When Tim Truman stepped away from being penciler on GrimJack, it was to work on his own series, Scout. Set in, at that time, the future of 1999, where the United States is an isolated, resource-depleted, impoverished nation, Scout followed Emanuel Santana, an Apache taken from his home, trained in the military, who eventually went AWOL, only to reappear on a quest to kill four dangerous monsters, plus their master, that had taken the form of humans and were doing great harm. As the "Master" was the President of the United States, Santana's actions did not go unnoticed or without larger repercussions.
The first six of the twenty-four issues are Santana's quest. Not one he wanted, but one he was chosen for and can't escape. I assume if he tried, the dreams and "temporal manifestations" would just keep getting worse until he was driven entirely mad, so he does the work. And he helps some people, and hurts others. The power he needs requires a sacrifice - of someone else. That doesn't endear him to people, nor does it endear him to himself. Truman draws Santana as lean, with a lined face and armed for bear. A bit of roughness to the lines like Joe Kubert, that suggests someone that has had almost everything soft about them worn away until only the bone and gristle are left.
But Santana's not unfeeling, and the weight of all this nearly pushes him to commit suicide. But, ultimately, he finishes his quest. Kills the monsters and their Master. And then, heads off into the wilderness, as though he will just be able to live an ordinary, peaceful life after everything. The red bandana he wore like a mask is turned into a headband instead. He's not some masked vigilante hero, he's just a guy.
The remaining three-quarters of the series is Santana being disabused of that notion. His actions have put all sorts of things in motion he couldn't have guessed at. Vice-President Carver was hooked on drugs to keep her out of the way once she got Grail the woman vote, but now she's President. And if she wants to be more than a puppet of Grail's former spiritual advisor, Bill Loper, she's got to get clean and pull herself together. Which draws in an old acquaintance of Santana's, Rosa Winter. Initially ordered to catch Santana, she got shifted to bodyguard detail for Carver in time to avoid getting killed when Santana cut his way to Grail. Carver grows dependent on her, and eventually in love with her.
That never goes anywhere, but Winter's position of trust means she keeps ending up in the middle of things as they escalate. Either because Carver trusts her, or because Loper wants her away from Carver. So when a young man tortured and blinded because of Scout becomes a messianic figure who seizes control of an old nuclear missile facility, Winter's tasked with ousting them. And she hunts Scout down for the purpose. Eventually, Truman escalates things to a full-blown war between the U.S. and Communist Mexico, among others (including Beau Smith stand-in Beau LaDuke.) This after Scout is captured and imprisoned in a psychiatric hospital, where he meets a man named Monday.
Truman (with Flint Henry as artist) had been publishing back-up stories about Monday: the Eliminator for several issues by that point, but it wasn't entirely clear it was in the same, particular crappy future. Especially since Monday had apparently been alive since at least the time of Roman legions, fighting the "Legion of Man", who are your typical shadowy group of lever-pullers. The war is a result of their manipulations, though pushing it to the point one or both sides might use nukes seems kind of stupid.
In a story where Santana was touched (bullied, really) by gods, and a blind man develops a different kind of sight and the ability to compel others, immortality isn't that weird. But however Santana perceived the people, or monsters, he killed, at the end of the day, it boiled down to them being the type to use and discard others, or even the world, like trash for their own benefit. Santana remarks at one point most of the people in Houston were living in subways because large chunks of the city had no electricity, and the only way to reach apartments was via elevators. Apartments which relied on pressurized, recirculated air to be breathable. He's not fixing those problems, but maybe by killing the people benefiting from them, the problems could be solved.
I guess the Legion of Man was going to do the same on a larger scale, but the resolution is essentially that Monday is watching over the world like God, ready to drop the hammer if anyone steps too far out of line (read: uses nukes.) But otherwise, the world will go on as it was. It feels like the problem was only introduced to be answered in a way that wouldn't actually change anything. But it could also been seen as Santana again being used by powers larger than himself, for things he doesn't necessarily want to be involved with.
No comments:
Post a Comment