Blaze (1994) # 7

"We Who are Lost"

Cover Date: February 1995; On Sale Date: December 1994

Writer: Larry Hama; Artist: Henry Martinez; Inker: Bud LaRosa; Letterer: Bill Oakley; Colorist: John Kalisz; Editor: Bobbie Chase; Editor in Chief: Tom DeFalco; Cover Artist: Henry Martinez

John Blaze wakes in his trailer in the middle of the night to find three intruders looking for jobs with the carnival: the diminutive psychic Madame Yang Kwei Fei, the Lobster Lad, and the Roach. Sensing that Fei’s psychic power could help him find his missing kids he hires them, then kicks them out of his trailer. The next morning, Blaze kicks a trick-shooter named Double-Tap out of the carnival during his audition. During that afternoon’s show, Blaze attempts to ride down a flaming wire that Double-Tap shoots and breaks, causing Blaze to crash and injure himself. Double-Tap’s two assistants, Tex and Aura-Lee, shoot the carnival’s cashier and steal the show’s ticket money.

Blaze wakes up in the hospital, where he’s questioned by a police detective. Madame Yang Kwei Fei reads the detective’s mind and learns that Double-Tap has a brother named Lucious Tapp, so the carnival members go off to seek revenge despite Blaze begging them not to. While Fei and her assistants interrogate the brother and learn that Double-Tap is hiding in an aquarium, Blaze convinces Clara to use the eyes of the Kristall-Starrer to help him find his motorcycle and stop the carnival members. Blaze and Clara arrive at the aquarium in time to see Lobster Lad and Roach running out, happy and no longer deformed. Two new minions carry Fei out in her steel box. The next morning, the detective questions Blaze at the carnival and notices that the new Roach and Lobster Lad look just like Double-Tap and Tex, while there’s a new trained monkey named Aura-Lee.

CHAIN REACTION

The Blaze series has been weird so far, but this issue takes it even further and presents its weirdest story yet.

The plots for this series aren’t usually dull and the weirdness is a charm that most titles of this era could only hope for outside of DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint. Blaze never felt like it really belonged at Marvel and certainly not as a superhero title. So, it stands to reason that a quiet issue such as this one that introduces a new, potentially important supporting character would feel like business as usual. Unfortunately, this issue pushes that offbeat tone a bit too far and collapses under the weight of its own oddness.

What really sinks this issue is Madame Yang Kwei Fei, who falls flat and is nowhere near as interesting or mysterious as Hama seems to think she is. When the story hangs on her character and she herself isn’t very interesting, that makes the comic surrounding her to be uninteresting as a natural consequence. There’s something of a kernel of intrigue when you bring in her enslavement of various Lobster Lads and Roaches, but it’s a revelation that can’t save the boredom instilled by the first 3/4ths of the comic. This reads like a police procedural slapped together with a zany ensemble cast and it just doesn’t work.

That’s not to say this is a truly terrible comic, any of Larry Hama’s Blaze issues are nothing but proficiently written even when they don’t hit the mark. Henry Martinez seems to struggle a little with making this one interesting as well, though, as his figure work suffers every time Madame Yang Kwei Fei is on panel. I gather she’s meant to be small, but those proportions shift nebulously throughout the comic. Sometimes she’s just a short lady and other times she’s the size of a doll and can fit in a little box.

I hate to say it, because I’ve loved this series to this point, but this one just didn’t work for me on any level. Technically well executed, just with a dead fish concept.