Random Back Issues #144 - E-Man #1

The filming of a big stunt sequence for "Riders of the Last Buick II" goes wrong, as a defect in the tracks flings the boulder towards not only "Minnesota Schwartz" and "The Girl", but a crowd of gawkers. Seems risky to endanger your star, though Garrison Bellot is high on Aunt Jemima's Pancake Makeup, and if you're hoping we're almost done with the sub-Mad Magazine-level parody names, buddy, this is just the first page.

In an apartment overlooking this mess, exotic dancer and part-time archaeology student Nova Kane has brought a date home, but as they're about to get down to sexy business, her roomie Alec Tronn (E-Man) shows up. Rodney's apparently not up for experimentation, as he's got lots of questions about this other guy, not the least of which why he seemed to materialize out of the TV. By then, Alec has noticed the trouble outside and transforms to energy to phase through the window and destroy the boulder. Nova tries to rush Rodney out the door, but when he keeps asking questions, uses her own energy-manipulating powers to slow his brain's electrical activity and temporarily put him in suspended animation. Did she not want to waste the good liquor?

E-Man keeps anyone from being hurt by the boulder - minus a street performer that took a chunk of rock in the kisser - and the film's producer, sigh, Stringpull Schmaltzberg is trying to convince E-Man to star in his next movie. It's called V.D., about caring and sharing and how adulthood breeds those traits out us, expressed through the innocence of an alien. E-Man says he'll think about it, which isn't good enough for Schmaltzberg's mysterious boss, "B.S."

Next day, Nova visits E-Man's partner, unkempt, unpleasant, private investigator, Michael Mauser. She's looking for E-Man, but gives us a 4-page origin recap, by the end of which Mauser's asleep. E-Man shows up, soaking wet, pissed off, and ready to accept the movie offer. He was drawn to an aquarium by strange music, and saved a man about to be eaten by a Great White Shark. Except "FBI Agent I.M. Faceless" was undercover to catch fish thieves. The ingratitude has soured Alec on using his powers to aid mankind, making him smarter than anyone who ever served on the Avengers.

But wait! Mauser notes that sounds like a scene from Schmaltzberg's "Maws,", and the music that drew E-Man to the aquarium was the theme from "Gross Encounters of the Weird Kind." Mauser decides to question Schmaltzberg, but once inside his 'palatial cottage', he and E-Man find themselves in a constantly changing environment. Coney Island one moment, and a bar from the first Riders of the Last Buick, until they're captured by Schmaltzberg and E-Man's original arch-foe, the Brain from Sirius, aka B.S.

He's gone loopy after the dome containing his native atmosphere got cracked in a previous fight, as his clever plan was to 1) make E-Man a movie star, 2) mind-control him to run for political office like Reagan, 3) make him declare himself King of Earth, and 4) have him assassinated. Now he'll just lower E-Man and Mauser into a pit of lethal Sirian snakes. Which is about when Nova shows up, zaps the alien helmet Schmaltzberg's using to make it look like there are snakes, and they defeat the Brain. But Nova still wants to go back to being a regular woman, or, failing that, at least have a regular guy.

Would you settle for a short, bearded weirdo that keeps kids locked in cattle cars until they sign consent form to be turned into his latest batch of "F-Men"? Because Ford Fairmont's going to try and make you into a Phoenix-knockoff and this issue is absolutely toast in the upcoming annual collection purge.

{4th longbox, 80th comic. E-Man (vol. 3) #1, by Martin Pasko (writer), Joe Staton (artist), Bruce D. Patterson (colorist/letterer)}

Sunday Splash Page #180

 

"Print Media is Going Out with a Bang,' in E-Man (vol. 3) #4, by Mike W. Barr (writer), Joe Staton (artist), Wendy Fiore (colorist), Ken Bruzenak (letterer)

There actually is another volume of sorts in between the original 10-issue run and this 25-issue volume published through First Comics. But it's just a reprinting of six of those original 10 issues so I don't even know if it should count.

Where the original series was closer to a straightforward superhero adventure, with a bit of "fish out of water" stuff thrown in, the 1980s E-Man book leans more into comedy and at times, melodrama. Which probably reflects the changing aspects of superhero comics on the whole. Issues 2 and 3 are basically a parody of The Dark Phoenix Saga, where Nova (who gained powers identical to E-Man's late in the previous series) is targeted by the creepy Ford Fairmont (Chris Claremont in a wheelchair) and his "F-Men". There's an issue that combines the Smurfs with Elfquest and the nightmare that was '80s children's programming. Later on, E-Man encounters the fugitive merc squad "The B-Team", and the member of their team with mental issues spends a couple of issues running around calling himself the Golden Gopher. 

I can't tell if that's a spoof on Mike Baron's The Badger, or the creative just attended the University of Minnesota.

There are certainly others, but those were the most obvious to me. As with all those kinds of parodies, it pretty much demands you have some knowledge of the thing they're making fun, enough to get the references and hopefully find them funny. On the last point, I'd say the success rate is much closer to 0 than 100. 

I enjoy the book more when it just focuses on its own characters and it's own weirdness. For example, issue 12, when Nova and Alec move to Chicago because she's taken a job as host of a late-night horror movie program for a local station, and Alec ends up dealing with dedicated Communist revolutionary Tyger Lily, who has teamed up with a giant, talking alligator crimeboss name Big Al, in a plot that involves a giant gator-bot and dangerous fusion reactors. Or issue 19, "Hoodoo Blues", where a famous blues player who was murdered before he could play his set is brought back from the grave.

Martin Pasko writes most of the first year's stories, working with Paul Kupperberg in the latter parts of that stretch, before Staton takes over writing for most of the second year (with Rich Burchett becoming Staton's inker, presumably to free up some time for Staton to work on writing). Nicola Cuti returns for the last two issues, an origin story for Michael Mauser, and one where E-Man gets tangled up in something with some island gods while trying to sort out his feelings about Nova (this series is marked by a fair amount of will they/won't they between those two.) It would be nice if you could draw a simple line between the two writer teams, but it's not that simple. The F-Men was under Pasko's pen, the B-Team and "Smelt Quest" were Staton's doing.

Staton's artwork seems less cramped in this series than the first one, though I'm not sure why. His page layouts don't look too noticeably different in terms of the number of panels. But the first book, with it's monster of the week aspect, might have leaned into horror a little more, wanting the reader to feel trapped. Or maybe it's just Cuti was a more verbose writer than Staton, Pasko, etc, and Staton's art had to allow for that. He definitely favors a stronger, more sharply defined line in this series, while simplifying and in some cases exaggerating figures for effect. Mauser gets considerably shorter and pudgier here, where he's halfway a spoof of the disreputable private investigator, compared to the first volume where I think he just was a disreputable private investigator.

The tone of this volume (and probably the quality of the printing) also leads to Fiore using brighter colors generally, which keeps things from feeling as dark and claustrophobic. There aren't a lot of narrow panels set in ominously dark alleys in this book.

Sunday Splash Page #179

 

"This Date's Going Downhill in a Hurry," in E-Man (vol. 1) #7, by Nicola Cuti (writer), Joe Staton (artist), Wendy Fiore (colorist)

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.

Random Back Issues #64 - Silver Surfer #13

Ah, just in time for the 3 p.m. Emo Monologue. If we missed it, we'd have to wait for the 3:15 p.m. Emo Monologue!

There was only comic out this week I wanted, and I wasn't driving 45 minutes to get Way of X #3. So, the first issue of Silver Surfer I ever read instead. Englehart's well into the Kree-Skrull war that would run the entirety of his span on the book. But this issue is really more about maneuvering and backstabbing within the respective sides.

We open with three Kree trying to assassinate Nenora, currently running the Empire because the Supreme Intelligence has gone mad from trying to combine blue and pink Kree minds into one within itself. The assassination runs smack into Ronan the Accuser, who promptly kills the three of them, and hurls a little racial invective at the last one before melting his face off at point blank range. A racist, lethally violent cop. Unheard of.

Nenora rebuffs Ronan's attempts to cozy up to her, telling him the Surfer has been attacking their border worlds recently, even after she agreed to let him and Zenn-La remain neutral in the war. Ronan's stoked to see how he stacks up and leaves Nenora to gloatingly monologue about how she's actually a Skrull now in charge of the Kree Empire. Only three people know this, and she already killed one of them, her own lover, and is making plans to deal with the other two.

The other two includes one of the five Skrulls claiming to be the true Emperor, and Nenora feeds him information on where he can score a great victory by ambushing a Kree armada. She assures him the Kree defense shields will be down.

Spoiler alert: They were not down. Word of Kylor's defeat reaches yet another of the five, S'Byill, who sends one of her agents to Earth as part of a big scheme that will play out later.

In other threads, the Surfer has currently teamed up with Nova to find the Contemplator, one of the Elders of the Universe, on behalf of Galactus. The Elders tried killing him as part of some big scheme to cause the end of the universe, so they could be big deals in the next universe like him. Brilliant plan. That's the best they could cobble together with literal billions of years? The Heralds find what's left of the Contemplator's head, the guy having been killed and partially eaten by space pirate Captain Reptyl. Except, Death decreed the Elders can't die after Grandmaster pulled that stunt where he stole her power and tried to end existence in those Avengers Annuals.

After the Surfer spends a few minutes moping over Mantis' recent apparent death, he and Nova set off and come to a world the Surfer recalls having visited before. A Kree border world, which doesn't respond well to his arrival since he was just there rampaging. Ronan shows up and when Nova protests the Surfer's been with her this whole time, he encases her in a bubble of absolute zero and declares 'accusation is punishment', whatever the fuck that means. He and the Surfer fight a bit, Ronan appears to have the upper hand, but gets caught with the old "mentally command my board to smack you in the head" trick. 

 

Surfer says Kree science is impressive, but he's the Silver Surfer, and he and Nova leave to find the imposter. The Surfer's able to track the energy signature to another world, even as Nova wonders how someone could impersonate the Surfer. His look sure, but his power is another matter. Well, they'll find out because the imposter is waiting for them. Meanwhile, Ronan's back on his feet and made some adjustments to prepare for a rematch.

[9th longbox, 240th comic. Silver Surfer (vol. 2) #13, by Steve Englehart (writer), Joe Staton (penciler), Dave Cockrum (inker), Tom Vincent (colorist), Ken Bruzenak (letterer)]