Elephantmen #35 – Review

By: Richard Starkings (writer & lettering), Boo Cook & Axel Medellin (art), Gregory Wright, Cook & Medellin (colors)

The Story: Untold tales of the circa 2239 war in Eurasia between the Elephantmen and the human survivors of the viral apocalypse.

What’s good: There’s a lot of flexibility to add material to a back-story when the whole story is only 30-40 issues old.  Usually the term “retcon” has a dirty connotation in comics and I think we’re all sick of seeing new layers added to the origin of a character like Batman.  How many dear childhood friends did Bruce Wayne have that he’s never mentioned again in the 1000+ comics since Batman first showed up???  But, with a young story like Elephantmen, there is all kinds of white space left to be explored in the timeline that Starkings has created over the past ~5 years.  Sure, it’s a little odd that we never heard about these Chinese Tigermen before now…..but who cares since they don’t really contradict anything either.   The Tigermen are cool and add a neat new wrinkle to the struggle between Africa and Chine in post-virus Eurasia AND they and another chapter to the Yvette character.  In some ways, reading stories like this makes me jealous of folks who got to read a series like the X-Men or Avengers when those series were still fresh and there was still so much unknown about the main characters.

So, to wrap up: Chinese Tigermen are very cool and Yvette is bad-ass.

Elephantmen #34 – Review

War Toys II by: Richard Starkings (writer & letterer), Boo Cook (art), Gregory Wright, Cook & Axel Medellin (colors)

Panya back-up by: Monifa Aldridge (writer) & Axel Medellin (art & colors)

The Story: In the main story, we revisit the Elephantmen war in virus-ravaged Europe while in the back-up we learn more about the origin of Panya (Sahara’s body-double).

What’s Good: As I’ve noted in a few recent reviews, for the last few months, Richard Starkings has made a concerted effort to make Elephantmen “new reader friendly” by revisiting some of the classic themes of the series.  But, he keeps giving new wrinkles to established readers so that we don’t get bored along the way.  Cool!

So, I was reading the main story and thinking, “This is all retread material from the War Toys story.  Oh, and here is Yvette from War Toys: Yvette.  I’ve seen all this before.” I understood that we’re getting this story because it’s important that new readers know about this Elephantmen back-story and I was okay with that because the series probably needs a few new readers to keep going.  And….I was very happy looking at the great Boo Cook artwork (more on that below).  Then I turned the page and there is a person in a spacesuit (“Whoa! That’s new!”) and he/she gets into a rocket and jets to Earth (“Definitely haven’t seen this before!”).  I won’t spoil the ending, but Starkings has done it again: He managed to bring new readers up to speed while also giving the existing readers something to chew on.  I am very intrigued by this new revelation.

The Panya back-up story was also a gem because she is shaping up to be a very important player in the future stories of the Elephantmen and she’ll be more interesting with a developed background story.

From an appearance standpoint, I say it every month: Elephantmen is one of the best-looking comics on the stands.  Not only is the interior art GREAT, but the whole package just looks awesome.  Again this month, we get two stunning covers with wonderful design.  Compare this to your typical Big 2 comic where they pay some artist to produce “20 dramatic covers featuring Batman” and then they just slap them on the comics without a lot of care as to whether the cover fits the story.  Elephantmen is the opposite of that: it looks like it is produced by people who give a crap about the comic!

Elephantmen #30 – Review

By: Richard Starkings (writer), Axel Medellin (art), Gregory Wright & Medellin (colors) & Comicraft (letters)

The Story: Hip Flask finally finds some love.

What’s Good: This was the best issue of Elephantmen (for me) in a long time.  This title is at its best when it is almost a slice-of-life story that follows these tragic Elephantmen through their daily lives because they simply don’t fit in.  They are huge and hulking and stick out like a sore thumb, and this aspect of their nature is best illustrated by contrasting our protagonists Hip Flask (the hippo), Ebony Hide (the elephant) and Obadiah Horn (the rhino) with the women in the series.  Simply stated, you don’t get a full sense of how large and out of place these characters are until you see them interacting with the outstanding human female characters in the book: Sahara, Vanity & Miki.

Obviously, this is a roundabout way of saying that this issue got back to more of this “slice-of-life” story telling and away from the action that had been the calling card for this Questionable Things story arc.  And, that’s really what I really enjoy most about Elephantmen.

Of course, one huge part of that “slice-of-life” drama is the love lives of the Elephantmen, especially the more tragic hero characters of Hip and Ebony.  How are these guys ever going to find love?  Are they destined (cursed?) to just spend their lives alone?  They have women who care for them, but… well, they’re huge and hulking and probably smell funny and you could see how they’re probably not destined to be all that lucky in love.  Well, let’s just say that this issue addresses Hip’s love life in a very complete way and (as a reader) I couldn’t be happier about where Hip is at the end of this issue.

I’ve enjoyed Medellin’s art on this series, but he really took it to another level with this issue.  The first two panels (both full page splashes) really establish the tone for the book.  The first shows Hip Flask, carrying his groceries home in the rain.  He just looks every bit the crusty, rumpled and soaked detective that he is.  I love how his whiskers even give him a sort of five o’clock shadow that you’d see on Bogart in an evening scene.  And, he just looks huge as Medellin has Hip fill almost the entire page.  Then, you flip the page and there’s Miki who doesn’t look crusty or rumpled.  She’s just standing there in a transparent raincoat looking sexy as hell and just by the way the page is framed, you can tell that she’s 1/4 the size of Hip.  This is a great issue from an art standpoint.  That splash of Miki in the rain has probably the best rain effect I’ve ever seen in a comic and could almost win an Eisner for the coloring alone with the way the neon signs reflect off her raincoat.  You really need to see it.

Elephantmen #27 – Review

By: Richard Starkings (writer), Axel Medellin (art) & Gregory Wright (colors)

The Story: Someone is interested in reactivating the Elephantmen.

What’s Good: Elephantmen is always a very pretty comic book, but it has had a bit of a revolving door on art duties for the last 12 issues or so, so it very nice that the title welcomes Axel Medellin to art duties.  Unlike a few recent artists on this series, he captures dark and dirty Ladronn/Moritat look of how this series is “supposed” to feel.  Medellin is touted as a new “regular” artist for this series and it can only be hoped that future issues look as nice as this one does.

From a story standpoint, after months of noodling around the issue, this issue reveals that the bad dudes behind the efforts to reactivate the elephantment are, in fact, former Mappo scientists.  This bodes ill for our band of protagonists and makes it appear that just as they are getting their lives in order, they may never be truly free of the bloody missions for which they were created.  Elephantmen is at its best when exploring the humanity of our half-human characters and it would appear that we will be heaping doses of that in future months.

Richard Starkings always puts out a very professionally done comic and this issue is no exception.  A good bit of advice for creators making their first comics would be to look at Elephantmen for how to succeed on the “little stuff”: nice cover, good printing, excellent lettering, footnotes referring the reader to events in earlier issues, etc.   Woody Allen said that “80% of success is just showing up” and something similar could be said about just nailing the easy stuff on a comic book that many creators and big publishers fumble the ball on.