WHEN WE WERE ULTRA: The Difference 25 Years Make, Steve (SLUDGE, SLUDGE: RED X-MAS)

Supposedly, Steve Gerber had no idea for what he could write as his contribution to the Ultraverse. Sure, he was doing Exiles, but that was a short term stunt designed to let readers know that no character was safe. And according to our dear friend Roland Mann:

"The idea was that he should write something along the lines of Man-Thing or Swamp Thing and he wasn't for it. So Chris Ulm said something like "Yeah, you probably couldn't think of anything new to do anyway. So--Sludge. "

And, yes...on the surface, Sludge is Swamp Thing relocated from the swamps of Louisiana to the sewers of New York City. But in its twelve issues and a special, it rapidly became something more--and easily lies alongside Firearm as my favorite Ultraverse title so far.

Frank Hoag is a a crooked cop doing tasks for the Marcello crime family. But one task he won't do is murder a fellow cop. So Frank is shot down in the middle of a chemical lab and dumped in the sewer. The mix of the chemicals he was bathed in and the sewer detritus transforms Hoag into a hulk blue goo monster with an addled brain and a serious case of malapropism...who's still stuck in a conflict between three...unusual gangs.

The thing that I love the most about Gerber is his strange combination of misanthropy, social concerns and humor...and given how light the reins were held on him, Sludge is magnificent. Even though you can see he is taking inspiration from his previous works, he manages to improve upon the original. You just have to look at Bloodstorm, who appears sporadically after being introduced in the second issue--there are elements of Man-Thing villain Foolkiller as well as his recurring motif of a fat kid's bullying ending up tragically (something he did in issues of Giant Size Man Thing and Omega The Unknown in the 70's) in this hitman...and yet his nihilistic worldview makes him compelling and his emotional arc is darkly entertaining. Making one of the other gangs a Triad that owns 'Paygo' (read 'Nintendo' or 'Sega') Electronics has echoes of both Howard The Duck and The Defenders. One of my favorite supporting characters is investigative reporter Shelly Rogers, who artist Aaron Lopresti explictly makes the niece of one of my favorite fictional characters of all time in a Easter egg in issue #4 and serves as a platonic Beverly Switzer to provide commentary as the story gets more and more absurb.

And then there's Pistol and his boss...

Lord Pumpkin is not Gerber's creation, according to Mr. Mann:

"I think, though, that Lord Pumpkin was the brainchild of Dan Danko. Gerber ran with it, but I think Danko is the one who came up with the nuts and bolts."

--and boy, did Steve run with it. In earlier articles, I've discussed the later appearances of this character and expressed some confusion as to why so much emphasis was put on it in the post-Marvel buyout world. In reading these early appearances, I certainly now understand why fans were so enthusiastic about him. Lord Pumpkin in Sludge is as charismatic a villain as can be, putting on a gentleman's demeanor and acting as a surrogate father to his bodyguard, an adolescent hitman. Both dress in classic 30's gangster style, and there seems to be an actual affection between the two of them. And when we do get some of Pistol's backstory (we'll get to that in a minute), we understand the dynamic even more. I get the impression that the duo's plan, involving marketing a magical drug called Zuke, was supposed to be bigger and somehow connected to Godwheel and Prime, but this was never expanded upon fully because the book was canceled after twelve issues.

Apparently Gerber's trouble keeping deadlines, which led back in 70's to such things as the 'Dreaded Deadline Doom' issue of Howard The Duck*, continued in the 90's which led to artist Aaron Lopresti plotting a handful of issues, all containing weird monsters like a giant crocodile man, a Frankenstein satire and an evil witch that spurs on a fight between Sludge and Prime in the last issue. Other than the inclusion of these monsters, they fit seamlessly into the series and not just because Gerber contributes dialogue. This may have been a case of writer and artist having such similar semsibilities that they create exactly what they had in their mind. Lopresti's artwork is moody, dark and distorted...which makes it perfect for this series.

After the end of the series, Sludge did pop up in an episode of the Ultraforce cartoon as well as an issue of Foxfire. But his last significant appearance may very well have been his best--and Mr. Mann seems to agree:

"I think Sludge was our best title. Sludge Red X-Mas being the single best book we did. "

Not surprisingly, Sludge Red X-Mas was a Christmas special that reunited Gerber with one of his key collaborators on his classic run on Man-Thing, Mike Ploog. It focuses on, in addition to Sludge, some minor characters from the main run as well as Pistol and ties them up in a plot about a union leader who's not as heroic as he seems. It's a wonderful story, especially in regard to how it makes us see Pistol from another angle, making him more than a weird sidekick to become a sympathetic character. I don't know if I can say it is my favorite single issue story given I still have a number of titles to read...but it certainly is one of my favorites.

It's a shame that Sludge is long out of print, especially given how there is so little crossover that it can be read as a standalone. I know that Marvel is highly reluctant to even acknowledge the Ultraverse's existence, especially now that they're owned by Disney, who might be nervous about what happened to one of the imprint's founders...but surely it's worth it to have this prime example of Gerber's later work to fans like myself who love his quirky and weird world view?

Next time, I'll be looking at an Ultraverse title I literally didn't even recall until I started this project. It's the third title by the problematic Gerard Jones, and it's may be more the Ultraverse's answer to Batman than Night Man was...mixed in with some pulp and film noir tropes. It's time to put on the purple and blue and walk down these lonely streets as we examine Solitaire!

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

*--This famous illustrated text issue pretty much inspired Vinegarette, a character who pops up in the later half of the book and resembles the Vegas chorus girl and ostrich fighting a lamp in one memorable double page spread in the Howard The Duck issue. 

WHEN WE WERE ULTRA: Hello, We Must Be Going (EXILES v. 1-2 and THE ORDER)

Earlier this year, I decided to read every issue of the short lived venture that was Malibu Comics' Ultraverse.

For those who wonder what I'm talking about (I know you're out there; I can here you scratching your head), the Ultraverse was a shared superhero universe that lasted five years from 1993 to 1997 and was one of many, many reactions to the success of Image Comics the year.  There are two things that made it unique separate from other shared universes: 

1. Malibu was the original distributor for Image before The Maverick Five made so much money they could strike out on their own, and...
2. Malibu was bought out by Marvel in 1994, and it is believed the sale was solely because Marvel coveted their at-the-time innovative coloring process...or because DC expressed an interest in buying it first.

According to publisher David Olbrich and editor-in chief Chris Ulm, the Ultraverse was developed by the top down by eight creator specifically to be a tightly connected world which emphasized crossovers.  We'll get to most all of these writers--I will endeavor to avoid talking about one of them until absolutely necessary for reasons that will become apparent then--but we're going to talk today primarily about Steve Gerber.

I'm putting this out right now--Steve Gerber is one of my heroes.  One of my earliest comic purchases was Daredevil and The Black Widow #97.

Okay, it was pretty bad....but this former ad man who came over to comics at the behest of Roy Thomas because his job was driving him nuts (his experience in the ad world became the inspiration for one of Gerber's weirdest stories, "In The Shadows of the City," a fourth wall breaking horror tale in Haunt of Horror #2) created some of the strangest, most absurd and unique comics.  This is the man who created Howard The Duck. Omega The Unknown and The Elf With The Gun, wrote a storyline in Defenders where lower tier hero Nighthawk's brain was placed in a deer, frequently broke up comic stories with prose pages, and put an official appearance by Kiss in a story featuring a villain straight-facedly called Dr. Bong...and that was only the early 70's!  He would go on to be a writer for Ruby Spears and Sunbow on Transformers, GI Joe and Dungeons & Dragons (introducing Jack Kirby to the former studio, which led to what may be the happiest period in Jack's life), create Thudarr The Barbarian and wrote the first issue of Marvel's Nightmare on Elm Street black and white magazine--which Marvel canceled immediately after that issue was released.

 Which brings us to 1993, and Gerber's involvement in creating the Ultraverse.  During the planning stages, Geber conspired with fellow Marvel vet Steve Englehart to create 'The Drunken Magician,' a character who was a hero for all the wrong reasons--and would die suddenly because he was a hero for all the wrong reasons.  Olbrich and Ulm weren't keen on the Magician as such, but they did like the idea of a book advertised as an ongoing when it's actually a limited series about characters fated to die.  The two suggested taking a concept they were playing around with and using it, also tying the character's death into the planned first line-wide crossover.  Gerber was keen on it, having pitched to DC a Vertigo revamp of The Inferior Five that would make fun of the 'grim-n-gritty' trend of 90's comics only to have it turned down.

...and those various threads came together in this uniquely skewed mind to give birth to the four issue series Exiles.

There's this nearly fatal airborne disease that apparently preys upon impossibly beautiful people called the Theta Virus.  The good news is that Dr. Rachel Demings has come up with a process of genetic resequencing that can cure people.  The bad news is you can only really get effective treatment from Dr. Demmings' secret island facility called Stronghold, and she doesn't know if the treatment stops you being infectious to others.  The good news is that a side effect of this treatment is the patients maybe gaining super-powers--resulting in Demmings 'training' these super-powered youth to become her Exiles...

Reading through this summary might remind you of a certain other wildly popular intellectual property of the time.  And looking at some of the characters code-names--the heroes are Tinsel, Catapult, Trax, Mustang, Deadeye, Ghoul and Amber Hunt, while the bad guys are...wait for it...Bloodbath, Supreme Soviet, Mastadon and Bruut (complete with umlat)--might remind you of certain other fairly new but wildly popular IP of the time.

Steve Gerber intended those associations.  Gerber has always been both socially conscious and believed in the utter absurdity of superheroes.  And I suspect knowing he was given permission to destroy this playhouse he was handed and was already itching to tear apart the state of comics of the time, he just let his freak flag fly.  These four issues are a savage takedown of how 'edgy' and 'flashy' superhero comics had become at a time, with a special aim being taken at the costume gumbo that the X-books had become over at Marvel.

Now granted, it's not being played for laughs--but then Gerber realized that the best way for your joke to land is to play it totally straight.  When I started reading the first issue, I was taken aback by how...boiler-plate it was.  But the boiler-plate of it coupled with Paul Pellitier's conscious aping of Image house styles, conceals the set-up for Gerber's critique.  It's not until I was deep within the second issue--which includes the 'sudden senseless death of a civilian' trope Gerber used in a number of his works for Marvel--that I realized all these characters were, well, intentionally terrible people.  Even Amber Hunt, who is meant to be the team's Kitty Pryde-esque reader identification proxy, is a shallow airhead who visibly recoils during her tour of Stronghold due to its condition.  And they all seem to be doing what they're doing recklessly and not trying to rise above their faults.  Of all the characters, only Ghoul seems the least bit sympathetic before he goes all Punisher to avenge the death of his sweetheart...and I think that's consciously because he was intended to become a member of Ultraforce (the line's Justice League analog) after the series was terminated.

All the sins of what some people call the Chromium Age is laid out for all of us, with Gerber doing the most effective kind of commentary.  At the end of the fourth issue, there's a one page letter from Gerber explaining the whole process behind this miniseries-that-wasn't-presented-as-a-miniseries and what they hoped to achieve.  And even in that time where the concept of internet fandom was still developing, you have to admire him and his co-conspirators for keeping everything under wraps (Malibu printed solicitation for an issue five, featuring 'The Hoaxster and His Carnival of Lies').  It's a great read, albeit one where you have to be familiar with the state of 90's comics before the Investor bust.

Now after Marvel's purchase of Malibu, there was a second attempt to pull off the very same thing with The All-New Exiles....although this one doubled down even more on the X-Men simile by incorporating three X-villains into the line-up.  Granted, two of those X-baddies were Reaper and Sienna Blaze, characters so badly conceived that when offered the chance to reintegrate them into the Marvel Universe, the editors of the X-books at the time politely declined.  The other non-ultra character, Juggernaut, was promptly returned to 616 after five issues.  In addition to these guys, we had Amber Hunt carrying over from the original Exiles (which I guess makes these Exiles not 'All-New after all), a ninja-themed, female Gambit copy called Shuriken, a Cable copy with precognitive abilities called Strike, and a Wolverine/Ghost Rider mash-up called Hellblade.  After the Juggernaut returned to the X-books, he was replaced as the team tank by Cayman from Freex.  The weirdest thing about this iteration of the team was how the first issue of that book, The All-New Exiles Infinity, reflected Marvel's first issue of their Exiles book in 2000.

The biggest problem with the new series was that it was badly written, partially because no one could be bothered to stay on it long.  Terry Kavanagh seemed to be the regular writer, as he penned the two-part story that led into the series, and wrote four of the eleven regular issues--although he needed help from Ben Raab in writing two and Jerald DeVictoria for one.  But in between those four issues was one written by Ian Edginton, and after Kavanagh David Quinn wrote two, Marc Paniccia dropped in for an issue (long enough to introduce the closest thing the book had to a main villain, an Amazo knock-off with extraterrestrial mufti called Maxis), Ann Nocenti did two and Phil Crain wrote the final issue.  Obviously, each writer had just enough time to introduce pet characters and hint at a direction before being replaced...which made the run really...nonsensical.  That final issue, which managed to be even more befuddling by dragging in a group of characters from a recently canceled series to be wiped out alongside the Exiles.  I find it fitting that the last caption box in that story simply states that the team has been wiped out, adding a somewhat cynical 'bye-bye' at the end.

Reading this run was not a pleasant experience.

Oddly enough, the 'limited series pretending to be an ongoing title where all the heroes die in the end' trick was used a third time, in Marvel's post-Civil War series The Order.  The Order was the official super-team of Los Angeles* funded by Tony Stark and overseen by Pepper Potts.  Over the course of ten issues, Matt Fraction revealed that these heroes were less than sterling, and there was a promise of each of these characters' sins coming to bite them on the ass...only for the group to be trapped by Ezekiel Stane in an underground, air-tight chamber until, it was implied, they suffocated to death in the tenth issue.

Now Matt Fraction claimed he was having problems writing the book and came up with the sudden ending himself...but I wonder if he read the experiment that was The Exiles and decided to do his own take on that tactic.  And if you squint, you can see The Order as a spit-take on Wildstorm's popular series The Authority, given the power sets of some of the characters.  I remember reading, liking, and being somewhat upset by the resolution, 

Anyway, even though it is very, very self-consciously 90's and over the top, I would recommend checking out Steve Gerber's four issues.  Just keep in mind that some of the bathos is intended to be funny, and you'll do fine.  I'd forget The All-New Exiles ever existed if I was you just like Marvel has forgotten the Ultraverse ever existed.  

(And to be fair, The Order was pretty well written and featured great Barry Kitson art...it's worth your time)

I will endeavor to continue reporting on my read of the entire Ultraverse line and, after that, other 90's attempt to get on the Superhero Multiverse Train (I'm looking at you, Broadway Comics...)  Until then--why be Meta when you can be Ultra?

*--Los Angeles has never had much success when it came to super-hero teams.  One day soon, you'll be hearing a long-lost podcast featuring myself and Michael Bailey discussing eleven year old Tom's favorite comic book, The Champions.