I'd seen the ads for the E-Man series published through First Comics in some of the GrimJack issues I've got, and we'll get to that next week (E-Man, not GrimJack. GrimJack will be next summer), but that's not where things started.
The first E-Man series, by Cuti and Staton, started in 1973, but was published sporadically (five issues in two years) until '75, when it settled into a bi-monthly schedule for the final five issues. E-Man starts as a sentient energy being that stumbles across a spaceship on its way to Pluto and decides to make friends. He learns the ship is piloted by a giant brain on a mission to test new weapons for some distant space empire, but his added mass throws the ship off-course and it heads towards Earth. The energy being winds up getting trapped in a light bulb of the dressing room of part-time exotic dancer and archeology major Nova Kane, who becomes his first friend.
So it's got a bit of the "strange visitor from another planet" vibe, and unlike Superman, E-Man (who adopts the name Alec Tronn) has to learn about Earth as an adult. Cuti and Staton eventually add a private detective, Michael Mauser, who can get Alec involved in different sorts of trouble than Nova, and brings a different sort of personality to things. Nova's caught between trying to protect Alec and being attracted to him, while Mauser seems more interested in how Alec can help his business. He's also probably trying to make Alec a little less naive.
The comic almost settles into a "monster of the week" format. The Brain is a recurring foe, given his purpose was to test new weapon prototypes, but he's usually in the background until the end of the issue. There's also a wealthy businessman named Boar trying to dominate the world by controlling sources of electricity. But you've also got an issue where Nova goes to the Middle East to study some Egyptian ruins and they end up traveling back in time to learn Egyptians were actually advanced alien species killed out by a flea-borne disease. Which they help identify but somehow has no effect on their timeline.
It feels like Staton is still trying to settle into a style, but it makes for interesting viewing. Sometimes his work looks rougher, less refined, gives it a bit of a wilder energy. Other times it's fairly clean and neat, makes me think there's a bit of Curt Swan influence in it. Maybe not Swan specifically, but artists of that era. I could be off, but I don't feel like I see Neal Adams or Gil Kane in there. Maybe the Adams is there in the perspectives used in the panels. His characters don't have that angular, beady-eyed look I associate with Ditko. Staton's very good at weird stuff already, though. When the monster of the week is an actual monster, he knocks it out of the park, and his character work is highly individual.
I bring up Ditko because one of the other interesting bits of this series is there are usually back-up stories and several of those are by Ditko. A couple of spy features, Commie-smashing and the like, but also of a costumed hero called Killjoy, who beats up criminals, all of whom spend a lot of time crying about how they deserve others' money precisely because they did nothing to earn it. That gets old, very quickly. There's also some early John Byrne work about a robot cabbie called Rog-2000, with stories usually written by Cuti.
Cuti tries to write about topical issues without being too blindingly obvious, or that may just be me looking back on stories written in the '70s about '70s issues without having lived through them. But energy as a commodity that will be desperately needed, and can therefore be hoarded by greedy individuals. Using other locations as places to test destructive weaponry without regard for the locals. There aren't many attempts at humor in the writing, and the ones that do don't really work. The delivery tends to be flat, and Staton's art doesn't really sell it, but that's not what the book is trying for. It's just sort of an earnest book about trying to help other people rather than wallowing in greed, self-doubt, or grief.
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