A new comic fancy - "Manifest Destiny"

So I've added yet another comic series to what I'm reading.  Like I've said before, I'm eccentric and my tastes vary.  I don't like superheroes or other nonsense and I don't think of comic books as "kids stuff" ... comics are, to me, an art form.  Growing up in the 1970's and being subjected to adult sci-fi and fantasy like "Heavy Metal" I took on an appreciation for illustrated stories.  Pepe Moreno, Richard Corben, Angus McKee ... all of these taught me that "comics" could be adult and hard hitting.  The only problem is that not until the last ten to fifteen years have comics not only matured to an adult level but they've also reached a point of not being kids stuff any more ... oh, no they're not.

I like my comic art adult and I like it strange so when I pick up a comic and read it and then decide to buy it that comic has something I'm interested in.

Let's be honest here ... I like weird shit.  There's just no other way to say it than that and my latest comic pick pretty much nails that category head on.  In spades.

"Manifest Destiny"

MD is a high aspiring historical revisionist tale of Lewis and Clark's famous expedition.  As they travel through an unknown America they battle monsters and weird shit every step of the way and I love it.  Giant plants, plant zombies, deep lurking river monsters, centaur bisons living in tribes ... some of this stuff is amazing in concept and the execution does not fail.

The first trade paperback is out and collects several of the first run comics.  I highly recommend it especially since the second trade paperback is due out soon.  Give it a looksee and chances are, if your tastes are like mine, you'll be a lot of not unhappy.

A new fancy: "East of West"

I was at Bombshell Comics in Hattiesburg the other day, seeing if a new "Prophet" had come in and I got invited to peruse a new offering ... "East of West".  It's a post apocalyptic western that mixes "Call of Cthulhu", "The Outlaw Josey Wales" and "Bladerunner" all together in a delightful blend.

In other words, it's my kind of weird and I have pretty high standards for weird.

It's an alternate America.  Sometime during the American Civil War a comet hit North America forever changing the world.  America is divided into high tech versions of the Union, the Confederacy, Texas, a nation of Freedmen (ex-slaves), the Endless Nations (all the Indian tribes joined together) and an outcast of China which has established a new Chinese empire on the west coast.

All are divided into their areas and at the center point where all of their territories meet is the impact crater of the comet.

Basically the story involves the end times, a group called "The Chosen" which is a cult trying to bring about the end of the world and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  Only, it's the three Horsemen because when Pestilence, Famine and Conquest awaken they find that Death has already awakened and been working for some time without them.  In fact, Death has found his soul mate, fallen in love, had a child and had his wife and child stolen from him.

This has tended to make Death a little pissed off.

Death finds that not only has he been betrayed, but that his wife and child are both alive.

His son has been kidnapped and is being groomed to be the "Beast of the Apocalypse" in an isolation facility where the child is being programmed by "The Chosen" as the ultimate weapon and conqueror of the world, a living means to the end of the world.

Death itself is a pretty neat character.  He's dressed all in white, from head to toe, long white hair, white albino skin and he carries traditional, albeit, high-tech western style weaponry.  

He reminds me a lot of Michael Moorcock's "Elric" if "Elric" had been cast to play the title role in "The Outlaw Josey Wales."  Death has some great lines in the comic, one of my favorite being his retort to one of the major power brokers in the storyline when he tells him "I beg to fucking differ." which itself made me chuckle out loud.  Not since "Firefly" and Captain Malcolm Reynolds have I liked a character as much as I've started liking this personification of Death.

This is what weird science fiction westerns should be about / like.

Death is a bad ass and stares down entire armies.  He wades through legions with six guns blazing, riding a mechanical robot horse that has a head that fires a devastating beam that reminds me of the hyperwave gun on the Space Battleship Yamato.  In other words, he's well equipped to deal his trade.

Death is travelling with two companions, "Crow" and "Wolf", both extremely powerful witches from the Endless Nations ... 

Crow is something not human, a female in shape only that can turn into a cloud of black crows that tear the eyes out of her enemies and tear them apart.  Wolf is an Indian who turns into a pack of white wolves that, well, pretty much tear his enemies apart.  Death, therefore, goes into battle aided by lots of snarling white wolves and a black cloud of killer crows.  It's magic, it fits, and when it happens it's effective.

And then there's the Cthulhu-like horror

There's mystical and mythical and just plain Lovecraftian-type plots going on.  Stories within stories, arcs within arcs.  Not since reading "Jonah Hex" as a child or the late '70's / early '80's of "Heavy Metal" magazine have I found something that catches my fancy like this story does (well, this and "Prophet").

So, it's good to be a kid again.

I don't read many comics but when I do, they're good ones.

I have high standards for weird and "East of West", so far, fulfills all of those standards and exceeds expectations.  If your tastes in weird run close to mine, give it a try.  "East of West" may make you a lot of not unhappy.

Prophet!

It's not often that I collect a series of comic books and usually when I do it's a short-run series like Miller and Darrow's "Hard Boiled" or something like Delgado's "Hieroglyph" or Steve White and Dan Abnett's "Hypersonic" but every once in a while, thank you life, there comes another series which I adore.  Luckily I found this one about two years back but didn't start collecting it until this month (which meant that I had to catch up).  

Prophet is the story of John Prophet, a modified / vat grown super soldier (think Captain America) who wakes up from stasis / hybernation on Earth so far in the future that nothing is recognizable to him.  Time, alien races and cosmic events have forever altered the planet, even the galaxy.  John Prophet is not alone, he is one of many John Prophets, some altered genetically for different environments or situations and each as a mission.

The Empire of Man is returning, rising in power, and hell is to be paid.

I can't tell you very much about this other than if you like classic 1970's style Angus McKee, Richard Corben, Moebius and Moreno artwork like that once found in the pages of "Metal Hurlant" ("Heavy Metal" to us Americans) then Prophet is for you.  Just flipping through the pages and looking at the artwork takes me back in time to when art ... comic art ... was hand drawn and not done on computers.  It's crude, brutal and wonderful, not glossy, sedate and precise.  I've ranted about art, especially sci-fi art, and how in it moving into the digital age it has lost a lot of what made it so great.  There's no soul, no emotion anymore in sci-fi art and it shows.  The same can be said of modern sci-fi comic books.  Everything is so clean, antiseptic, mundane and predictable.

Not so with Prophet.

Prophet is the telling of an epic story, tens of thousands of years, with characters that have started in another age of comics (the 1990s) and off and on appeared in several series then had their selves thrown into a reboot in the far future, a future so wonderfully bizarre that you wish that someone would make a movie of it.

Carnivorous aliens, symbiotes, parasites, adaptive membranes, interspecies sex, living rock people, living metal robots, crystal sentients, sapient fungus ... Prophet has something for everyone and a surprise for all.  The artwork is amazing in scope and depth, it's like looking at Darrow's work on "Hard Boiled" ... every time you go back and look at it you see something you missed.

John Prophet is an interesting character but so far I'm drawn more to Diehard, a cyborg shell that is over 10,000 years old.   A man from the 1990's, his body was replaced after his death and his cyborg form lives on.  Several stories tell of Diehard's past, some of when he was still a man, others when he was living on some planet with some adoptive race and had a family.  The fact that Diehard is replacing parts of himself with organic parts taken from dead John Prophet clones is intriguing.  At one point he has a human heart beating in his chest cavity (something he hasn't had for thousands of years) and later he can speak again due to adding one of the clone's vocal cords to his design.  You would think that if a machine was operating just fine without a human heart (and for thousands of years) why would it need to install one now?  Also, why does it need vocal cords to communicate which it could just have a speaker to project an artificial voice.

I may find this out yet.

If you want to pick up on Prophet, you can do so now quickly and cheaply.  There are 45 issues of Prophet dating back to the early '90's but the current restart didn't happen until issue 21.  There are 45 issues now meaning that you need to start at issue 21 and catch up.  That means that you have 24 issues to grab.  This isn't hard since on Amazon there are three trade paperbacks which capture issues 21 to 38 leaving you only with 39 to 45.  I bought the trade paperbacks (about 10 bux each) and then found the other back issues at my local hobby shop for face price.

If you like weird sci-fi, were once a fan of the old Heavy Metal magazine and like stuff like Delgado's "Hieroglyph" then you'll dig Prophet.  Each issue is a page turning treat that leaves you waiting impatiently for next month and the next issue.

"Doomsday +1" - '70's post apocalyptic goodness from Charlton Comics

"Doomsday +1" was a post apocalyptic science fiction comic series published by the small, Derby, Connecticut-based publisher Charlton Comics.  The series ran for twelve issues with the first six issues running from July 1975 to May 1976 while the second six issues were simply reprints of the first six issues labeled 7 to 12. The reprints ran from June 1978 to May 1979.

The cover of issue one is wrong ... the astronauts did not arrive back in
New York and this art was clearly a homage / play to the
highly successful "Planet of the Apes" franchise.

"Doomsday +1" is probably best known as the first original, color-comics series by artist John Byrne who would eventually become a major industry figure.  The series was created by writer Joe Gill with John Byrne doing the penciling and inking while George Wildman served as the editor. 

Byrne, serving as letterer, used the pseudonym "Byrne Robotics" while working on issues #4-6 (later reprinted as issues #10-12). The credits for issue #5 show the artwork as "Art: Byrne Robotics with technical assistance from Patterson-75", a pseudonym then for Bruce Patterson who provided some degree of inking.  Byrne drew the covers of issues #2-6, with the cover of issue #1 variously credited to Byrne and to Tom Sutton. Issues #7 and #11 featured re-colored reprints of Byrne covers, while issues #8-10 and #12 featured "new" covers created by blowing up panels of interior artwork from the stories.

 

The stories ran from 22 to 23 pages with most issues also containing a two-page text backup — either a story featuring the main characters or a non-fiction featurette. The backup story in issue #5 consisted of two comic pages, drawn by Steve Ditko, of "real world" paranormal vignettes.  These stories were, by and large, nothing more than filler.

Synopsis:  "Doomsday +1" features some of my favorite genres; atomic holocaust, survival, astronauts returning to a devastated Earth and a good dose of science fiction / science fantasy thrown in.  "Doomsday +1" occurs in the near future (then the late '70's / early '80's) in which a South American despot named Rykos, facing a military coup de tat, launches his sole two atomic missiles on the world.  The atomic missiles are targeted on New York City in the United States and Moscow in the U.S.S.R. Both cities are destroyed.  The two superpowers, each believing the other has launched a first strike, launch their own atomic arsenals at each other in retaliation. The truth becomes known and American president Cole along with Russian premier Mikhail realize their errors but it is too late; the fully automated nuclear-missile systems of each country can not be countermanded or turned off.

The world is doomed to atomic holocaust.

Only hours before the apocalypse begins, a Saturn VI rocket bearing three astronauts launches from Cape Kennedy in Florida.  Onboard the Apollo style command module are three astronauts: Captain Boyd Ellis, United States Air Force; his fiancée, Jill Malden; and Japanese physicist Ikei Yashida.  All three astronauts witness the atomic holocaust from the safety of orbit.  Weeks later, after the post-apocalyptic radiation has subsided to safe levels, their space capsule lands upon a melting Greenland ice field.  Seeking shelter, the three astronauts make it across the ice field and encounter a wooly mammoth, frozen alive for thousands of years and now thawed due to the atomic exchange.  They are saved by an equally ancient Goth named "Kuno" who joins the party but is the man lost in time among all the high technology that the astronauts depend on to survive.

Crossing over into Canada using a sail boat / yacht, they are attacked by a robot operated fighter jet.  Arriving at a Royal Canadian Air Force base, they make the base their home only to discover that a crazed Russian scientist / cyborg has them in his sights.  The Russian cyborg sends hundreds of robot paratrooper infantry to attack the RCAF base and the astronauts.  

Boyd Ellis uses a RCAF jet fighter to strafe the robots from the air while Jill, Ikei and Kuno make ground attacks using laser rifles (backpack mounted power packs) and an atomic powered tank (with a flamethrower cannon).  Boyd Ellis must land his jet when he is low on supplies and he is captured by the robots and taken to Russia to be interrogated by the Russian Cyborg.  Jill, Ikei and Kuno all board a RCAF supersonic transport, travel to Russia and with the help of Boyd, defeat the crazed cyborg and escape back to Canada.  The cyborg threatens revenge but Boyd tells him that if he tries anything that Boyd and the others will return and nuke the cyborg thus offering mutual assured destruction.

Back at the base, Boyd and Jill realize that they have grown apart and may not be the couple that they once planned to be.  Jill seems taken with Kuno now and Ikei, long jealous of Jill, is ready to move in on the vacant spot that she is leaving in Boyd's life.

The first two books in the series (detailed above) are probably the best in the way of story telling.  Later issues tended to get a little bit silly.  Plots included meeting robot guardians from a highly advanced galactic civilization who are here to pass judgment on humans for their folly (and let the astronauts teach them the error of their ways).  The astronauts deal with an underwater city being attacked by ancient aquatic enemies, visitors from a future utopia and of course, a group of other American survivors who want to do away with Boyd and Kuno and keep the women for their own needs and pleasures.

Overall, "Doomsday +1" pleases on a base level that, as a child, I found hard to ignore.  This series pandered to all of my post apocalyptic day dreams and my original copies of this short-lived series are very dog eared, especially issue #2 with the epic air and land fight against the Russian robot death machines.  The art is okay (Charlton was never known for its fantastic art quality) but the story, at least the first two or three issues) goes far in supporting what the art can't convey.

And it's John Byrne whose art is iconic and it's early John Byrne so that counts for something as well.

Ricardo Delgado's "Hieroglyph"

Digging through the piles of crap that I need to sort in my study I came across a four part sci-fi comic series that I had almost forgotten about.

I like comics.

As a child I used to read comic books a lot but the older I got the less I read and the less I collected them.  Super heroes don't do anything for me, never really did so while I enjoy the occasional "Batman", "Spiderman", "Iron Man" and "Avengers" movie you won't find any of those comics in my meager collection.  No, I grew up reading stuff like "The Losers", "Sgt. Rock", "The Unknown Soldier", "Weird War Tales", "Tales of the Haunted Tank", etc.  Later, in my late teens and early twenties my taste in comics both waned and got pretty picky to the point that I might get a few comics a year and those comics would have to be pretty frigging outstanding.  They were almost invariably science fiction ...  This curve of decline of interest in collecting comics / required quality of comic to be collected only grew as I got older.

Flash forward to 2000.

I'm in a comic / hobby shop and I see the first issue of Ricardo Delgado's "Hieroglyph".  I can't say that the cover is the greatest in the world but being a fan of all things weird and Cthulhu-ian I was intrigued so I picked it off the rack and gave it a readsy.  I was impressed with Delgado's artwork.  The story followed an astronaut from Earth on some vague mission to explore the universe.  He's separated from his family by time and space.  He has a giant "mothership" in orbit and he takes a shuttle down to the latest planet he's supposed to investigate / catalog.  

The shuttle is the size of a B2 stealth bomber (and looks amazingly like a B2 stealth bomber).  Landing on the planet he muses that he's going to be bored, he'll get this planet cataloged quick and then be on his way to yet another boring world in a long line of boring worlds until his mission is up and he can get back to his wife and two kids.  Shortly after that, everything changes and the astronaut discovers that not only is the planet not dead but that it has untold amounts of different lifeforms in types that defy the imagination.  The astronaut also quickly becomes part of a holy war fought over a pentagon shaped talisman with unknown powers but powers that every faction on the planet is willing to go to extremes to possess.

The premise is simple and a bit loose but the artwork is delightful.  Taken from Delgado's fascination with the wonders of ancient Egypt, the art of "Hieroglyph" focuses on the grand and the immense.  Going into space, let alone flight to other stars is not a small feat of technology yet despite all the amazing advances of science and engineering that Delgado has given to the Astronaut ... all of that seems dwarfed, literally, by the immensity of the ruins that the Astronaut continually comes across.  Ancient alien temples, burial chambers of long dead alien rulers, weird alien hieroglyphs, fossilized bones stuck in strata of rocks ... it blows not only the Astronaut's mind but the reader's mind as well.


While the artwork is not as tight or sharp edged as Frank Miller and Geoff Darrow's "Hardboiled" but similar in nature in that the visuals tell the story and the text is really only there to join certain ideas together and sometimes to speed things along when the visuals bog.  It's not the "Blade Runner" meets "Where's Waldo" of "Hardboiled", more like an epic tour of an amazing alien panorama where the details are not tiny but rather vast and sweeping visuals.

Trust me, it works and Delgado's artwork would have been right at home in the late 1970's sharing pages of "Heavy Metal" magazine with the likes of Moebius, Moreno and even Corben.

"Hieroglyph" has plenty of artwork and eye candy.  It lacks a whiney protagonist which endears it to me because I myself am a strong individual who deplores whiney or useless people.  I find it hard to believe that someone can go through something as hard as astronaut training only to wind up some blubbering, inwards collapsing wimp at the first sign of trouble.  Such is not the hero astronaut of Delgado's "Hieroglyph".  No, the astronaut faces his fate / destiny with little or no whining, not the usual liberal limp wristed, hand wringing, soul searching, self-defeating, self-loathing pseudo heroes that the insipid pop culture of our once great society has forced upon us lately.  Even for a nearly 15 year old comic series, it's refreshing to see the main character show some stoic traits, accept his fate and deal with it.

If any story cries out to be released as a complete trade paperback it is "Hieroglyph."  I have read where finding this series is kind of difficult.  I can't tell you because I collected it month by month when it was first published.  

Delgado has a blog if you wish to know more about him.  Find it here.

Final verdict?  If you're picky like me about comics and you like great art and lost astronauts then "Hieroglyph" is probably worth checking out and collecting.  Perhaps Delgado will do a sequel but with a decade and a half so far those hopes grow dimmer and dimmer.

"The Last American" - Post Apocalyptic goodness from Marvel Comics

"Are you there, God? Come on out! I got a bone to pick with you! A bone -- hah! That's a good one! I got a million bones to pick with you, pal! All the bones in the world! This is all your fault! That's right! You coulda stopped it -- why didn't you? Eh? You're so all-damn powerful, why didn't you do something? Have you seen what it's like out there? Have you? Well, I'll tell you, pal! If there is a God then you gotta be one twisted, evil son of a bitch! Damn you! Come on! I'm not afraid of you! Strike me down! Gimme the big zap! What are you waiting for? Had enough death? Sickened even yourself? Don't worry! You'll be doing me a favor! I don't any part of this. I don't want to be the last American..."  -- Ulysses S. Pilgrim

 

  

"The Last American" (hereby abbreviated TLA for brevity’s sake) was a four issue comic written by John Wagner and Alan Grant with two issues being done by each author supposedly at the end of their professional relationship (a relationship that was rapidly sinking against the jagged rocks of artistic differences).   

Mike McMahon was the artist for all four issues.  

 Published by Epic Comics from December of 1990 to March of 1991, TLA was a four issue limited run that left off with a slightly open-ending.  I became interested in this particular work for the primary reason that it fulfilled two of my strongest fascinations … waking up from long term suspended animation in a strange, new world (ala Rip Van Winkle) and the post apocalypse.  I've always been fascinated with stories about ordinary people thrust into environments beyond their control and often times beyond their understanding.

The story of TLA centers on Ulysses S. Pilgrim, a disgraced US Army soldier in military prison for some unknown but obviously severe crime.  Pilgrim is chosen to be the last American, a project which will put him in suspended animation for 20 years deep inside a hardened bunker in order to (hopefully) survive World War III.  At the time of Pilgrim being chosen for the project, for whatever reasons, global nuclear war is imminent and unavoidable and time is running out.  Pilgrim is whisked away from his family, put into the bunker with enough supplies to weather the coming war, and given the task of waking up in 20 years to begin the rebuilding the United States of America.

The story begins on July 4, 2019, at twelve noon, twenty years after the nuclear war.   Pilgrim wakes up in a bunker, attended to by a likable robot valet / Man-Friday named “Charlie” who is obsessed with pop culture (the robot has had twenty years to absorb all the substantial archive of recorded pop media that the bunker has to offer) as well as two large, gruff, all business-like, no-nonsense combat robots named “Able” and “Baker” (A, B, and C for you non-military types).  Charlie serves as Pilgrim’s personal valet and as a go-between for Pilgrim and the two combat robots.

Pilgrim’s first questions when he wakes up is “Who won?”  Before he can receive an answer from Charlie he admonishes himself that what he just asked was a pretty stupid question, in hind sight.

Waking up and leaving the bunker, Pilgrim and his three robot companions travel the devastated America in a large, squat, armored ATV.  They find nothing but destruction and desolation.  Along the way, Pilgrim has flashbacks and memories of his life before he went into suspended animation.  We learn of the life he left behind, his wife, his young son.  He pines for them during his travels, even almost visiting the place where he and his wife first met by accident (he ran over her bicycle with his VW bug).  Along the way, the destruction and devastation are so great that Pilgrim has trouble dealing with the immensity of the fate of the human race.   

When offered a bottle of whiskey he proceeds to get drunk and curse God.  His fourth travelling companion, a hallucination, a figment of his imagination, is Bert the Turtle from the old Civil Defense films of the 1950’s.  Bert becomes his best friend and talks to him all the time, often serving as a filter to help Pilgrim understand the situation that he is in and the situations that he finds himself in.  This seems to upset the two combat robots and concerns Charlie who sees Pilgrim’s continual backwards mental slide as some kind of failure on Charlie’s part to take care of Pilgrim during his 20 year long hibernation.

Able: "It ain't my job to be worried about his state of health but if it was my job to be worried I'd BE worried."

Charlie: "Oh, Doctor Kildare!  You're so handsome when you diagnose!"

Able:  "Come to that.  I'd be worried about YOUR state of health."

With only four issues to tell a story I won’t ruin it by giving a complete summary of the story, suffice to say that if you like post-apocalyptic stories then TLA is a little bundle of pure PA candy.

TLA is a great post-apocalyptic treasure and at just four issues it doesn’t take a deep wallet to add it to your collection or a lot of time to add it to your memories.  The designs of the robots and the ATV are solid if a bit whimsical but Pilgrim’s uniform looks more for show than actual use.  He is a caricature of America, even more so than Uncle Sam ever was.

All in all, TLA is solid and is one of those lost gems that would make a great movie, even if it only made it as a low budget, CGI heavy movie in the same league as most Sci-Fi channel movies.  Hell, you could make this movie with only a handful of people and I'd suggest the more less well-known the better.  The robots would be simple to build or even easier to just CGI together, ditto for the ATV and the PA backdrops.

Timothy Truman's "Scout" comic series

“Scout” is probably one of my all-time favorite series of comic books, written by artist and guitarist Timothy Truman and published by the stinky hippy managed, ill-fated Eclipse Comics which was itself an independent bastion during the “Direct Distributing” years taking on the likes of Marvel and DC.  “Scout” debuted back in September of 1985 and at that time I was just sixteen and a junior in high school.  Now, when it comes to comic books I’m not big on super heroes … I was far less a “Superman” kind of comic book fan than I was a fan of comics like “The Unknown Soldier”, “Sergeant Rock”, “The Losers”, “Weird War Tales” and the various horror comics.  Comics and I parted ways for a while, several years in fact, and when we met back up my interest in comics had changed considerably.

“Scout” piqued my interest because it had relevant issues in a time when those issues were still both relevant and a possible outcome to (then) current events.  I know that sounds kind of like a cop-out but “Scout” hit hard and it hit true, for the time that it came out swinging.  The series took place in the (then) year of 1999 in a story setting where the United States had been knocked far down the world political power ladder.  America was being punished for years of ecological waste with heavy sanctions levied against it by the other countries of the world (kind of like Germany was punished at the end of World War I).  Despite all the liberal guilt based background, the actual story followed the spiritual quest of a Native American Apache Indian by the name of Emmanuel Santana (who was actually named for Carlos Santana, the musician, which Truman was friends with).  

Santana was an ex-US Army Ranger on a spiritual mission to destroy several mythical monsters of Native American folklore that had come to plague the land.  These monsters could take on human form and thus infiltrate various power structures of our once great country.  This particular quest comprised the first seven issues of the series, after that, the series got pretty serious up until the 24^th issue which ended the first series.  Along the way, Santana is reunited with an ex-lover, Rosanna Winter (also a US Army Ranger who, along with her psycho Ranger teammate Raymond, is tasked with hunting down Santana).  Santana also meets up with Beau Le Duke (a gun toting, beer guzzling, bearded real man’s man), Monday the Eliminator (who is a mostly immortal warrior created back in the time of the Greeks) and a mercenary group called “The Swords of Texas.” 

(Rosanna Winter would have her own off-shoot series, four issues, in the “New America” collection and “The Swords of Texas” got their own four issue mini-series as well to bridge the gap between the first series of “Scout” and the second series.)

  

“Scout” was gritty from the start, and it had a rough, shaky start to be sure.  When I first read it I noticed that it had that kind of Pepe Moreno “Rebel” feel to it (and I’ll discuss Moreno’s “Rebel” and “Generation X” in followup postings).  Originally published bi-monthly, “Scout” was later announced to being rescheduled as a monthly series.  “Scout” had a lot of growing pains and I was there for its birth as well as its whole life run.  “Scout”, in one form or another, was published from the fall of 1985 to the summer of 1989 and it was an epic run for a comic.  Equipment and hardware in the series were period specific and easily recognizable to anyone who followed pop culture action shows or movies … Monday the Eliminator preferred to carry a Franchi SPAS-12 shotgun (the iconic shotgun of the 1980s) and later had a cybernetic eye implanted so he could chip into a 5.56mm “smartgun” (itself a heavily modified M60). 

Emanuel Santana carried an Israeli made 9mm Uzi submachinegun (the iconic SMG of the 1980’s) and in the first few issues a Automag .44 caliber automatic magnum (much like Clint Eastwood’s character “Dirty Harry” used in the movie “Sudden Impact”).  Later a Colt .357 Python magnum revolver with a ribbed barrel was included and Scout carried a 5.56mm Colt M16, a H&K CAWS automatic 12 gauge combat shotgun, a 7.62mm FN FAL battle rifle, hand grenades, knives and later in the series, a British made .303 Lee Enfield bolt action rifle of WW2 origin.  Emanuel Santana’s outfit was a mixture of pop culture (a leather jacket with an American flag on the back), military surplus (his duty belt, holsters, and fanny packs) and traditional tribal Native American fashion (bandannas, war paint, groin cloth and boots).  He rode a Harley Davidson Sportster … that ever so ridiculous icon of 1980’s faux motorcycling because back then (and to a lesser extent today) Harleys were considered “cool” and “tough” even if they could live up to neither aspect of their pop culture reputation.

What made the comic interesting besides the ingredients that went into the comic itself was the fact that not only was Timothy Truman a musician but he put a lot of music into his comic as well.  One of the characters that Santana encounters is called “Guitar Man” and it is “Guitar Man” who plays his Fender Stratocaster loudly while the enemy base is burning around him.  “Guitar Man” always seemed to be the embodiment of Jimi Hendrix, at least to me; that’s the vibe that I got from that character.   Missy, a woman that Santana rescues early in the series, goes on to become a pop star with her own band.  In this way, the comic had that kind of “Streets of Fire” feel to it.  In issue number 16, Truman even included a flexi-disc record that you could play on your record player (some of you won’t know what that is) … a two song soundtrack for the comic itself.   

After a brief respite from the comic, Timothy Truman and his band “The Dixie Pistols” cut a vinyl record of blues rock that was inspired by the comic itself, another first and this time a LP based soundtrack to a comic book.   

The record included a mini-comic detailing some of the events after the first 24 issue “Scout” series concluded, namely the marriage of Santana.  Santana found a wife, was married, had two sons, his wife died, and he went back to traveling the devastated America with his sons.  The mini-comic paved the way for the introduction of the second full length series and sequel to the first; “Scout: War Shaman”.   

That series lasted sixteen issues and ended with the death of Emanuel Santana.

During this time, two other “Scout” series were produced; “New America” which chronicled Rosa Winter’s violent rise to American political power and “The Swords of Texas” which told the story of the mercenary group that had played a big part in helping Emanuel Santana.

There was even a technical manual / handbook published which detailed and gave the specs for all of the equipment that Scout and his friends used in the series as well as profiles, maps, etc.  One of the neater vehicles introduced in the series was the Israeli giant mecha called "Big Moishe".

“Scout” was one of those iconic comics that, if you got onboard with the first issue and managed to hang on until the end then it was an epic ride and one of those kind of artistic events that you “had to be there for” otherwise you just couldn’t really get the feel of what it was like to have been part of it.  Today, finding all of the issues let alone the flexi-disc and the vinyl album by The Dixie Pistols would be a real grail quest.  I’m glad that I’ve got all of my original stuff and every few years I sit down and revisit Emanuel Santana’s journey through the Second American Civil War, throw my Dixie Pistols vinyl album on the old turn table and just lose myself in some great childhood memories.

I guess what strikes me as interesting is that as I’m writing this it has now been 28 years since I first picked up my first issue of Truman’s “Scout” at Brendon’s comic shop there on Hardy Street in Hattiesburg back when he had opened a shop right next to the hobby shop.  Twenty-eight years ago, way back in September of 1985, I was sixteen years old and the year 1999 was still so far away that it might never be reached.  1999 was a mythical, magical year.  Warren Publishing had an entire series of adult graphic magazines sold under the “1999” banner.  There was “Space: 1999” the old TV show from the 1970’s where the Moon was blown out of orbit by a nuclear chain reaction and went hurtling off into space on adventures every week and the pop artist Prince wanted us to party like it was 1999 in his hit song.  

1999, way back then, was so far away.

What is interesting, though, is that way back in 1985, at fourteen years in the future, the year 1999 was as far ahead of us (then) as 1999 is behind us (now) in 2013.  Think about it … Not only did we make it through the long fourteen year climb up to 1999 but the world didn’t end either and, now that we are the same amount of time and distance on the other side of 1999 as we were in front of 1999 way back in 1985 it is interesting to stop, take a deep breath, and look back at just how far we have come as well as what our expectations of our future once were.

Think about it for a minute ... the iconic year 1999 is now as far behind us as it once used to be in front of us.  That year is now as far behind as it once was ahead of us.  I find it interesting to look back on how we all thought the world was going to be … and to see how it really turned out.

The future isn’t what it used to be and that may not be a bad thing.  For all the troubles that this once great nation now has, for all the wrong choices that it has made politically in the last five years, thankfully, this once great nation doesn’t resemble the nightmarish hell that the United States in Emanuel Santana’s time is portrayed as. 

There isn’t a Second American Civil War … at least not yet. 

So if you’re like me and you like finding new and interesting stuff then I’ve got a real grail quest for you.   I've got all of my Scout series, extras, flexi-disc and vinyl record.  How about you?

Enjoy!