Comics
Days Missing, Vol. 1 Phil Hester, David Hine, Ian Edginton and Matz. Archaia, $19.95 (160p) ISBN 978-1-932386-84-4
The Stewart is a lonely immortal who for hundreds of millions of years has been trying to breed peers from the material available to him on Earth. Blessed with the ability to wind back time one day whenever calamity strikes, he has been guiding mammals toward intelligence and wisdom ever since his first choice—dinosaurs—were taken from him by an event so large even he could not reverse it. In the millions of years since hominids first appeared, the Stewart has erased apocalypse after apocalypse from an unknowing humanity's past, steering us past extinction and folly toward near-godhood. This volume recounts five such interventions, ranging from a doomsday plague to nanotech research gone horribly right. The Stewart's great power is tempered by its limitations, and his potential for arrogance is tempered both by empathy and the fact that he does not always win—even his victories come with bitter costs. Although Days Missing takes liberties with history and it's a bit Eurocentric, it's still a tolerable entry in the Secret History genre. (Mar.)
From the Ashes Bob Fingerman. IDW, $19.99 paper (176p) ISBN 978-1-60010-600-2
This “speculative memoir” chronicles the misadventures of writer/artist Fingerman and his wife, Michele, in a postapocalyptic Manhattan. Despite being bombed out and irradiated, New York City is still rife with assorted factions representing the worst of humanity, only now those groups are writ large and lawless since the restraints of conventional civilization no longer exist. While a far cry from the all-out horror of a Mad Max—style landscape, Fingerman's wasteland is overrun with homophobic religious zealots, insane right-wing politicos and cannibalistic foodies, while the last bastions of human decency prove to be a plethora of mutants and zombies (or “reanimated Americans,” as they prefer to be called). Bob and Michele wander through all of this with a wry acceptance familiar to anyone who's ever lived in New York City, serving as the heart of an end-of-the-world narrative that wrings a wealth of humor from its potentially bleak scenario while making pointed observations about the idiocy of humanity and how it's likely never to change. A fun read, spiced with highly appealing artwork, this one's a solid winner. Plus it gets extra geek credit for inside jokes involving Zardoz and cannibal cinema auteur Ruggero Deodato. (Mar.)
Ultimo, Vol. 1 Stan Lee and Hiroyuki Takei. Viz, $9.99 (219p) ISBN 978-1-4215-3132-8
In this bizarre international coproduction, Marvel Comics legend Lee (Spider-Man; X-Men) pairs up with artist Takei (Shaman King). Lee himself cameos as a crazy inventor-cum-scholar in 12th-century Japan transporting two doll-like robot boys to his clients. Bandits attack and activate the robots as Lee reveals that one is an incarnation of pure good and the other pure evil, named Ultimo and Vice, respectively. Lee has invented the robots to discover, outlandishly enough, “which is stronger, good or evil.” Cut to present-day Japan, where average high school kid Yamato stumbles upon an inanimate Ultimo in an antiques shop. Yamato turns out to be the reincarnation of one of the 12th-century bandits, a good-hearted freedom fighter also named Yamato. Lee's premise is dead in the water, and Ultimo proves to be a laughably bad adventure. Ultimo's fights with Vice play out the empty old good versus evil stock premise of American comics. The book also captures several of manga's worst clichés. In one scene a school friend walks in on Yamato kneeling over Ultimo in bed; it's simultaneously a nod to unappealing erotic romantic comedies and yaoi. The artwork is adequate yet unmemorable—Lee's character is ridiculously manly and his caricatured face appears throughout the book, well after the joke has worn thin. (Feb.)
King: A Comics Biography—The Special Edition Ho Che Anderson. Fantagraphics, $34.99 (288p) ISBN 978-1-60699-310-1
Some who read this deluxe repackaging of Anderson's epic three-part biography of Martin Luther King Jr. will come away thinking that the great leader is even more remote and unknowable than before—and there is nothing wrong with that. King has long been a figure so ubiquitous in American culture that little of his true self remains in his frequently invoked image and words. Anderson does the man a favor by taking a spiky, fractured approach to his subject and refusing to plant a halo on his troubled head. Much of the book (packaged nicely with previously unprinted material, sketches, and a somewhat beside-the-point modern-day “prelude” titled Black Dogs) tracks King from his college days in the 1950s to his death, jamming each page with noirishly drawn frames and tightly packed political debates. Though all the great moments of his civil rights battle are here (from the March on Washington to his less-successful housing campaign in Chicago), Anderson doesn't resort to the cheap cinematic trick of success and fadeout. There is more disappointment here than celebration, suffused with the sorrowful sense of a long, long battle just barely begun. A crowning achievement, like the man it portrays. (Feb.)
