The one thing that is slightly irritating if you read a lot of them consecutively is the same event is referenced repeatedly, in essentially the same wording. The event that caused the disbanding of the original Crusaders being one such thing. It makes sense in that the event is important to each character whose bio mentions it, and maybe that's par for the course with these sorts of these. I never collected Who's Who or Marvel Handbooks**, so I'm not really up on how it works. 

Still, the writer(s) has fun with it when they can. When describing the skills and abilities of a member of WEB, they're said to 'be well-versed in the handling of small arms, as is absolutely everyone, without fail, in the Impact Universe, which I find vaguely amusing.' I liked that because, as this was one of the last bios, I can attest to the relative accuracy of the statement, and that I was having similar thoughts by the time I reached that point***. 

Also, the writer(s) like to make portentous statements, such as suggesting the next time a hero and villain meet, things will be different, or telling us that a hero knows the answer to a particular mystery, even if they don't realize it. Providing information, and teasing future story arcs, nicely done. 

Plus there are some pretty good artists at work here. Rags Morales, looking a bit simpler in style here than what I typically associate with him. Rich Burchett, who was at some of the past Cape Comic-Cons, and looking at his work here, I'm kicking myself that I didn't swing by his table. Too absorbed in back issue hunting (a problem I'm hoping to have eliminated by next spring). Tom Lyle and Scott Hanna are teamed up on characters related to The Comet, and Mike Parobeck and Paul Fricke are both credited for art on ones connected to The Fly. I think for about ten bucks (and that's with shipping) I'm really happy with what I picked up here. 

* I say they might have because I haven't bothered to check and see if he held onto them.  

** Which given my nerdy, orderly inclinations, kind of surprises me. I guess that by the time I'd think to look for such things, I realized that hard copies would constantly be failing out of date. Characters would have died, or had new love interests, or had a change in powers/costumes/status quo, and what I'd have wouldn't be as useful as a reference material.

*** The other part I liked about it was that 'vaguely amusing' is the sort of phrase I might use, so I wonder if an older me traveled back in time to write these.

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