From 1977,
Hercules Unbound #11, "The Dark Side of the Gods" Written by Cary Bates, art by Walter Simonson.
Oof, previous issues of this series had José Luis García-López and Wally Wood, but it barely made it to 12 issues? Also, this is a quarter-bin copy, but I have
two reprints of it on the shelves;
Showcase Presents the Great Disaster (the Amazon listing doesn't think it's there; I checked, it is!) and the 1989
the Art of Walter Simonson. As you might guess from the former book, this was set during DC's "Great Disaster" period, a vague number of years post-World War III, and the Atomic Knights guest-star here, helping Herc forge his new outfit, before they inadvertently destroy one of Detroit's "Big Three" factories. The
GCD mentions, in the previous issue where the Atomic Knights appear there were tie-ins to
OMAC continuity, which would lead to
Kamandi: men could still talk at this point, so the "
Great Disaster" might have actually been yet to come! (Or, this might have gotten bumped to another alternate earth besides that presumably got wiped in
Crisis on Infinite Earths, 'cause that's fun.)
At the start of this series,
Hercules had been found by the blind boy Kevin, chained to a rock in the Mediterranean for centuries. Herc had gotten free, although wasn't entirely sure how he had done so then, or maybe why he'd been chained up in the first place. Still, he had some adventures with Kevin, his dog Basil, and a young woman named Jennifer; but those appeared to be coming to an end. By the end of this issue, Jennifer was dead, Kevin had some weird power, and the gods in Olympus finally get through with a message, imploring Hercules to "
destroy the deadly scourge" while he was able. Kevin tears off at Jennifer's funeral, stealing their flying wing transport, although Herc is able to leap aboard in time to go with him, back to the island he had been chained to; where Kevin is seemingly unmasked--as Ares! Who was planning to release the "Anti-Gods," which doesn't sound great: think "
Skin of Evil," there would be more than a bit of exposition in the next, final issue.
I did like the stylised representations of the gods; I don't know if that had been established earlier in the series, or if Simonson just threw that in.
I like how Simonson’s not even remotely trying to hide his Kirby influence with the detail on that armor.
ReplyDeleteOk, so this title had Simonson, Garcia & Wally Wood on it & it STILL tanked? Wow. Just…wow.
The whole reveal scene with the Gods just goes to further cement the fact that they were the original internet comments section trolls of their era.
All this talk about rocks had me suddenly thinking of those two Paul Simon songs about rocks. Why did he devote two songs to singing about rocks anyway?
I think this one ended because of the DC Implosion actually. It was kind of an untenable concept anyway. Hercules wasn’t like this at all anywhere else, and the whole ‘Day After Doomsday’ concept (basically anything they could fit between OMAC and Kamandi) was only showing up in anthology titles at this point.
ReplyDeleteAlso, this technically never ‘happened’. As cliché as it is, it was all a dream. Anything with the Atomic Knights turned out to be a military simulation in the lead knight’s mind while he was in suspended animation.
That whole depiction of the gods was definitely Simonson though- I don’t think they’d even mentioned the gods other than real briefly in the first issue.
Implosion huh? Sounds about right.
ReplyDeleteIt was more to do with an unusually snowy winter ruining a warehouse full of comics and delaying shipping than any real quality issues. There admittedly was a glut of new titles, so a few of them would have been canceled anyway. The name comes from the DC Explosion, which was their marketing term for all the new titles and page increases they were doing at the time.
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