$9.95
from Dark Horse
Credits:
Story
& Art by John Byrne
Colors
by Steve Oliff
John
Byrne has always struck me as an artist and writer of contradiction. Consider the work that Byrne did on Superman
in the mid-1980s: at that point not only had Byrne reinvigorated the *Fantastic
Four* over at marvel, but he also
published a little-read essay on Superman-- long before getting the DC job--
outlining Byrne's careful considerations on how Superman’s powers
functioned.
Byrne
was the very first writer to suggest that perhaps Superman's vast powers were
in fact an alien *telekinetic* power: Superman could fly because he was
lifting himself with his mind, and he could lift airplanes because he was
lifting *those* with his mind, too. The trick, Byrne wrote, was that Superman was
unaware that he had telekinesis and thought that he had to touch everything to
be able to lift it. You see how well
this works? You see what a great trick
this was? John Byrne, without even
having the assignment, came up with brilliantly ridiculous explanation just so
you could have Superman carrying gigantic objects, such as airliners, without
them falling apart around him.
And
that to me is just the sort of thing that John Byrne was always good at: telling
and retelling comic stories not with eye towards facts or
"modernization," but towards *believability* for a modern audience that still wanted to *thrill.
*
It's
a careful distinction I’m making. If
Allen Moore and Frank Miller were the New Wave, John Byrne was the
constantly-modernizing Hollywood, with eye on past and on the New Wave, with
one goal in mind: making stories that the modern audience will believe in and
be excited by, exactly the same way that generations before were by *their* respective stories. (Also like
One
of the things that Byrne produced during one of his fickle periods was the
independently-owned Dark Horse title *2112. * In *2112*, John Byrne creates an
entirely new world set less than 200 years in our future. And it's a beautiful future, with everything
that you expect from John Byrne: lots of sprawling, continent-sized city
backgrounds and all those distinctive John Byrne cheekbones on the very lovely
and well-dressed denizens of the Earth of the future (John Byrne’s future Earth will have no second-class.)
Well,
there is *sort* of a
second-class: a race of people called a Halflings, genetic mutations who are
shipped off to an orbiting satellite prison moments after they are born. Our hero is Thomas, a young man who has just
graduated from the futuristic Safeguard police academy and finds himself playing
second banana to Prime Agent Red, an iconoclast who is naturally the only one
who knows that the Halflings are plotting a gigantic invasion. The first half
plays almost exactly like *Starship Troopers*.
It’s
all fairly common science-fiction stuff. But what's pleasant about *2112* are the touches that are so distinctly
Byrnesque that any fan will be pleased.
For one thing, *2112* is
essentially John Byrne doing Jack Kirby: the city designs, the juxtaposed
dinosaurs and space stations, the costumes, and my God, the hair, all look as
if John Byrne snickered for months as he kept one eye on Kirby’s *New Gods* and another eye on his own easel. The look and feel just thrills; aside from
the distinctly modern references to sex and the scattered profanity, this comic
easily have issued from the '60s.
In
other words, in 1992, John Byrne was again answering question that perhaps no
one really needed to ask: Can I make a slick, modern-feeling homage to the
gee-whiz science-fiction comics of the 50’s and 60’s? Well, heck, of course he could.
And
*2112* is it. If you ever read *Adam
Strange* back in the day and liked it, or have an occasional yearning for
science-fiction comics that don't involve creatures bursting out of other
creature’s stomachs, you should try it.
Probably, you'll smile.
What
more could anyone ask?