Pulp-Powered Comics: The Perhapanauts

This week I am going to take some time to focus on a few more modern interpretations of the pulp genre. First stop: The Perhapanauts.

More accurately titled Todd and Craig’s The Perhapanauts, the comic first debuted in 2006 as a four issue limited series from Dark Horse Comics. It returned as another limited series a few months later before moving to Image for its current (sporadic) edition.

The book treads a lot of ground with its concept: a secret government agency devoted to unlocking the secrets of cryptids, strange beings that populate the earth in unexplained ways: bigfoot, chupacabra, ghosts, and the like. What makes the Fearless Five-esque unit fun is that they represent those cryptids. Bigfoot (nicknamed Big), the Chupacabra (nicknamed Choopie) and a ghost named Molly are all members of our main team. The mystery guy MG (clever initials there) and team leader Arisa (a psychic) round out the team.

The book tends to take the team’s adventures literally everywhere as they seek to uncover the truth and often haphazardly stumble their way through each adventure. They meet monsters from the Chimaera to the Jersey Demon to Filipino vampire known as the aswang.

In some ways it is similar to the early stories of its fellow modern pulp Hellboy, only The Perhapanauts never gets half as grim as Mike Mignola’s creation. Writer Todd DeZago (Tellos, Sensational Spider-Man) brings a lighter, more exciting prose style to the book. Impulse and Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane artist Craig Rousseau’s light pen work and deft character designs turns DeZago’s words in to page after stunning page, all colored perfect by Rico Renzi. The book looks good and can best be compared to the adult cartoonish style of Powers’ Michael Avon Oeming.

After its move to Image, the book failed to bring in enough money for the team to keep it afloat as a monthly title. A few issues have been published sporadically, but Rousseau seems to have moved on to work for Marvel, including the recent debut of Marvel Her-Oes, the worst titled comic since Giant Sized Man-Thing. Trades are still available though, and I highly recommend them to anyone that enjoys a good comic or a good heroic pulp. Highly Recommended.

Note on the links: Though its labeled as volume one, Triangle is actually the third book in the series. First Blood and Second Chances come before it.

Pulp-Powered Comics: Hellboy Seed of Destruction

Having read the entire series a few years ago, I recently took the chance to look over the first volume of the ongoing series of miniseries Hellboy: Seed of Destruction again. The character, at least in his early incarnation, was decidedly adventure pulp in origin only coated in a fine layer of Lovecraftian horrors. But until recently I never noticed the striking resemblance between his first adventure and those of Doc Savage.

Basically, Hellboy is Doc Savage.

Artist Mike Mignola and scripter John Byrne have crafted a story about an intrepid agent with uncanny abilities that makes him far and away better than an average man and his allies. His father’s death sets off his first adventure. One his quest, his company of heroes follow him. A clear similarity begins to show itself.

Now clearly, it is by no means a straight pastiche. Hellboy is a demon with filed off horns. Instead of the Fearless Five, his aides are the fish-man Abe Sapien and pyrokinetic Liz Sherman. (His other allies would come later.) His father is killed by evil toads, not a South American assassin.

But I think the similarities are worthy of attention. Over the last sixteen years of stories, Hellboy, his supporting cast, and their ongoing narrative have easily become the most widely known neo-pulp characters in fiction.

I digress. I am here to talk about Hellboy: Seed of Destruction. The series gives us a brief origin of the character that opens up as many questions as it might solve before we leap head-long in to the story. The team quickly find themselves in to an ever growing web of evil crafted by the half-alive mad monk known as Rasputin. Things get complicated and Hellboy finds himself battling to save the world.

Mignola’s skills as a storyteller were still rough around the edges at this point. John Byrne providing the script to Mignola’s plot helps some, though at times the characters seem slightly off in their decisions. Viewed as a standalone though, it is nothing short of epic.

Each book in the series seems to stray farther and father from that initial pulp premise. But Seed of Destruction is definitely a good piece of pulp. Recommended.

Super-Powered Comics: Umbrella Academy: The Apocalypse Suite

With the second volume, “Dallas”, coming to an end I thought I would take a look back at one of the greatest new super-powered concepts of the last few years: Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba’s The Umbrella Academy.

When I first heard of the book a year or so before its release, I got excited. I already really enjoyed Ba’s work on both De:Tales and his Image book with Matt Fraction, Casanova. And as I glanced over the announcement, I saw the name Gerard. Instantly I got excited to see Gerard Jones returning to comics. Jones was the writer of some really solid books back in the nineties: Prime, Wonder Man, Green Lantern, El Diablo, etc.) He left the industry late in the decade after his books continuously were canceled.

I was somewhat chagrined when I read another article about it and noticed it was not Gerard Jones behind it, but Gerard Way, lead singer of My Chemical Romance.

Now I have to be honest here. I know My Chemical Romance has a lot of fans out there. I mean, a lot. But I am sure as heck not one of them. I find their music to be dreary, tedious, and unbelievably trite. But still I thought the Umbrella Academy looked good. Ba was still there after all, and his art was fantastic.

So I picked it up. And I was glad for it.

The Umbrella Academy takes weird conceits straight out of the playbook of a Grant Morrison or Warren Ellis, twists them in to a whole new form, and unleashes them on the page in an utterly readable manner. This isn’t an existential clusterf**k the way JLA: Rock of Ages or Final Crisis were. The storytelling always remains clear and the characters and their personalities shine through.

The book revolves around six of the seven children taken by a genius decades ago and raised as the country’s super-beings. Decades later, the family hates each other. But when the man that created the original academy dies, they find themselves drawn back together to defend the world from a new wave of threats, one originating from within their very midst.

The cast is well laid out for a team book with the right level of interplay between all the main players, both personality and power-wise. The villains are something out of an acid-fueled Mignola page. Doctor Terminal, the Orchestra Verdammten, Zombie-Robot Gustave Eiffel... these are cool and crazy whack-jobs unlike the world has ever seen. And they are all fun and different. You will be hard pressed to find anything like any of these characters from the big two.

Ba delivers on the art side with a strange style I like to call proportioned-Mignola. The Hellboy creator’s art style is clearly an influence. But Ba takes it and makes it his own... and then some. He brings solid story-telling and a unique look to every page.

Oh, and did I mention the series won the Eisner for Best Limited Series? Sure did. And I cannot think of many books more deserving. If you haven’t already, you owe it to yourself to check out Umbrella Academy: The Apocalypse Suite today. Highest Recommendation.