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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WHEN WE WERE ULTRA: THE ENDLESS NIGHT OF JOHNNY DOMINO (NIGHT MAN V. 1, NIGHT MAN INFINITY)

Even though my childhood experienced the height of Steve Englehart's run as a Marvel writer in the 70's, I admit to being a bit ambivalent about him as a whole.  Part of that is due to his less-than-stellar work for Marvel in the 80's.

That being said, I am pretty confident in saying if it wasn't for his Marvel work in the 80's, Night Man would not have existed...and considering Night Man was arguably the most successful of the Ultraverse characters in terms of success in other media (Night Man ran for two seasons in television syndication), that's a good thing.

You see, Englehart had been tapped to become the regular writer for Daredevil after Frank Miller's legendary 'Born Again' arc.  His plans were for Matt Murdoch and Karen Page to relocate to San Francisco and join the West Coast Avengers among other things.  Reading Night Man, I could see some of what would have been an Englehart DD even though he took a much different direction as the series developed.

Johnny Domino is a well-known jazz musician who gets into a car crash with a cable car in San Francisco.  He ends up with some shrapnel in his brain that destroys his sleep center...and something else.  It turns out that cable car was the one that was hit by the Entity that jumpstarted the Ultraverse, and Johnny also finds he picks up any evil thoughts in his general vicinity.  Deprived of his capacity to slumber and having failed to save someone from a murderous being called Death Mask, Johnny becomes the Night Man to combat a variety of evil much darker than any other Ultra has encountered.

The first few issues read very much like they were salvaged and revised from potential Englehart Daredevil issues.  The villains are grotesque but grounded, and you could easily see the New Mutants subbing for Freex in the Mangle storyline.  Later on, in issue #15 ("The Night Man Before Christmas"), there's a story that could have been intended for DD villain The Jester during his Marvel run.  But the series pretty quickly tilts into supernatural territory with the introduction of Rhiannon, a Celtic sorceress who ate human organs to continue living her life and was romantically fixated on Night Man--and was brought to vibrant life by artist Kyle Hotz, who should have been the regular penciler (but we'll get to that later)--and it.  just. CLICKS.  The idea of a more or less 'baseline normal' ultra figuring his way through building an identity and making the playing field between him and actual ultras level while the supernatural world keeps intruding really worked for me, giving the book a 'Kolchak The Night Stalker In a Cape' vibe that set it apart from other Ultraverse titles.

There were other things I really enjoyed about this first run....Englehart really shows us the process that take Johnny from just a man with a peculiar ultra power to a full on hero--for example his costume and weaponry is developed over time.  I really enjoyed the relationship Johnny had with his father, who quickly figures out his secret identity.  It's oddly appealing that a major subplot that runs most issues is not about ultras but Johnny's efforts to stop a developer from raising the amusement park where his father works (and also in the later half of the series serves as his...ummm, Night Cave?).  And if we discount Strangers baddies TNTNT, who keep showing up, the villains in this series are suitably macabre.  In addition to the aforementioned Rhiannon, I particularly dug Chalk, a murdered gangbanger who possesses the chalk outline around his dead body to gain revenge.  Not only is it a strikingly weird visual, Englehart manages to use the character to link Johnny with his romantic interest for the later half of the volume, Gail Yee.

There is one peculiar thing though.  Starting with issue #9 ("Solitary"), Englehart introduces Teknight, a robotic enemy masterminded by The Strangers' J.D. Hunt.  That Teknight is disassembled pretty quickly, but a second one is created based on actual armor--and is then possessed by Theodoric, an ancient warlord in issuer #11 ("Turning On").  Englehart spends a lot of time with the Theodoric Teknight before participating in a giant crossover in the annuals for both Night Man and The Strangers.  It's a weird tangent that seems at odds with the spookier stuff the series is concerned with.

While Englehart writes all but one issue (#16 was written by R.A. Jones...and its one of the worst issues of the series*), this is a title that once again suffers from a carousel of artists.  At first we've got another Murderer's Row situation, as the initial issue is penciled by Darick Robertson, the next two by Gene Ha, and the seven after that by Kyle Hotz. Hotz' tenure is really where the book hits its stride, with his moody pencils complementing Englehart's brooding writing perfectly.  Hotz is gone partway through issue  #11**--although he will also draw the Night Man versus Wolverine one-shot--and that begins a brief round of artist roulette before John Dennis and Dean Zachary hand off issues through Infinity Issue save for issue #23's turn by Robert Ruiz.  I think that once again the constant change of artists was part of the reason Night Man was, according to its editor Roland Mann, one of the lower selling Ultraverse titles.  I would like to point out that according to Mann, Englehart wasn't upset with the artist changes, even though Zachary's credit on issue #18 is prefaced with 'Hey!  A Permanent Penciler!,' which sounds like there's a touch of exasperation.

Not surprisingly, when Marvel took over things got shaken up.  According to Mann:

"He was one of the few who were excited when I let him know Marvel had purchased the company. Like most of us on staff, he saw Potential in what Marvel ownership could mean: more eyes and higher sales."

...although there is a definite sense of chaos to the last few episodes.  The return of Chalk in issue #21 ("Chalkmark In A Rainstorm") is abruptly shoved aside for another Loki appearance where the Reality Gem splits Night Man into a number of different duplicates representing the different paths he could take.  Our hero manages to banish all of them but one, leading to a final issue with one Night Man tracking down the other...only for Rhiannon to show up, offer one of the Night Men magick and banishing the other one to what we will discover is 616....

I was taken aback by how much I enjoyed Night Man.  I really suspect that Englehart had a special affinity for this character and the mystical background, which is usually outside of his comfort zone.  There's some truly excellent art in the first half of the run, and some vivid and unusual takes on the development of a hero.  I would recommend it.

Of course, after the Infinity issue there's a whole other volume, one that Englehart intended to be a launchpad for two separate books featuring Johnny Domino.  But that volume lasted only four issues (the shortest run of all the Ultraverse second volumes), the aforementioned special guest starring Wolverine, and a miniseries guesting Gambit.  But I'll be covering all that next time!

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

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

*--According to Roland Mann:

"I seem to recall Steve got so far behind we ended up giving him an option to have a fill in on Night Man or on Strangers. He did not want either, but--again, because Night Man wasn't selling well, and late books become fully returnable (and thus can cost a lot of money), the option was pick one or cancel Night Man. As the editor, I wanted the fill-in and not a canceled book. Steve opted for that option as well."

 **--Again according to Mr. Mann:

"Kyle left partly because he was unhappy with the inking and partly because he wanted to do something else."

WHEN WE WERE ULTRA: Prequel, I Say! (ULTRAVERSE YEAR ONE: DEATH OF THE SQUAD)

 It's a short one this time out.

This miniseries is a prequel to Hardcase...although writer James D. Hundall wanted to tell it before that series started.  And because it was published well into the book's run, Hundall has tacked a...peculiar framing device on it.

You see, by the time we learn about that first year prior to The Jumpstart Event that launches The Strangers and, by extension, the entire Ultraverse, the big reveal about Choice had already been made.  As such, Hundall decides that Linda, who was Hardcase's girlfriend/coworker on the Squad and was the, ummmm, unwilling brain tissue donor so that Choice could have ultrapowers, narrates this tale.

From the hospital bed that's she's been in a coma for the entire series....during, it is implied, as she is passing over to the other side.

It's...weird, to say the least.

The overarcing story itself is pretty good--in some aspects, like when Hundall is defining exactly what Aladdin is supposed to be, it's extremely good--but there are some puzzling bits.  In the first issue, we're introduced to a number of other people who were hit by the same 'jumpstart' that hit Tom, Linda and the others.  Some of them go on to be characters in the Ultraverse proper, like the Hardcase villains Headknocker and dust Devil....but with one exception, we never really see these characters again.  And that one exception is there long enough to serve as a cliffhanger for the third issue, only for us to be told that character was never connected to that cliffhanger and he became a photographer.  Uh....okay.

We should probably mention that third issue ("City on Fire").  If you go past the cover teasing some sort of confrontation with Rex Mundi, the bulk of the issue is about the Squad ignoring orders and trying to help during the Rodney King Riots.  Reading this issue at this point in the project, which has very pointed avoided any 'world outside your window' references to real events, it comes off as very awkward.  The set pieces are as expected and all I could think was 'why are we doing this here?'  And the reintroduction of Javinder, a young Sikh(?) man with electrical powers, just so he can accidentally fry some looters invading his father's convenience store implies a next issue that just isn't--and on some level, readers at the time must've known that issue would never show up because there's only one issue left in the mini and it has to be all about NME wrecking the Squad.  Death of The Squad should have either ignored the Riots or extended the mini by one issue so that they could deal with the implications of that third issue properly.

With the exception of the first issue (which is done by Scott Benefiel), the art for this mini is by George Dove, and it's fairly consistent with the artwork I've seen in all the issues of Hardcase.  It's not remarkable, but it also avoids the disconnect almost all of the other titles has suffered from when a variety of artists work on the same title--or, in this case, a spin-off from a title.

Some mention should be made of the back-ups that appeared in the first three issues, which showed us where certain other Ultraverse characters were in that year prior to the San Francisco Jumpstart.  Mike Barr tells a story about how Eden Blake and her daughter interacted with Starburst in issue #1, we learn what Rune was doing at the time in #2, and #3 is what amounts to a trailer for Codename: Firearm.  They're all okay, although the third backup doesn't do much to make me want to read Codename: Firearm (of course, I'm lucky; I've already done that so you don't have to...)

Ultraverse Year One: Death of The Squad is a good read overall--although I wonder if it wouldn't have been better served as three stand-alone flashback issues placed between story arcs in Hardcase.  That would have gotten rid of the need for the whole 'Linda narrates like William Holden in Sunset Boulevard' framework I found mildly offputting.  I do recommend it.

There's one more mini to cover before I launch into the next core title (and that one's going to take two articles given the second volume, the minis associated with it and the suspected intrigue behind the scenes!).  It's another split book, although it's one that's...kinda telling one story from two directions?  Join us next time as we give the Ultraverse Stage over to the bad guys with Lord Pumpkin/Necromantra!

(Or maybe I'll skip over Lord Pumpkin/Necromantra for a mo' and go to Volume One of Night Man, as I have loads to talk about there and I'm still working out what to say with that mini....) 

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