Now I'm trying to do a bit of sorting, since right now I'm trying to complete runs of Arion, Strikeforce Morituri, and of all things, TekWorld from the cheap bins. Actually, Strikeforce Morituri I'm probably down to one or two issues, and there's also that second run of the Earth X titles that I keep picking at. So, for here, a quick scanproof book!
From 1993, Psychonauts #1-2, written by Alan Grant and Tony Luke, art by 小林源文 (Kobayashi, Motofumi).
This was hyped on the cover as "The 1st ever American-Japanese creatively co-produced comic book!" Um, wasn't Grant British? This was a project spearheaded by Gene Pelc, trying to drum up an international hit; which would be published in a single black-and-white version in Japan, and four color issues in the states. Already we've got problems, as Kobayashi usually worked in grey washes but Marvel didn't want those muddying up the color: the blog Totally Epic has a pretty good post on the series, pointing out Kobayashi's art was usually way better than this series would indicate.
Plotwise, it's fine: in the year 2199, the orbital colonies that escaped earth are getting old and overcrowded, and after catastophic failure of one, six psychics are chosen for a mission to see if earth was habitable again. They wander the unfamiliar earth, getting involved with this and that, which involves both mutant cultists and hyper-intelligent dinosaurs in the first couple issues. I feel like this would've worked better in black-and-white, like as a serial in 2000 AD, but that'd lose the American market again. The characters all have powers, but not a lot of personality and no visual hook; so it's probably no wonder Psychonauts is far better known an unrelated video game. I wonder if they had to pay for the name, though?
4 comments:
Psychonauts huh? At least the title sounded interesting. I checked out the Totally Epic blog post about this series (Thanks for the recommendation and inevitable rabbit hole dive btw) and yeah, the premise sure sounded interesting, but the execution was definitely shit, with the art CLEARLY being the worst part of the whole thing. And that’s only because they didn’t really utilize Kobayashi & his art in the way it should have been. So yeah, I can definitely see why no one’s begging for this to be reprinted & collected in trade.
Maybe it's just because Grant's involvement made me think of 2000 AD, but it really felt like a lesser serial like the Helltrekkers.
That could be because his Batman stuff aside, his work in general reads like he’s always writing for or permanently in 2000AD writing mode 🤷♂️
Btw, I finally read Void Indigo by Steve Gerber and……I’m not understanding why all the unnecessary fuss & drama 🤷♂️
Honestly it doesn’t feel anymore overly violent or sexual than any other indie stuff from that time period or the following decade after it came out. Definitely much ado about nothing.
I don’t know about that- his Demon and Lobo aren’t that 2000 AD-ish. This definitely isn’t one of his better ones though, I’ll admit that.
Didn’t know you’d read Totally Epic, goo- have you read any of that guy’s other blogs? The Eclipse and Fantagraphics ones are pretty good, and I like most of the others.
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