It Was Good To Have a Sidekick

So awhile ago I happily discussed The Next Issue Project, wherein many modern-day writers and artists would essentially continue defunct old series from the golden age of comics, using characters that are now in the public domain. A great idea indeed. Then, more recently, I geeked out over the fact that it was, supposedly, about to come out, and was going to include characters created by the great, twisted Fletcher Hanks.

Unfortunately, it did not end up coming out the week that I expected. I have no idea why this was, and it’s perfectly likely that it was the fault of the website I heard the news at, and nobody involved in the project, but one way or another, Fantastic Comics 24 finally came out this past Wednesday. And it was good… very good.

Erik Larsen is behind all of this, and in his column for Comic Book Resources I think he summed it up very nicely:

This isn’t a depressing “everything has turned to crap and look how old, tired and silly looking these characters are” story — we’ve seen those tepid tales time and time again ever since Alan Moore trotted out Marvel Man. This isn’t some pale imitation of an Alan Moore story — it’s an upbeat, energetic “look how cool these characters are and can be” type of thing.

You can read the full column here, if you like.

Now, I can’t speak to why the book took awhile to come out, but I can guess. The Next Issue Project is made up of many short stories by some of the best creators around, and not only that, but different people working on the issue had different ideas concerning what sort of paper they wanted to use. Some preferred nice, clean, new paper, while others wanted something that would look and feel like an old, faded comic book. It turned it into a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too situation, as the kind of paper, and the “quality” of the colors and inks literally change from story to story. This is just one example of the kind of care that was put into the book–care that makes it worth the wait, and the 6 dollar price tag.

I should also add that the thing is gigantic: bigger than your average comic book in all dimensions. There are 64 pages, yet the longest story only runs 13, and the amount of crazy and incredible ideas per page is ridiculous. Essentially, it seems that everyone was given free reign to do whatever they wanted with the characters: some go more for parody, some go for a surreal update, and just about every other base is touched as well. We get two separate, funny takes on the teenage sidekick, one of which is actually a two-page prose pulp story (the likes of those which were often included in old school comics).

The whole thing is great fun from end to end, with the closest thing to a misstep being the bizarre last story, which works just fine but is a strange note to end the proceedings on. The highlight, though, is definitely the beautiful and dreamlike resurrection of Fletcher Hanks’ seminal Stardust character, by Mike Allred and Joe Keatings. It’s pitch-perfect, hitting the right notes without seeming derivative, and telling its own nostalgic story without simply parodying everything about Hanks’ work that was worth laughing at (earlier on, a Space Smith story by Tom Scioli does just that, and does it very well).

Without going into a specific story-by-story breakdown there isn’t much else to say, but rarely does one find so much great work so closely packed together–the different stories all came from the same general idea, yet none of them are too similar. I can’t wait for the next issue.