Hell Rider 2
Hell Rider Story #1
The Associate Editor was Herschel Waldman. Was he Israel Waldman's (of I. W. Comics) son? I had no idea what American comic books look like after the mid 1960s, or so. The painted front cover looks like an adventure magazine. The inside pages look like European Graphic Novel style. So, he's a well-meaning fellow, who had bad luck of his uncle being a crook. He killed the guy so he would stop hurting innocent people. So now he is hunted by the police. He's a superhero with super strength that comes and goes without warning. So, he is not only not invincible, but he becomes very vulnerable, often at the wrong time. That reminds me of Dr. Jekyll becoming the monster, Hyde, and returning to normal without warning, after he'd used his potion too much, and also a similar effect of visibility and invisibility for The Invisible Man, after he'd used HIS potion too much. There are some things that Man should not fool with. Interesting that he ends up having to fight a villain who also took the same drug that gave the hero super strength, but it not only gave the villain strength, but also turned him into a monster with a passion for murdering women. He must have been a woman-hater before taking the drug.
The quality of the artwork is good, but I don't like the style. It's way too modern for my taste. The author tries to make everything point towards the nightclub owner (older brother of the hero's friend) appear to be the murdering monster. And then at the story's end the younger brother , who hates him, but is his employee turns out to be the murderer, out of the clear blue sky. This is very unfair to the readers, not providing any clues, so the reader never had a chance to suspect different characters. If I submitted this to any of my editors, they'd have all handed it back telling me to add a few scenes providing some subtle clues, that the younger brother has some connection to the drug. Maybe the reader might suspect that he is putting the drug in his brother's drinks to get him to murder people, so he can take over his business empire after the brother is put in jail, or executed for mass murdering. It is not good to anger your readership by being unfair, and having the reader feel cheated. Maybe this is part of the reason that this series ran only 2 issues. Also, wioth all those gruesome murders of the young women at the nightclub, it's impossible to believe that they would agree to stay in his employ, and also stay 24 hours a day in that building where several murders occurred. While they were safe, and the murderer wasn't around, they all would have quit, and tried to get away from there as fast and far as possible.
The Wild Bunch
Nice to see they had a token African-American in their motorcycle gang, who fought against crime and cooperated with police. At least it was a gesture. But this was 1971. I don't remember the general public still calling them "Negroes" (except in The South). I thought it had changed to "Blacks" by the mid '60s. This is sort of a "Robin Hood" story, like Hell's Angels offering to protect people from criminals, and cooperating with police to help keep the peace or catch criminals. Some of the violence in both stories is quite graphic, with necks being cut open and bloody. I would have expected this kind of thing in Men's adventure magazines that were located on high shelves in newsstands and book shops that children wouldn't be able to access, NOT in regular Superhero floppy comic books. A lot of kids could have gotten 60 cents together to buy a comic book. As it was considered an adult magazine, I assume it was in a section of book stores where children couldn't go, and in newsstands it was up on high shelves. maybe behind the cashier/clerk. I wonder why Skywald made the grievous error of not placing a notice of the copyright on the Hell-Rider books? They must have known about their state's and USA's copyright laws. Or did they issue ALL their comic books without the notice, and they ALL are now in The PD?
The Butterfly
A female superhero who wears a mask, giant butterfly-style wings, superhero tights, and a jet pack to allow her to fly! And she is an African-American. So the "token" description can be removed, especially as the head police officer on the case in this story is also African-American. A US senator turns out to have been the head of a Ku-Kux-Klan type of racist organisation, that plans to get The African American community in their city, or state, to hate all "White people", so that will lead to racial strife that will end up ridding their state, or ALL of USA of Black People. An ambitious plot. They are thwarted by The Butterfly.
Hell-Rider Story 2 - Shanghai .....70's Style
Very short. Too large a plot scope to fit inside 10 pages. It all moves much too fast.
Overall Analysis
This book is just not my cup of tea. Too modern, too much of what I lived through in real life while in The USA. Not my idea of entertainment. It just throws in front of my face The World's current problems. If that becomes one's entertainment, there is no rest from it. I don't mind well-written crime stories that are well flushed out, having settings, so you know where they are happening. Building up of characters including their motivations is necessary for identifying with them. Issues that affect people in their daily lives, or in times of crisis can be interesting and good to think about, and storytelling provides that. But it affects the reader much more if we can see how the protagonist is like us, so we can put ourselves in his or her shoes. The story must be paced in a way that allows that information to be given to the reader and digested, and so that suspense can be built up to a creschendo at the climax, and thought about to see its relevance to the reader's life, after the epilogue.
Comic book storytelling is a complicated art, requiring cramming in all those elements I've listed above in a small amount of room. It is more difficult than writing an all-text short story, and novels, as well, at least in that context. Of course, writing full novels brings other problems in that comic book space precludes even considering. As I've stated many times these publishers that insisted upon having several different stories in short books are fighting their own product. I always prefer at least 20 pages to really be able to tell a "story". The 10 pages and less are really, to me, showing a vignette, or outlining a scenario, or telling an extended joke or depicting a gag. The artwork was fairly good, but can't uplift badly-paced stories, some of which have weak, unrevealed, or unbelievable character motivations, and/or unbelievable events.
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Topic: Reading Group #330 - The gritty side of golden (Read 546 times)
