Howard Chaykin

Even though the comic adaptation of George Lucas’ Star Wars by Marvel contains a few factual flaws (Red Five, and what’s with Jabba the Hutt?) and the illustrated characters rarely look like Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford, it was still quite delightful to revisit the space epic in comic book form. Most of the flaws I can write off as being due to them writing the story before the finalized film was released, but it was a bit weird to see so much exposition within the show more panels. Most modern comics rely on strong dialogue and visuals to get the story across to readers, but during this period Marvel writers seemed to add a lot of omniscient narrative in addition to these staples - not always necessarily in fact. The majority of the panels adequately depicted the story (with much of the artwork being surprisingly good for non-coloured or shaded work) and the dialogue was generally taken right out of the film, so a lot of their added content in the form of characters’ inner thoughts (which didn’t appear in the film obviously) or in a formalized narration came off as being slightly overkill and in some cases downright forced. All that aside, considering that comic adaptations of films or novels often aren’t successful (even now), Marvel made a pretty strong representation of the Star Wars story! show less

Back when I hung out at the Warren Ellis Forum and The Authority was coming out, there was a lot of talk about decompressed storytelling, and widescreen comics. This is the opposite. Sp far the opposite. Crowded, dense, detailed, the characters, the stories, the dialogue, the sound effects, the colours, all so crowded together they're literally tripping over each other all across the pages, with tight focus, like a television screen rather than a cinema. It's also garish and nasty, knowingly show more full of the sex and violence it sends up in its satirical take on the media, so sordid and twisted, a cynical corrupt world full of venality and hatred. It's glorious. A sly bit of fast and furious pop-comics, politically aware, culturally accelerated, socially diseased. Chaykin's a craftsman, and never loses control of the chaotic material he's splurging with exceptional skill and energy all over the page. show less

I love how this is billed as The Complete Howard Chaykin Classic!.

Uh...no.

When I think of some of Chaykin's classic work, I think American Flagg or his work on The Shadow or Black Kiss. If you ask me, his best work was on a blink-and-you-missed-it single issue Monark Starsalker and his work on Dominic Fortune, both for Marvel.

In fact, this single issue collection of Ironwolf tales sort of seems like an embryonic version of Starstalker, which would come along about three-ish years show more later.

Chaykin came a long way in a short while, but this is actually somewhat painful to read. The art is before he came into his own style and looks a lot like Starlin (though not as clean) at this point. And while he can be blamed for the rough art and plotting, the blame falls squarely on Denny O'Neil for the horrifyingly overwritten purple prose. It's staggeringly awful.

For all of that though, as others have said, there are the first faint sprouts of ideas he would later build into much better written and drawn stories. It's sort of like finding a bit of early archaeology that would point to modern man.

UPDATE: I don't think I've ever had this happen previously, but I literally had no memory of reading this collection previously (which shows what little impact it had on me), nor did I even remember writing the review 2 1/2 years ago.

Bizarre.

But, yeah, I still stand by my original words. Though I'm surprised 2016-me gave this three stars. Two is all it deserves. Two different damsels in distress? One who's the leader of the resistance, but is Ironwolf's second-in-command? Come on! show less

The prescient sci-fi dystopia of a hyper-violent, hyper-sexualised, media-saturated world after environmental, economic and social collapse jumps through the door of a vehicle and kicks the driver in the face in this grand finale. An artificially generated blizzard paralyses Chicago and floods it with refugees, a secretive militia group prepare for a coup, bringing back an unfamiliar and unwelcome face to run the show, Flagg and co move underground and organise the resistance. It's a world show more where the current US president would feel right at home, which is not a fun thought, but it is a fun book, mad pulpy satirical fun. show less