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Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Scorpio Rose #3 Comes Out... Twenty Years Late
This is weird. I just read that Image will be reprinting the original Coyote miniseries by Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers that first appeared in Eclipse Magazine back in the early 1980s. This volume is the first of a series that will reprint all of Coyote: after the original story, Rogers left and was replaced by Steve Leialoha and some others on the series' Epic Comics run. As an added bonus, the first Coyote trade will also reprint the first two issues of the Englehart/Rogers Scorpio Rose miniseries... and the materials completed (sketches and notes and unfinished pages) for the third and final issue, which was never published.
I'd been waiting twenty years to read Scorpio Rose #3. For fanboys of a certain age (and by that I guess I mean ancient), it's like a long-forgotten dream come true... we finally see how the story ends. Though for the life of me, I can't remember what exactly happened in the first two issues, which I last read fifteen or more years ago.
For newcomers, Scorpio Rose is basically DC's Madame Xanadu but without the pesky copyright infringement, a fortune reader who combats against dark occult forces and was apparently a victim of rape. (There was a decade or two in comics where rape was the easiest, most common way to make a female heroine tougher and grittier or something.) Englehart and Rogers had also done a one-shot Madame Xanadu which was a pretty good story, if I remember correctly, though considerably tamer than Scorpio Rose.
For my money, Englehart and Rogers are one of the great comic book teams of all time. Their run on Detective Comics in the 1970s was legendary and the work they did at Eclipse was of the highest quality. It's great to see it back in print and to finally have some closure about something which... well, I didn't care about for a long while now, but am glad to finally read.
Englehart and Rogers are continuing to work together and they're doing a miniseries with Terry Austin of the character they're most associated with in Batman: Dark Detective. The first two issues have been excellent but they also feel remarkably retro. Gratuitous modern-day comments about American Idol sting for their blatant attempt at being hip, while Rogers seems intent on recreating a storytelling style that went out of date decades ago. His 1980s work on Scorpio Rose and Coyote feel more recent than Dark Detective, which could have easily been published in the 1970s with the team's original run.
So on the one hand, it's a very good comic so far. On the other hand, its quality comes from a rather outdated style of comics storytelling that only creators from that time can carry out with a complete lack of irony. If somebody younger, somebody who didn't create comics in the 1970s, tried to make a comic like Dark Detective it'd be an homage or a postmodern pastiche or some other godforsaken bastardization of genuine creative expression. In the case of Englehart, Rogers, and Austin, it's riffing on their greatest hits, a classic rock band reuniting to please old-timers who still listen to their vinyl records.
DC may even want to consider having other excellent series of the 1970s revived by the original creators. Bring back Michael Fleisher and Jim Aparo to do more - and more fucked-up - Spectre short stories. Or have Walt Simonson channel the spirit of Archie Goodwin and create a new Manhunter graphic novel. Or maybe even get Denny O'Neill and Neal Adams to get back together and work on some Green Lantern / Green Arrow or Batman stories.
Because if Scorpio Rose #3 can be released, anything is possible.
I'd been waiting twenty years to read Scorpio Rose #3. For fanboys of a certain age (and by that I guess I mean ancient), it's like a long-forgotten dream come true... we finally see how the story ends. Though for the life of me, I can't remember what exactly happened in the first two issues, which I last read fifteen or more years ago.
For newcomers, Scorpio Rose is basically DC's Madame Xanadu but without the pesky copyright infringement, a fortune reader who combats against dark occult forces and was apparently a victim of rape. (There was a decade or two in comics where rape was the easiest, most common way to make a female heroine tougher and grittier or something.) Englehart and Rogers had also done a one-shot Madame Xanadu which was a pretty good story, if I remember correctly, though considerably tamer than Scorpio Rose.
For my money, Englehart and Rogers are one of the great comic book teams of all time. Their run on Detective Comics in the 1970s was legendary and the work they did at Eclipse was of the highest quality. It's great to see it back in print and to finally have some closure about something which... well, I didn't care about for a long while now, but am glad to finally read.
Englehart and Rogers are continuing to work together and they're doing a miniseries with Terry Austin of the character they're most associated with in Batman: Dark Detective. The first two issues have been excellent but they also feel remarkably retro. Gratuitous modern-day comments about American Idol sting for their blatant attempt at being hip, while Rogers seems intent on recreating a storytelling style that went out of date decades ago. His 1980s work on Scorpio Rose and Coyote feel more recent than Dark Detective, which could have easily been published in the 1970s with the team's original run.
So on the one hand, it's a very good comic so far. On the other hand, its quality comes from a rather outdated style of comics storytelling that only creators from that time can carry out with a complete lack of irony. If somebody younger, somebody who didn't create comics in the 1970s, tried to make a comic like Dark Detective it'd be an homage or a postmodern pastiche or some other godforsaken bastardization of genuine creative expression. In the case of Englehart, Rogers, and Austin, it's riffing on their greatest hits, a classic rock band reuniting to please old-timers who still listen to their vinyl records.
DC may even want to consider having other excellent series of the 1970s revived by the original creators. Bring back Michael Fleisher and Jim Aparo to do more - and more fucked-up - Spectre short stories. Or have Walt Simonson channel the spirit of Archie Goodwin and create a new Manhunter graphic novel. Or maybe even get Denny O'Neill and Neal Adams to get back together and work on some Green Lantern / Green Arrow or Batman stories.
Because if Scorpio Rose #3 can be released, anything is possible.
