$6.95 from Marvel Comics
Written by Ann Nocenti
Penciled by Rick Leonardi
Inked by P. Craig Russel
Lettered by Ken Lopez
Years ago, Marvel Comics ran a gag feature-- I think this was in an issue of *What the --?* -- called “Spidey Intellectual Stories.” The idea was, just as you had “Spidey Super Stories” for the kindergarten set, you could have these tales where Spider-Man and Doc Ock bust into one another’s abodes and launch into long, arduous intellectual discussions of life, the universe, and everything.
I remembered Spidey Intellectual Stories when I read *Colossus: God’s Country* because it struck me as a way to boil down what can go wrong with this sort of story. Even with the best of intentions, dialogue-driven debates about anything can seriously misfire in a comic-book form.
In the case of *Colossus: God’s Country*, the topic is freedom-- in general, I think. Colossus, the Russian Immigrant X-Man whose skin can turn to metal, wanders the Midwest, where he argues with Russkie-hating newsstand attendants and quizzes himself on whether freedom of speech justifies pornography. Rather randomly he wanders into a picnicking family straight out of Tennessee Williams, each of whom are meant to spark debate and viewpoint consideration: Bruce, the gun-toting, commie-hating vet; Roxanne, the fragile wife who’s barely recovered from her last breakdown, Zackery, the impressionable child who repeats his father’s mindless invectives, and Grandpa, who wishes for a kinder, gentler time. Colossus comes across these folks just as Zackery witnesses a government black ops witness execution, meaning that the whole family is now in grave danger. Colossus joins them, follows them home, helps them fight off the black ops team that now wants them all dead, etc.
All of which is fine, except that it’s just bizarre the way Ann Nocenti has these characters get into these long discussions: whether the United States should provide health care and whether Russia was wrong to limit speech, whether the federal government can be trusted, how long the ozone layer will last, and occasionally-- actually, constantly, in the *middle* of all this -- bullets fly through the walls and government mutant marauders come to call.
And once it’s all over, I’m not even sure what we’ve learned. The Russia Nocenti has people talking about sounds more like the Soviet Union than Russia, making this 1994 story dated even when it arrived. And Nocenti, who hangs her plot around the usual anti-government paranoia, seems unaware that her character Bruce is completely unrealistically portrayed-- the Reagan-loving and commie-hating may be right for a back-country Viet Nam vet gun-nut, but Nocenti has this guy espouse great, forced faith in the police and the federal government while it’s the hero, Colossus, who suggests you can trust the feds. This is just absurd; Bruce should be a paranoid militiaman. I get the feeling Nocenti wants to present a paranoid story, which is fine, but doesn’t want her best arguments coming from her ugliest character, so she made a ridiculous character instead.
Or, he’s just an *original creation*, the one gun-toting Viet Nam vet redneck in the backcountry who *does* trust the police, the FBI, and the federal government, to give Nocenti the benefit of the doubt.
It’s all a strange, strange experiment, leaving me at the end feeling like I’ve watched a civics skit written by Tennessee Williams and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Nice try, but give me *Spidey Super Stories* this time, instead.