Flashback Friday Friday Review: Youngblood #1
Introducing the next generation of super-heroes…meet Youngblood. This explosive first issue features two teams and two exciting adventures. First Shaft, Die Hard, Bedrock, Vogue, and Chapel must confront the nefarious Four. Then, Sentinel leads Riptide, Brahma, Photon, Psi-Fire, and Cougar into a Middle-Eastern country to put an end to an evil dictator’s rule.
It’s been around 25 years since I last read Youngblood #1, the comic that really launched Image Comics setting off a revolution in the comic industry. Even then, I remember walking away from the comic enjoying the action movie quality art, but rather underwhelmed by the story. 25 years later, that pretty much remains. It might actually be a bit more negative since then.
In honor of Image’s 25th birthday I decided to go back and explore it’s launch titles over the next few weeks and it felt appropriate to start here. While Youngblood #1 is mainly attributed with Rob Liefeld, the comic featured dialogue by Hank Kanalz, and that crediting makes me think Liefeld plotted the general comic doing the art with Kanalz handling the dialogue after. And the comic really feels like that. While the action is over the top, the dialogue is stilted and at times makes so little sense.
There’s a focus in the first story on the briefing the team received. Like, they’re obsessed about it. What might be a witty back and forth in another comic for a panel or two goes on for pages, like this is all that’s on their mind. It gave me a bigger sense that there really wasn’t a script at all and things were written to bit what Liefeld drew.
Broken up in two stories, the comic follows two teams. One is sent on a mission to the Middle East to take on a Saddam Hussein like character giving a clue as to the age of the comic and what was going on at the time. The other story basically is just an introduction to that team mainly focused on Shaft, the “star” of the group. The two stories are diametrically the opposite in style, pacing, and to some extent actual look. Splitting the comic up to two teams was fine, but this first issue feels like one team is given a full story arc and the other just a sliver of a story. It’s odd, really odd. It also very much feels like it embodies the stereotypical 90s comic in a way too.
The art is pure Liefeld. If you love his style, the comic holds up a lot, but even with the style it’s amazing to see how that’s changed over the years. While it’s what I’ll call “action movie” in scenes, Liefeld still generally sticks to panels, not really breaking things or changing up page layouts all that much. It’s kind of fun in a way to return to see this and reflect how he’s shown growth even on his own as well as seeing just how comics have changed. Still, everything stereotypical that Liefeld is known for is there. Lots of bullets, big guns, pouches. If you’ve got a check list of what to look for, it’s here.
There’s a concept toy Youngblood that’s great, an exploration of media and violence, at least that’s what it’s supposed to be. This first issue doesn’t really touch on any of that. It’s a debut that doesn’t deliver on what is promised. I don’t remember things getting much better as they went on, but it’s fun in some ways to return and see something from so many years ago… and more importantly reflect on how far we’ve come.
Dialogue: Hank Kanalz Art: Rob Liefeld Color: Brian Murray
Story: 2 Art: 6 Overall: 3 Recommendation: Pass
New York City is in flames due the hatred stoked by the Hate-Monger and his crew including the mysterious Malice (in bondage gear) and Psycho-Man, a concept and story you’d think was rather appropriate for this day and age. The issue is broken up with a few storylines including Daredevil leaping around attempting to stop a hate crime. Reed Richards and Johnny Storm are hold up at the Avengers Mansion attempting to figure out what’s going on and Johnny is more focused on a missing Alicia Masters.
The oddity includes Daredevil’s segment which begins with his swinging around the city dealing with crime and protecting a woman who is being assaulted by two individuals. All of that leads to a rather infamous scene of the hero being punched by the woman who states:
To save all Creation, Archer attempts to assassinate Erica Pierce! But “Mothergod” is beyond harm and she easily thwarts the attack. For this affront, Archer and Armstrong are thrown in the dungeon. When the pair escape, Erica sends her finest warrior, Turok, Dinosaur Hunter, to hunt them down. But, sensing Archer’s inner nobility, Turok spares their lives and forsakes his allegiance to Mothergod.
The Olympian Apollo visits Avengers Mansion, bringing Hercules a new costume to replace his previous garb, shredded in battle. Then, at the team’s regular meeting, the Wasp is reinstated as chairman and the Black Knight officially rejoins the roster. The team is then summoned to the site of a South Atlantic shipwreck, where they learn of a monstrous extraterrestrial menace called Terminus. Following the mystery being’s trail, they rescue the staff of a wrecked Antarctic research station and deduce that their quarry has entered the hidden primeval jungle known as the Savage Land, where, at that very moment, the giant alien menaces a party of researchers and their guide, Ka-Zar.
And speaking of Hercules, he gets a new costume provided by Apollo and channels He-Man in a style that’s reminiscent of the character that was popular at the time. The costume is a familiar one designed by the legendary John Buscema, but boy does it look like a certain cartoon character as you can see to the right.
It felt appropriate for a “Retro Friday” review to check out a comic featuring Marvel’s time-traveling mutant Cable! Cable Vol. 1 #4 stems from 1993 and holy crap does it feel like a product of the time meeting all of the stereotypes of the comics from the time and living up to all that was bad during the time period.
For the first review of “Retro Friday” it felt like it’d be fun to go WAY back into the GP vault of comics and take a look at Superman #185, the first volume of the series that was released in February 1966. Back then comics were 12 cents and featured 25 pages of story and more.
The art is great with nothing too dynamic, but this still feels like the early years of comics where overly dramatic depictions of action were still being figured out. It’s a bit choppy in the flow, but it’s fun to see the retro look of everyone depicted, especially Superman who looks more like a Fleischer cartoon than today’s take.