The Complete Aztec Ace!

It was a great pleasure to at long last read the full run of Doug Moench's Aztec Ace from Eclipse. I was an Indy fan when this book debuted from Eclipse but soon had to draw back in because of family responsibilities and financial obligations. One cannot justify getting expensive (at the time) comic when the wife and child need to taken care of. I could've filled in the collection at anytime, but never did. But when I saw that Dark Horse had reprinted the complete run with a few extras I was intrigued. That is until I saw the asking price of $79.99 -- too much for idle curiosity I thought. Then I found the book for half that and jumped. I'm very happy I did for this is a very intriguing read. I won't suggest it's a complete epic, because the reader is left with a number of questions after all is read and done. But that's to be expected of a series this densely packed with details and motivations which doesn't reach its natural ending. 

Aztec Ace is a time traveler from the 23rd century who operates out of a base hidden in the world of the Aztecs in the 14th century. The funniest detail is that he uses the accumulated slime from slugs to power his time travel devices. He hooks up with a woman named Bridget Kronopoulous from 1940 and they fall in love. But first she has to die. Later they take a swing at a bogus Ben Franklin and a fake Cleopatra among others. There are appearances by the real Amelia Earhart, Glenn Miller and Ambrose Bierce. They have an ally hidden in a head shop in 1969 and another who is a detached head who sounds like Sigmund Freud. They make sure that Galileo's work survives. They battle strange creatures called "Gaunts" which serve the whims of a man behind a gas mask named Nine-Crocodiles who rules a land isolated from time itself. The latter has a wife named Shakreen who gives birth to a baby, but the baby might the child of Aztec Ace himself. Aztec (or Caza as he's called) pretends to be a number of things including a Mummy and a bonafide Golden Age superhero. There is no way to fully explain all that goes on in this series without creating a vast network of cross-referenced entries with deep annotations. The series rewards dealing with the complexity by treating the reader as an adult. 

Doug Moench's scripts are dense and require a reader's full attention, but that's worth the effort. The artwork is by a number of talented chaps including Mike Hernandez who does the first two issues another later on, and Ron Harris who lays out several issues late in the run. Tom Yeates sneaks in toward the end of the series and I assume we'd have seen more from him if it had continued. (His cover rendition of Cleopatra in the penultimate issue is a stunner.) But the core of the art is done by Dan Day who offers up sterling and ornate artwork ideally suited to the tone of the book. Nestor Redondo is on hand to give the series a solid look with is masterful inks. Mike Gustovich steps in to ink later issues with great results. 

Below are the covers for the full run. Also included in the collection is a single story from Total Eclipse. 

It's a lot of money for a collection. But if you can find it for less like I did, I highly recommend it. It was nice to time travel back to the 80's again, if even for a little while. 

Rip Off

All-Star Comics - Shadow Of The Bat!

America Versus The Justice Society of America recently reprinted by DC, is arguably the most indulgent comic ever written. Let me begin by stating that Roy Thomas is my favorite comic book writer, but increasingly over the decades his work has become less about telling whopping great yarns and more about cataloging the minute details of the comics he himself enjoyed in years previous. AvTJS is just such a story to the max, a ponderous tale which might be the most static adventure I've ever encountered in a comic book. I love the Justice Society, I like Roy, I love the Jerry Ordway covers, and I even don't mind the intererior artwork by a cavalcade of talents like Rafael Kayanan, Mike Hernandez, Howard Bender, and inker Alfredo Alacala.

In the first issue we learn that Batman, before he died, had written a scandalous diary which accused many of the original Justice Society members of being Nazi sympathizers, and that their adventures had been a ruse to actually support the efforts of Hitler and his forces. This obvious network of lies is seen by Clark (Superman) Kent who recklessly allows it to be published and before you can say "McCarthy" the heroes are arrested and taken to Washington, D.C.

What we are subjected to at this point is testimony as the colorful cast recount again and again their litany of adventures explaining how all of it fit together and contradicted the accusations made by the deceased Batman. Defending the heroes is Helena Wayne (Huntress) the daughter of Bruce Wayne and assisting the congressional committee conducting the investigation is Dick Grayson (Robin) who spends issue after issue tormented that his mentor could be under such scrutiny.

It all gets and stays tedious as we get many stories told several times (the rule that each issue of a comic is someone's first is generally good, but in this instance slows down a story which is already glacial in its pace).
Even the advent of star witness The Wizard to supports Batman's accusations doesn't add much spice.

The enemy behind the scheme is ultimately revealed to be Per Degaton (it's not much of a surprise really) and this is one more of his overly-complex time-traveling schemes to gain control of the entire planet. It's not too much to say he fails.

This story fails because it's not really a story, but a series of footnotes passed off as narrative. As such there is almost no forward momentum as we get recollections from first this hero then that one, one after the other with overwrought explanations as to why different devices are not used to cut to the chase. The story is a tedious excuse for Roy (God love him) to correlate the complicated continuity of the original Justice Society stories (as wacky as they could be) with the more modern tales of the Silver Age and Bronze Age including his own material in All-Star Squadron. Roy is nothing if not relentless when it comes to clarifying miniscule details which seem to bother no one but him.

Sadly the artwork in this series is damaged because we get three main artists (Kayanan, Hernandez, and Bender) in four issues with interpolations by Ordway and others throughout. The series does sport some exceedingly handsome Jerry Ordway covers and that's a bonus.

In his defense you do get the sense that with the transformations imminent with Crisis on Infinite Earths which had retroactively engineered to wipe out much of the story continuity of the Golden Age, Roy was under the gun to get this story told before it become utterly obsolete. But still it's pretty clunky given all that. I'd love to recommend this one, but it's only for completists like me who might have forgotten how lame the original was.

Years later at Twomorrows Roy Thomas finally got to created the kind of index for the Justice Society he craved in this limited. He did it forthrightly and without the pretense that there was supposed to be any drama involved. More on that next time.

Rip Off