Paul Pope! I think I mentioned him when I was rambling about so-called “American Manga” awhile back. Pope was the real deal, an American cartoonist who moved to Japan and worked for Kodansha, one of the big publishing houses. But while the manga influence is clear in his work, it’s not pastiche or rip off. It’s its own thing. Pope did a lot of cool graphic novels. “Cool” is the operative word, his stuff had a look and a vibe. He was trying very hard to sell himself as a sort of “comics rockstar,” and that’s goofy, but the work was something. THB, Escapo, One-Trick Rip-Off, Heavy Liquid, 100% and so on, all excellent comics. Around this time, he was either doing or about to do his biggest mainstream comics project in Batman: Year 100, a wild story about a far flung future where Batman is just an old legend until a guy becomes the new Bat. It was awesome. I guess that’s a few years after this. Anyway, point being, while this series is all over the place in terms of creators and each issue justifying its existence, I was super excited for one by Paul Pope. Lee Loughridge colors.
All that grit. The environments. The sound effects as part of the art. So cool. That guy’s working away at what appears to be a supervillain suit and scoffing repeatedly as the TV talks about First Amalgamated Bank unveiling its new security system today. He jams all his gear in a bag and leaves his apartment, and we learn he’s the super in the building, and many people are mad at him. He brushes them off.
You could’ve been forgiven for thinking the cover promised us a young Mary Jane story, but it is not to be.
Heather gets up, telling us her dad has been sneaking out this time every night this week, and not coming home til it’s almost time for school, and that’s fine by her. She sets about taping her Spider-Man poster back together, wondering what he looks like under the mask. Then she hears a news report of an apparent supervillain attack on that bank from earlier, what a coincidence.
Art is subjective and all, but the inky, lived-in feel of Pope’s art is tough to beat for me personally. Down at the bank, the cops have just gotten the ok to use “the big guns,” and as Heather arrives, trying to sneak past the barricade, they fire some kinda crazy cannon at her dad, who actually shrugs it off. Heather sneaks past him and into the bank, where it looks like he’s already been inside and blasted his way into the vault. Then she hears someone coming, sounding like they’re in bad shape.
What a creepy Spider-Man! A lot of people have tried to make him seem creepy over the years, but few have been this successful. Why is he creepy, tho? Where’s the wisecracks? Why didn’t he ask this random girl in a crime scene if she’s ok? Very odd.
Now that’s an abrupt ending. One almost wonders if he was planning to do 2 of these and couldn’t make it for some reason. But that’s our ending, leaving us to wonder what happened next. I think we can more or less guess, tho. Pope would go on to do that Batman thing, some odds and ends, and then, with much fanfare, launch Battling Boy, what was to be the first of a series of superhero adventure books. He only did one and he hasn’t done any comics since. I don’t know why. I don’t think he’s commented on it publicly. He’s still drawing, still doing commissions and such, but no comics. I wonder why.