WHEN WE WERE ULTRA: TROUBLE DOUBLED (NIGHT MAN V. 2, NIGHT MAN VS WOLERINE, NIGHT MAN & GAMBIT)

Going into the 'Black September' reboot, Night Man was not selling well.  According to the editor for the book, Roland Mann, Marvel didn't ask for any changes like they did for the rebooted Mantra...but Steve Englehart had an idea for a change based on the last few issues resulting in two different Johnny Dominos.

According to Mr. Englehart on his website: 

"On the one hand, he was the new, more magickal guy seen in Volume 2, issues 1-4...in what really wasn't a bad story under the circumstances...

...and at the same time, he was the original guy, now lost in the Marvel Universe, where he fought Wolverine. And both were real."

It was Englehart's intention that Marvel put out two Night Man comics, one Marvel and one Ultraverse, and his pitch for what he was intending showed up as a one shot you could mail in for, The Night Man vs. Wolverine.  We see Night Man show up at the amusement park he operated in, only in Earth 616.  This park turns out to be a blind for one of Arcade's Murderworlds...and Johnny ends up fighting, then teaming up with, Wolverine to find a way out.  The best thing about this one-shot is the return of Kyle Hotz to the art--once again his macabre, dark pencils fits what Englehart is doing damn near perfectly.  But you can see there's been a shift in emphasis from characterization to action.  Since one of the major charms of Night Man was the characterization of Johnny Domino and the tension between his relative normalcy and the weird mystical stuff he's now dealing with...there feels like something has changed.  It's okay for what it is (as a long-time Arcade fan, I enjoyed the way the villain seems a bit bored with his game until Night Man shows up), but there's a nagging sense it could be better.

That shift to more action oriented storytelling carries over into the second volume, which begins in media res with a throwdown with the werewolf Nokolai Apocaloff.  It seems Nikolai has spent his time in prison a) figuring out Night Man is really Johnny Domino, b) figuring out that the guy who acted as a sniper last time they fought was Johnny's father Eddie, and c) kidnapping Eddie to force Johnny into battle.  Given that Johnny is still struggling to understand the magicks Rhiannon gave him, it's not surprising the fight doesn't end well...and Nikolai kidnapping Gail Yee and bundling her away to the crumbling castle owned by an ancestor of Rasputin, which has a portal into the Godwheel, which Johnny goes through the portal to meet Lord Pumpkin, which...

Needless to say, it was a bit of a mess.  Englehart does strive hard to advance characterization but in all the rushing some key beats get lost.  Primary among those lost beats is the fact that Gail turns out to be an ultra herself...although other than that revelation we learn nothing about Gail's back story.  The later half drags in Mangle and implies how Mangle is Lord Pumpkin's dimensional twin (?).  The ending of the fourth issue is confusing, partially because it's conveyed as a bunch of expository dialogue by Pumpkin's raven sidekick.  It's all very confusing, and I would not be surprised if there wasn't some interference by Marvel to make it more 'extreme' (Roland Mann claims "Marvel never really asked for changes in Night Man.").

The pencils for three of the issues are by Andrew Wildman (Gabriel Gecko penciled the third issue), and its....okay.  It's kind of hard to get excited about Wildman's work after being reminded of how perfect the Englehard/Hotz collaboration was in the Night Man vs. Wolverine one shot.

According to Mann, the reason for Night Man V. 2's cancellation after four issues was "sales...purely sales. It wasn't selling and had to be cut."  And that would be the end of it....

If Night Man/Gambit hadn't come out.

Outside of v. 1's fill-in issue, this three-part miniseries is the only Night Man story not written by Steve Englehart.  David Quinn takes the wheel for this mess, and boy is it not good.  Dietrich Smith does the majority of the pencils, with Andrew Wildman helping out for the second issue.  In this wreck of a story, the 616 Night Man heads to the Xavier Institute for help with the way his skin seems to be melting off him and his increasing mental instability.  The only one home is Gambit, who is trying to politely turn down 'goddess of thieves' Chandra's offer to come away with her to Ultra-Earth to start again.  Meanwhile, on Ultra-Earth, Rhiannon is trying to halt the degeneration of Magickal Night Man by heading to where 616's Nighty is and merging the two...only for Magickal Nighty to end up in Chandra's clutches.  There's a lot of gobbledygook with these four characters, and I think Quinn tries to claim that Chandra and Rhiannon have a similar 'dimensional twin' situation going between them that Lord Pumpkin and Mangle had in v. 2.  Oh, and out of nowhere it's revealed that Rhiannon was Night Man's mother due to an affair she had with Eddie.  It ends up with everybody back in their respective corners, one Night Man sacrificing himself to avoid further degeneration and the other faking his own death, giving up his identity and restarting his career with a composition he had stuck in his head throughout the story.

This was brutal.  It's downright nonsensical and, like with most Ultraverse/Marvel crossovers, the POV is firmly on Remy even though I think Quinn was trying to resolve some dangling threads left by Englehart.  Much like with Codename: Firearm, Quinn also tries to make a sort of connection between what he's doing and what came before--but there is so much stuff stuffed in here, cast out to us readers with very little indication of why that stuff is all about.  Many of the action sequences are confusingly laid out (although that might be more due to Dietrich Smith's pencils than Quinn's script).  The Rhiannon development is particularly bizarre, as the revelation throws her relationship with Johnny into a different light in odds with the very implicit romantic chemistry they had in the two volumes.  I think it's very telling that editor Roland Mann is only partially credited for the second issue, with the remaining part of the second and the third issue to be edited by Phil Crain--a possible reflection of the chaos that must've been going on behind the scenes once Marvel took full ownership of the imprint.  The whole miniseries leaves a really bad taste in the mouth, equal parts the dirt of depression and the lemon of confusion.

In a way, it's kind of amazing that Glen A. Larson decided to make Night Man into a syndicated television series, Nightman (the space was gone in the title) that lasted two seasons, and that Steve Englehart was invited to contribute three episodes.  Even though the comic never sold well according to Mann, the television series makes Johnny Domino the Ultraverse character with the biggest pop culture exposure.

If I don't finally complete my thoughts on Lord Pumpkin/Necromantra next time, I'm going to turn my attention to a series that wasn't a series--three one shots featuring a bad girl with a sword, a plunging neckline and a number of different codenames who ended up lowering the curtain on the entire Ultraverse.   And while we're at it, we'll also witness what I suspect is the first Marvel work written by a certain Cleveland native who will go on and help build the Ultimate Universe. It's time to meet the late arrival Maria the Witch Hunter...or Angel of Destruction...or just Angel in Witch Hunter, Angels of Destruction and Ultraverse: Future Shock.  

Until then....why be meta when you can be ultra?

Thanks once again to Roland Moore for his insight and answers to my questions!

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