[Concluding Doug Glassman's "Indie-Pendence Month"; Doug also Tumblrs at Hell Yeah '80s Marvel!]

I’ve saved the smallest and newest publisher of Indie-Pendence Month for last. Independent comics publisher Cosmic Times started up just a few years back in West Palm Beach, and they are helping assemble a strong local talent base -- local for me, at least. South Florida has a huge amount of untapped creative potential, and Cosmic Times saw that potential after Nathan Hill, Mervyn McKoy, and Dawson Chen turned to Kickstarter to fund a new title. I was happy to make a donation to a book with a title like Giant Robot Warrior Maintenance Crew, as a fan of both giant robots and satire.

Instead of following the pilots, Giant Robot Warrior Maintenance Crew (GRWMC)’s main character is Erica, a genius mechanic and a fangirl of the titular giant robot, Herotron. When she's rejected from the Herotron piloting program, she signs on to become part of its maintenance crew. A huge robot such as Herotron requires a large team to handle its many problems; they aren’t helped by a bureaucracy helmed by the tyrannical lead pilot. In fact, Herotron is so large -- and it causes so much damage -- that it has its own onboard accountant, who goes mad from the pilots’ abuses.

One problem which makes GRWMC hard to crack at first is that Herotron is never shown in full. As a parody of Voltron and other similar mecha shows, it’s easy to imagine the details based on the few images we get. But parts of the parody seem to contradict the idea of having an on-board maintenance crew in the first place. Herotron is powered up by a long sequence spoken by the five pilots; this was present in Voltron because the robot was formed by five individual components. However, in the book, there’s no talk of combining; indeed, if Herotron had multiple parts, it would create some plot holes. It’s not too big of an issue unless you’re very into mecha.

GRWMC plays out as an workplace comedy, with antics reminiscent of The Office, Spin City, and Office Space. Herotron’s crew is mostly comprised of veteran mechanics who deal with recurring problems like the faulty “Blazer Sword” and alien parasites in Herotron’s crotch area. While these begin as running gags and filthy puns, by issue three, it’s clear that the higher-ups have no intention of sidelining Herotron for necessary repairs. Important suggestions to the pilots are laughed at, almost as if the mechanics are wacky comedic sidekicks like the mice in Voltron or 7-Zark-7 in Battle of the Planets.

As a viewpoint character, Erica is a little bland at first, but her disappointment with her dream job makes her work even harder to succeed. Through her, we meet teammates such as the grizzled Jeb and the angry Rodney, who all know that Herotron is obsolete but are under contract to keep it going. There are a few crew members who don’t get named who I’d like to know more about, especially one who resembles a giant hamster.

The pilots are brutal parodies of the Voltron Force, and while their characterization isn’t a key element, their antics make for some of the best moments. Tristan, the headstrong Keith analogue, is essentially Zap Brannigan without the hidden cowardice. Guy, the parody of Lance, is the only sane person on the ship, while Hump, the spoof of Hunk, eats a lot; their lack of personality is actually accurate to Voltron. Princess Luna doesn’t get any of Allura’s strong characterization; instead, she’s mostly used as the impetus for the accountant’s madness. The last pilot is Boomie; where on the original team this spot was taken by the brilliant Pidge, Boomie is actually a parody of the various aliens on the “Vehicle Voltron” team adapted from Dairugger XV. Boomie speaks in only words rhyming with “boom” and seems to be more deranged every time we see him.

Mervyn McKoy’s artwork kept me interested in the series even though first issue felt a little flat to me. While not overly anime-stylized, GRWMC has just enough anime feeling to add to the nature of it being a Voltron spoof, a tone aided by Dawson Chen’s bright coloring. I have to give McKoy a lot of credit for having excellent backgrounds, almost never reverting to block-color. Hill and McKoy also picked up a great choice of fonts, switching to a blockier, authoritative “narrator font” to emulate Peter Cullen’s Voltron narration. This leads into a hilarious fourth-wall-breaking gag introduced at the end of issue two that I won’t reveal here.

There seem to be no plans to collect the first issues of Giant Robot Warrior Maintenance Crew in trade, although a sequel is entirely possible with another Kickstarter. At this point, the best way to get the individual issues is through Cosmic Times at various cons and online. I met McKoy and the Cosmic Times crew at Florida Supercon earlier this month and I was impressed with their efforts. Apart from a slightly high cover price and a few odd quirks related to being a Voltron parody, GRWMC gets high marks for a unique concept and excellent art.

I hope you’ve enjoyed Indie-Pendence Month. I’ve tried to include a range of publishers, creators, and genres, and some books will be easier to find than others. I left Dynamite and Valiant out because the former mostly produces licensed titles and I’m saving the latter for a special look at the rise, fall, and second rise of both Valiant and Image. And one day I’ll review that Zenescope book once my skin stops crawling. Until then, feel free to leave suggestions in the comment thread, and remember: if DC and Marvel start getting you angry, there’s a huge world of alternatives out there.

Craig Yoe has an interesting Facebook page devoted to horror comics. Although I love them, I don’t show a lot of horror comics. Steve “Karswell” Banes in his Horrors Of It All blog does such an excellent job that I try to think of another angle when I do show horror.

So here it is. Three horror stories, slightly different than you might expect. First up, “Weird Tales” from Quality’s Hit Comics #1, which some claim is actually the first comic book horror story, done in 1940. I’m not sure of that, but I’m not ruling it out, either. Something that seems horrible to me is that the artist couldn’t keep the Old Witch’s look consistent on the first page. It also distinguishes itself by the most tepid horrors I’ve ever seen when the hotel “guest” peers through the keyhole at the phantasms haunting the inn. It’s historic, though, if we believe it’s really the first of its genre, so I’m including it.

Superior Comics of Canada published some great horror comics, but the printing was often terrible. The contents of the books were supplied by the Jerry Iger comic shop, and judging by the original artwork for “Here’s to Horror!” from Journey Into Fear #18 (1954), the artists who worked the story did a good job despite knowing how it would look once it came off the presses. A dialog paste-over on page has fallen off, so I’m including the panel from the printed comic where you can see it covered up the girl walking her dog. The artist(s) need not have gone to the trouble to provide an interesting background. Oh, and lead character, the crooner, Lanny, has a condition called spasmodic dysphonia, called “spastic throat” by the doctor in the story.

The scans came from the Heritage Auctions website. Thank you, HA!

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Finally, I found this horror story of the living dead in an unlikely place, a comic book about Native Americans called Redskin #9 (1952). (That word is now considered a racial pejorative; my apologies to those offended.) When horror comics got popular then horrors started showing up in comics of other genres. The cover of this issue, though, has no indication that upon reading the book zombies will be encountered. The artwork is by Edwin Goldfarb and Bob Baer, a team who drew reams of crime and horror comics during this period.

Geoff Johns's Aquaman series had a rocky start, with a short first arc that seemed more focused on attesting to Aquaman's "coolness" than really telling an Aquaman story itself. Aquaman Vol. 2: The Others, however, is a seven-issue collection that feels exceptionally robust, offers a compelling mystery, and spotlights well both Aquaman, his enemies, and his supporting cast. With The Others, the Aquaman title begins to resemble the great early days of Geoff Johns's Green Lantern run.

[Review contains spoilers]

The Others is the kind of story Johns tells well, if often. Aquaman's long-time foe Black Manta hunts Aquaman's former teammates, the Others, and Aquaman searches for both the Others and Manta over the course of the story, discovering the Others a few at a time -- see Justice Society: The Next Age and Justice League Vol. 1: Origin for something similar. Johns succeeds here in teasing out little details about the characters over the course of the story, rewarding attention and keeping the audience reading (how Vostok got his helmet, for one; the nature of the Prisoner's powers as another; but did anyone catch what happened to Shin's neck?). The end, in trademark Johns fashion, is both action-packed and resonates with the character of Aquaman himself.

Johns made Black Manta fearsome already in Brightest Day, and his portrayal of Manta is similarly effective here (helped in the interim by Khary Payton's great turn as Manta in the Young Justice show). Johns plays with time and continuity a bit here, making this the first time Manta meets Aquaman's wife Mera, thus erasing most of Brightest Day (and Brightest Day's Aqualad Jackson Hyde) even as the impetus for the Aquaman series -- Aquaman's decision to remain on land after Brightest Day -- remains in effect. Though I like Aqualad (mostly again because of Young Justice), Johns offers a simple, potent origin for Manta here that I like a lot, especially since the character was something of a cypher before.

Also in Johns-ian fashion, Black Manta's new origin ties him irrevocably to Aquaman, with varying degrees of moral ambiguity and guilt. Aquaman believed Manta killed his father, and in taking revenge Aquaman accidentally killed Manta's father. It is Greek (or Atlantean) tragedy in the highest -- Aquaman was in the wrong, and though he's hardly responsible for all the destruction Manta has wrought since then, he'll never convince himself of that. This, in the style of Johns's Green Lantern and his friend-turned-enemy Sinestro, Superman versus his father's most trusted ally Zod, Flash Wally West battling one-time ally Hunter "Zoom" Zolomon, and so on. (Johns, we should note, also makes much more significant the death of Aquaman's human father, following the same emphasis he placed on the death of Green Lantern's father and the murder of Flash Barry Allen's mother.)

All of this is a great contribution to the Aquaman mythos, and as well as Johns does with Black Manta, it makes me all the more eager to see him introduce Aquaman's brother Orm, the Ocean Master, later in this series.

The flashback aspects in this story to Aquaman's original partnership with the Others is useful because it helps bridge the gap between today's Aquaman and the one we see in Justice League: Origins. Johns uses well Aquaman's "original" costume and especially the necklace Aquaman wears in Origins, such to draw those two stories together. Inasmuch as this story explains about Aquaman's origins -- how he grew up human, when he left the surface after the death of his father -- there remains various gaps as to when Aquaman first ventured to Atlantis, why (if not Brightest Day) he returned to the surface, and so on. I'd eagerly read an Aquaman: Secret Origin story if Johns wrote it, or maybe he'll address these aspects in the "Throne of Atlantis" storyline coming up next.

I rather like artist Ivan Reis's work in these pages. I have not always liked it, finding Reis's sketchy lines too indistinct for my personal taste on cosmic titles like Green Lantern, for instance. No question of Reis's talent, however, and with all the wind and rain that peppers The Others, Reis's less-defined style helps bring forth the mood of the story. I'm still cautious about Reis taking over from Jim Lee on Justice League, but The Others has helped alleviate my concerns somewhat.

In all, Aquaman Vol. 2: The Others creates a more compelling case for continuing to read the Aquaman series than volume one did. Though Johns's conceit that Aquaman is the "least liked" hero both outside comics and within is cute, the character needs more; with The Others, Johns shows Aquaman to be complicated and nuanced, and I'm far more enthusiastic about the third volume now than I was for the second after the first.

[Includes original covers, "Robot Chicken" variant cover]

Up next, something a little different with my review of Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi: Prisoner of Bogan. See you then!

Lester Gillis, AKA Baby Face Nelson, died after a shootout with FBI agents in November, 1934. I heard the story of Baby Face early in my life from my father. It helped form my fascination with the early ’30s motor-gangsters who robbed banks and ran wild. The best account I’ve read of this lawless era is Public Enemies by Bryan Burrough. The book was made into a movie but focused mostly on John Dillinger (and got a lot of details wrong, including Baby Face’s death).

This particular version of the death of Baby Face, drawn by Jack Kirby for Headline Comics #23 (1947), is also loose with the details, editing the story considerably. But the thing that makes this particular crime comic so desirable is it is all Simon and Kirby, full of action, guns and gangsters,

Terry and the Pirates, a phenomenally popular strip, well written and drawn by Milton Caniff, was, like all newspaper features, disposable. Newspapers were thrown out after being read, or used to wrap fish. I’m sure there were people clipping and saving the strips day-by-day, but for the most part newspaper comics were one-and-done. That is, until comic books came along with an insatiable need for content. Then many popular newspaper comics, including Terry, got another life.

The Dragon Lady, one of the most popular characters, is introduced in this first issue of the Terry and the Pirates reprint series from Harvey Comics. (The comic says #3, but it was a continuation of Boy Explorers, which lasted only two issues). Although the Dragon Lady had been introduced in newspapers in 1934, the comic book was published in 1947, which gave it a huge new batch of readers who weren’t around when the original strips were published.

It was another era...China was a faraway place, a strange universe of its own, far from America of the 1930s. Stereotypes were used (Connie especially, although next to Chop Chop of the Blackhawks he seems almost acceptable). Despite being the title figure, Terry Lee was something of a secondary character next to his adult pal, Pat Ryan. Terry grew up later, but in these early strips he’s a callow youngster.