 |
| Cover Artist: Jim Balent |
Original Price: $3.99
Title: untitled
Writers: Brian Pulido & Mark Andreyko
Artist: Ivan Reis
Inker: Joe Pimentel
Letterer: Comicraft
Colorist: Elizabeth Lewis & Dean White
Editors: Tim Tuhoy & Brad Gould
Editor-In-Chief (Chaos!): Brian Pulido
Editor-In-Chief (Marvel): Bob Harras
SYNOPSIS
When two young boys, Daniel and Jericho Drumm, attempt to use voodoo to bring their mother back to life, they accidentally started the "Chaos! Event", which caused all of Earth's superhumans to disappear instantly. Daniel Drumm also disappeared after the event, which still haunts his brother Jericho even 13 years later. Jericho wakes up as the Halloween anniversary of the event is causing unexplained phenomena around the world, and despite his successful musical career Drumm realizes that only Doctor Strange can help him. Meanwhile, at Stone Hinge, a young couple witness a powerful entity crossing over to Earth.
Elsewhere around the world, several young men and women, including Maria, Jack Russell, Isaac Christians, and BMX biker Johnny Blaze are watched by mysterious individuals. Back in New York, Jericho Drumm transforms into Brother Voodoo and goes to the home of Dr. Strange, only to find it a wreck and its owner missing. Drumm picks up the Eye of Agamatto and sees a vision of the people he will need to find in order to save the world from a repeat of the Chaos! Event. The first of the five people is near him, a young woman named Felicia Hardy. Meawhile, the others are all attacked by the watchers, which causes the targets to reveal their mystical natures. Isaac Christians transforms into the hulking Gargoyle and destroys his attackers, which Christians did not want to happen. During Blaze's X-Games competition, which Maria is also attending as a model, the creatures attack as well. When zombie pirates attack the show, Maria transforms into Satana and Blaze becomes the Ghost Rider. Finally, in Los Angeles, Jack Russell has become the Werewolf by Night, who is attacked by small demons that merge into a larger more powerful form. Back in New York, Felica Hardy is sexually harassed by a co-worker, and when she tells him to "drop dead" he flies backward through the window to his death. Brother Voodoo arrives in time to witness this, unaware that they are all being watched by the being from Stone Hinge, Jack O' Lantern.
ANNOTATIONS
The Supernaturals was a 4-issue mini-series released weekly in October of 1998. The series was produced outside of Marvel editorial by Chaos! Comics, who were the publishers of comics like Evil Ernie and Lady Death. This series exists outside of established Ghost Rider continuity and is considered an alternate reality.
Each issue of this mini-series came with a cardboard mask of one of the main characters stapled in the middle of the series. A smaller number of issues came packaged with the "rare" Ghost Rider mask.
REVIEW
Chaos! Comics gets the opportunity to revamp Marvel's horror characters with this 4-issue weekly mini-series released just in time for Halloween.
In the late 1990s, Marvel was struggling both creatively and financially. This led to the company farming out a lot of its properties and output to independent production companies, the most notable example being the "Heroes Reborn" event that gave titles like the Avengers and the Fantastic Four over to Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld to produce and release by way of Image Comics. It happened again at the end of the decade when Joe Quesada's Event Comics was given the Marvel Knights imprint, which allowed them to revamp properties like Black Panther and Daredevil outside of Marvel's own editorial base. A much smaller attempt to give creative control of Marvel properties to an outside comic company was this mini-series, The Supernaturals, which allowed Brian Pulido's Chaos! Comics (yes, the exclamation mark is in the name) the chance to revamp Marvel's horror characters. Chaos! was the publisher of the insanely popular Lady Death series, which wasn't exactly popular for its writing as much as it was the character's breast measurements, but for better or worse they were one of the top contenders for quote/unquote horror comics in the late 90s. So allowing Pulido the reins of the Supernaturals was probably an easy decision for Marvel, with the hopes that they'd at least make a quick buck off the series.
Whether or not this series was successful financially is a question I can't answer, I didn't pick it up when it was released nearly 20 years ago and I don't remember what its sales figures were like. Creatively, though, this project is a mis-fire on just about every conceivable level, mainly due to the creative team's disastrous attempt to "update" the Marvel horror characters. It's not enough to simply give the individual heroes a consistent origin story, now they all have to be "extreme, dude!" in that way that mocks popular fads of the time while trying to be as hyper serious as possible. Jack Russell, the Werewolf by Night, is now a black belt martial artist that wants to be Bruce Lee; the Gargoyle is a kid who turns into a fire-breathing Hulk type of monster; and Brother Voodoo is a "gangsta rap" record producer. The most egregious example of this has to be poor Johnny Blaze, though, who is immediately both obnoxious and ridiculous, and I think only the former was intentional. I get that the "stunt motorcyclist" bit from Blaze's origin is outdated, but making him a teenage X-Games BMX biker saps away anything that might be inherently cool about the character. This was 1998, and the X-Games were a big deal, but like with all of the other character "updates" it's extremely patronizing and some pretty awful shorthand that's stuck there in lieu of proper characterization.
Plot-wise, this story hinges on the "Chaos! Event" (there's that damn exclamation mark again!), which 13 years ago wiped all of the superheroes off the planet. That's a fair plot device, and it allows the creators to make this an inherently darker world than the established Marvel Universe, but on the surface it really doesn't appear that much has changed. Guess Marvel's heroes weren't really that needed all those years after all, huh? Outside of the anniversary backdrop, though, this comic doesn't do much at all other than giving really brief introductions of each cast member.
The artwork is by a very young Ivan Reis, who is just at the start of his career. While you can certainly see the promise in his work, and this guy is going to go on to be a pretty great artist about 10 years later in his career, here he's saddled with some of pretty terrible aspects of that era's comic zeitgeist. For every awful character redesign, like Brother Voodoo and his knock-off Spawn costume/cape or the Gargoyle's tiny-legged Hulk form, you also get the totally anachronistic return of Johnny Blaze's original Ghost Rider outfit. And now that I think about it, if he's a BMX biker, why in the world does he show up on a big fucking chopper and leather jumpsuit when he arrives as Ghost Rider? Shouldn't he be on a flaming BMX bike with spiked knee and elbow pads? Still, Reis is already a solid superhero comic artist by this point, he's just not reached his peak yet.
I'm really not much of a fan of this mini-series, and it's been so many years (over a decade at least) since I read it that I don't even remember what happens in later issues. For a debut, though, this does nothing to make me care about the next three issues at all.
Grade: D
Elsewhere around the world, several young men and women, including Maria, Jack Russell, Isaac Christians, and BMX biker Johnny Blaze are watched by mysterious individuals. Back in New York, Jericho Drumm transforms into Brother Voodoo and goes to the home of Dr. Strange, only to find it a wreck and its owner missing. Drumm picks up the Eye of Agamatto and sees a vision of the people he will need to find in order to save the world from a repeat of the Chaos! Event. The first of the five people is near him, a young woman named Felicia Hardy. Meawhile, the others are all attacked by the watchers, which causes the targets to reveal their mystical natures. Isaac Christians transforms into the hulking Gargoyle and destroys his attackers, which Christians did not want to happen. During Blaze's X-Games competition, which Maria is also attending as a model, the creatures attack as well. When zombie pirates attack the show, Maria transforms into Satana and Blaze becomes the Ghost Rider. Finally, in Los Angeles, Jack Russell has become the Werewolf by Night, who is attacked by small demons that merge into a larger more powerful form. Back in New York, Felica Hardy is sexually harassed by a co-worker, and when she tells him to "drop dead" he flies backward through the window to his death. Brother Voodoo arrives in time to witness this, unaware that they are all being watched by the being from Stone Hinge, Jack O' Lantern.
ANNOTATIONS
The Supernaturals was a 4-issue mini-series released weekly in October of 1998. The series was produced outside of Marvel editorial by Chaos! Comics, who were the publishers of comics like Evil Ernie and Lady Death. This series exists outside of established Ghost Rider continuity and is considered an alternate reality.
Each issue of this mini-series came with a cardboard mask of one of the main characters stapled in the middle of the series. A smaller number of issues came packaged with the "rare" Ghost Rider mask.
REVIEW
Chaos! Comics gets the opportunity to revamp Marvel's horror characters with this 4-issue weekly mini-series released just in time for Halloween.
In the late 1990s, Marvel was struggling both creatively and financially. This led to the company farming out a lot of its properties and output to independent production companies, the most notable example being the "Heroes Reborn" event that gave titles like the Avengers and the Fantastic Four over to Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld to produce and release by way of Image Comics. It happened again at the end of the decade when Joe Quesada's Event Comics was given the Marvel Knights imprint, which allowed them to revamp properties like Black Panther and Daredevil outside of Marvel's own editorial base. A much smaller attempt to give creative control of Marvel properties to an outside comic company was this mini-series, The Supernaturals, which allowed Brian Pulido's Chaos! Comics (yes, the exclamation mark is in the name) the chance to revamp Marvel's horror characters. Chaos! was the publisher of the insanely popular Lady Death series, which wasn't exactly popular for its writing as much as it was the character's breast measurements, but for better or worse they were one of the top contenders for quote/unquote horror comics in the late 90s. So allowing Pulido the reins of the Supernaturals was probably an easy decision for Marvel, with the hopes that they'd at least make a quick buck off the series.
Whether or not this series was successful financially is a question I can't answer, I didn't pick it up when it was released nearly 20 years ago and I don't remember what its sales figures were like. Creatively, though, this project is a mis-fire on just about every conceivable level, mainly due to the creative team's disastrous attempt to "update" the Marvel horror characters. It's not enough to simply give the individual heroes a consistent origin story, now they all have to be "extreme, dude!" in that way that mocks popular fads of the time while trying to be as hyper serious as possible. Jack Russell, the Werewolf by Night, is now a black belt martial artist that wants to be Bruce Lee; the Gargoyle is a kid who turns into a fire-breathing Hulk type of monster; and Brother Voodoo is a "gangsta rap" record producer. The most egregious example of this has to be poor Johnny Blaze, though, who is immediately both obnoxious and ridiculous, and I think only the former was intentional. I get that the "stunt motorcyclist" bit from Blaze's origin is outdated, but making him a teenage X-Games BMX biker saps away anything that might be inherently cool about the character. This was 1998, and the X-Games were a big deal, but like with all of the other character "updates" it's extremely patronizing and some pretty awful shorthand that's stuck there in lieu of proper characterization.
Plot-wise, this story hinges on the "Chaos! Event" (there's that damn exclamation mark again!), which 13 years ago wiped all of the superheroes off the planet. That's a fair plot device, and it allows the creators to make this an inherently darker world than the established Marvel Universe, but on the surface it really doesn't appear that much has changed. Guess Marvel's heroes weren't really that needed all those years after all, huh? Outside of the anniversary backdrop, though, this comic doesn't do much at all other than giving really brief introductions of each cast member.
The artwork is by a very young Ivan Reis, who is just at the start of his career. While you can certainly see the promise in his work, and this guy is going to go on to be a pretty great artist about 10 years later in his career, here he's saddled with some of pretty terrible aspects of that era's comic zeitgeist. For every awful character redesign, like Brother Voodoo and his knock-off Spawn costume/cape or the Gargoyle's tiny-legged Hulk form, you also get the totally anachronistic return of Johnny Blaze's original Ghost Rider outfit. And now that I think about it, if he's a BMX biker, why in the world does he show up on a big fucking chopper and leather jumpsuit when he arrives as Ghost Rider? Shouldn't he be on a flaming BMX bike with spiked knee and elbow pads? Still, Reis is already a solid superhero comic artist by this point, he's just not reached his peak yet.
I'm really not much of a fan of this mini-series, and it's been so many years (over a decade at least) since I read it that I don't even remember what happens in later issues. For a debut, though, this does nothing to make me care about the next three issues at all.
Grade: D
No comments:
Post a Comment