Deep Ice: We have the weapon (Eternity Comics’s War of the Worlds, Issue 5)

Moving right along. It is now January or February 1990, and Eternity is continuing with the increasingly unbelievable fiction that there is some connection between their comic book and “A HIT TV SHOW”, which would be really obviously false even if this comic did have anything more in common with War of the Worlds The Series than an incredibly tenuous connection to a book by H. G. Wells, since the show, at this point, has been cancelled.

We left off, if you’ll recall with Stanley Boyd and his Aarach son Meat had just escaped from an insane asylum and were about to steal an airplane to fly to America because Meat’s brothers are plotting the destruction of mankind.

Issue 5, “Overmen and Underdogs”, begins with… a recap. Not just any recap. It begins with the first three paragraphs of the previous issue’s recap. Jesus Christ, I know it’s 1938. We add only the knowledge that the new generation of Aarach view humanity as, “An irritant, and one that must be removed.”

Fine. Okay. These recap pages are probably mandated by the management for the benefit of new readers and don’t really fit into the core of the storytelling Finlay and Hagan are trying to do. Let’s just move past the cliche establishing shot of the Statue of Liberty and into the story proper.

I admit, I don’t have the patience I used to. But okay. In keeping with our new approach to this story, I’m going to continue to basically try to read the comic two separate ways. First, just interpret it on a strictly visual level, as an abstract story about the weird CHUD children of a strange and irascible race of elder gods. Then, read the actual dialogue and see how it shapes that abstract story into something more concrete. Typically what we find is that the story is perfectly comprehensible without the dialogue. At best, the written part of the story adds a bit of detail. At worst, it actively undermines the visual narrative.

So… In the purely visual version of the story… Meat gets airsick, so they jump out of the airplane for some reason, which Meat finds scary. Minor point here: according to the dialogue, Boyd assumes Meat’s airsickness is due to agorophobia, Meat being overwhelmed by the experience of flight after a life lived underground. Leaving aside that it would have taken close to a day for them to make the trip and he only got sick at the end (In 1938, heavier-than-air transatlantic flight was still mostly experimental; the first commercial transatlantic flight would only occur in August), this is a good solid guess. It is also wrong, but in context, Boyd is right to assume it. That said, when the actual reason Meat got sick comes out, no reference will be made to this bit, so I kinda suspect it was not drawn with that assumption. Hm. Well, I guess we’ll have to resort to the dialogue. The written version tells us that Boyd reckons that it’ll be easier for them to enter the country by getting fished out of the harbor after their plane crashes than by just landing somewhere. The logic here is… I mean… Well…

I guess I can sorta see the shape of the logic. They land their stolen plane after flying over from England, and the authorities are liable to take umbrage. But if they’re survivors of a plane crash, I guess that could be seen as giving them some cover. Maybe. I mean, there’s a lot of weird assumptions here. But okay. They ditch, get rescued by the Staten Island ferry, and… I guess in the 1930s the police won’t be waiting when the ferry docks to ask about the plane crash?

I’m just saying, this seems like an extravagant way to avoid immigration. But I guess it works. Next, they go to immigration.

Whut.

Yeah. Pretty sure the whole “Ditch the plane to avoid immigration” thing wasn’t part of the storyline Brooks Hagan drew, and it’s kinda awkward. But you know what’s even more awkward? What happens between them jumping out of the plane and turning up at immigration. They’re taken aboard a ferry, and, after agreeing to pay the full fare despite only needing half a trip, Boyd is invited to dry off in the cabin. Meat will have to stay outside because he’s a [redacted slur for African Americans]. “‘Less of course you’s a [word for people of hispanic descent which is not as offensive as the first one but still pretty offensive] or [old-timey slur for Native Americans]. Got some [redacting that second one again]?” There’s something kinda wild about the tone of it; the boatman seems to be genuinely trying to find a loophole in his racism to do Meat a favor. Sadly, Meat turns him down. “No, I think I am [that first one again].”

To get out in front of it, yes it is good that Finley contextualizes the boatman’s racism in a way that shows it as fundamentally ridiculous. There’s even an overt implication of race being a broadly arbitrary societal construct. And the fact that Meat understands and internalizes the concept of being a [yeah, that one] is telling: “You want to know what race I am so you can decide how to treat me? I’m whichever one you think the least of.” And Boyd follows the scene up with a statement directly rejecting the concept of “undesirable races” as fascist (prompting me to remember that, hey. it’s 1938, and we’re edging right up to World War II).

But still. That’s a lot of racial slurs in one word balloon. And… Despite the first half of the series’s foray into being philosophical, this is basically a Bond-esque action thriller. It’s not the last time we’ll see racial overtones, but ff there is a broad statement to be made about race in Finley and Hagan’s War of the Worlds… It’s… Not… It’s… Ugh. When you get right down to it, the narrative as a whole is going to just tacitly accept the idea that the Aarach hybrids are a failed, fallen race, that they are essentially animals able only to put on a show of being civilized, that they are physically unfit to share the surface with proper humans, that both humanity and the pure-bred Aarach are right to reject them, and even that Meat’s heroism is a product of his own self-loathing. This grand idea of synthesis between human and Aarach we saw in the first half is utterly rejected in the end with a message that comes damn close to outright saying, “It’s a bad idea for races to interact since they just contaminate each other.”

We cut over to Gash and his party, who have bought a steel mill just outside of downtown Pittsburgh, where they are working on something that is going to be a big visual reveal but oddly understated in the narrative. I will not bother with the pretext: he’s building a tripod. Well, the others are building a tripod; Gash is sitting around in a dressing gown watching. And yeah, it appears they simply bought the factory, paying, as Meat did before, with silver nuggets. There’s a short scene with uncertain purpose a few pages later where they buy oranges from the local grocery store which I guess implies that the hybrids are trying to keep a comparatively low profile by doing things non-violently. Except…

There is never going to be a really good explanation for why the action has shifted over to the new world. The closest we get is Gash claiming that, “Here we can birth the finest carbon alloy,” because Pittsburgh is, “Home to the Steelers,” (The Pittsburgh Steelers were founded in 1933). Later, I guess, they add the implication that America is beyond the range of the old Aarach’s ability to sense them, but it still seems like having this one issue set in America is an odd diversion.

The reason we’re given for why Boyd and Meat go to the immigration office is that Boyd reckons the hybrids “offered up one of their own” to cover their arrival in America. We cut back to Gash and Melina to confirm this: they arrived in a “walking vessel”, which crashed on arrival, and left Sniv in the wreckage, reasoning that the authorities would find one demihuman in the crashed ship, and be happy enough to accept that he was the only one, and not go looking for the others.

This follows the pattern we’ve seen a lot in this part of the series. In isolation, there is some sense in this idea. If the ship had been found empty, the authorities would have assumed a crew and gone looking for them. That part makes sense. But the way it’s contextualized undermines that bit of sense. Because they say they arrived in a “walking machine”. I assume that means a tripod. If they had a tripod to begin with, why did they need to come to Pittsburgh to build one? Why did it crash? And more important: if they arrived in an Aarach craft, that should have set off alarms. On the one hand, Gash’s idea that the authorities would desperately want to believe Sniv was the only one of his kind does still work. But what doesn’t work? The bit where whichever kind of governmental authority found him sent him to immigration. Or the bit where the hybrids are able to pass themselves off as “Colored Brits,” just perfectly normal humans who have enough cash on hand to work around the fact that they’re an oppressed minority in a limited sort of way.

If they’d just said that they’d arrived by plane, it would make sense. They stole a plane, just like Boyd and Meat, and, also like Boyd and Meat, they crashed it to cover entering the US illegally. But instead of hopping a boat, they left Sniv in the wreckage to be caught. Even in this case, I am not sure Sniv being taken to immigration is the most reasonable thing, much less that Boyd could intuit all of this.

Visually, Boyd and Meat’s trip to immigration doesn’t seem quite right either; it looks a lot more like Hagan’s intent was that they showed up at the immigration office for the usual reason — to try to enter the country legally. Meat catches Sniv’s scent on literally the next panel after Boyd explains the whole “I bet one of your brothers is here so we came to snoop,” thing, yet Boyd reacts with surprise when Meat actually finds one of them, and they respond by beating a hasty retreat.

Outside, Meat stands on Boyd’s shoulders and pulls Sniv through a window to demand Gash’s Pittsburgh address. I’m not sure I follow this; Meat already knows Gash was going not only to the US, but to Pittsburgh specifically. Since Gash is hardly likely to have told him this ahead of time, I think we’re meant to assume that it’s the psychic link between them that gave him that information. But he can’t locate him any more closely than “Somewhere in Pittsburgh”? But Sniv would know, even though they abandoned Sniv as soon as they entered the country, before going to Pittsburgh and buying the factory?

Even more confusing is what happens next: a policeman walks by and they’re forced to explain themselves. The policeman threatens Meat, pointing out that, “This is America. We can arrest people who look peculiar.” And then, like, they just hop in a cab and leave. I… What was the point of that?

In the cab, Meat has another bout of illness, and pulls up his sleeve to reveal tumors covering his arm. And for the first time, the dialogue actually improves on the artwork, because we have a really nice parallel drawn when we cut to Gash. who is tearing his car to pieces. It isn’t clear why from the artwork alone, but the narration explains it: he’s flown into a fit of rage upon discovering that he is suffering from a super-aggressive form of skin cancer. It seems like a good read that Gash kinda snaps here, switching from an ’80s cartoon sort of villain to a Final Fantasy sort of one, determined that if he can’t live on the surface, he’ll just destroy everything. Of course, later on, he’ll imply this was his plan all along.

During the cab ride from New York to Pittsburgh (good thing Meat is carrying a sack of silver nuggets), Boyd suggests that this might make their job easier; the brethren might be “A trifle calmer” once they realize that living on the surface isn’t an option for their race. But no, Meat asserts, it will instead make them desperate and mean.

Gash’s machine nears completion, and he explains to Melina that, “Nuclear is a toy for children,” and that his craft is solar-powered.  She’s confused when he confesses that he’s no longer expecting to survive, and he does nothing to clear it up by relating an anecdote:

There is a story I like to tell about a war rocket builder who said, “I’m only responsible for making it go up. Where it comes down is someone else’s problem.” Yes? Yes.

Um. A couple of things here.

1. It’s 1938. “War rocket builder” does not exist as a career yet.
2. Unless he means among the Aarach. But they live underground, so I can’t imagine rocketry is a big thing for them.
3. Also, the “war rocket builder” he’s talking about is Wernher von Braun, who hasn’t really gotten as far as making rockets come down on people yet.
4. Also, he’s paraphrasing a line from the song Wernher von Braun by Tom Leher, not actually relating a quote from a “war rocket builder”.
5. Where would Gash have heard either a quote from a war rocket builder or a Tom Leher song?
6. Tom Leher wrote Wernher von Braun in 1965.
7. Even bracketing all of that… None of this has anything to do with Gash building a solar powered tripod to cause mass destruction before he succumbs to skin cancer.

Once they arrive in Pittsburgh, Meat warns Boyd that the psychic connection will warn his brothers of their arrival, so they split up. We cut back to Gash, who (metaphorically, I assume) sees Meat in a hand-mirror, and is able to read his thoughts in enough detail that he orders the male hybrids to intercept Boyd, while the women remain at the factory to kill Meat. Gash himself reckons it’s time to launch his tripod, because it will make for an awesome full-page spread, even though he will not actually do anything with it in this issue. Well, anything besides making his dad repeat one of his catchphrases.

Gash’s tripod is a nice design. It’s clearly related to the Aarach tripods we’ve seen before, but it’s also very different, and it seems like it’s different in a way that suggests not just evolution (as, for instance, with the transition between the first and second generation tripods in Goliath), but rather a radical change in approach. The basic shape of the head is the same, but the large windows in the front are no longer composed of clusters of small portholes when views close. It still sports the porthole-style windows, but they are smaller and clearly secondary. The “shoulders” are far more pronounced, and, most straightforwardly, the new tripod is gleaming white, rather than the “matte black Statue of Liberty” look of the originals. The recolor also makes new details stand out in the hood that give the impression of a rictus grin.

As I’ve said before, the art style of this book makes for some very powerful tableaux. But it’s not great at handling action scenes. The confrontation between Boyd and Meat’s brothers, for instance… Actually, it’s pretty straightforward except for the fact that it doesn’t go where the narrative needs it to. When they show up to kill him, Boyd chucks a grenade at them (Boyd makes a reference to stopping off to buy some “portable death” before the showdown, but then he seems to walk it back, and in any case, it’s not at all clear when he’d have had time to buy a hand grenade. Or, y’know, where) and runs away, they look stupidly at it for a few seconds, then get exploded.

That’s fine. But when we next meet Boyd, he’s badly wounded and slowly bleeding to death, so I’m not sure where that came from.

Meat confronts his sisters at the factory, but when Melina calls for them to attack, they all suddenly decide they’ve had enough of this shit and run away. This simplifies things so that Meat and Melina can have a nice climactic catwalk battle. I think Melina is meant to dominate the fight, but it’s hard to tell, especially since I can’t always be sure which one is which when there’s a blur of motion and their faces are meant to be contorted in rage. I will give them the benefit of the doubt and just assume that what happens is that Meat finally pulls a gun on Melina, but she wrestles it away from him. She, rather predictably, calls him “Dead Meat,” and pulls the trigger.

The gun is unloaded, of course. Or perhaps she doesn’t know how to disengage the safety — that would fit with Meat’s taunt that, “When you take something that isn’t yours… You should know how to use it.” The business with the gun was, I think, a feint, to give Meat time and clearance to draw his Aarach flamethrower.

Meat escapes the burning factory to find Boyd surrounded by the bodies of the other brethren. “Son… See if you can stop a bit of this bleeding… I’m not nineteen anymore.”

The overall plot of issue five is… Okay, I guess. I’m okay with the overall concept that Gash and his party came here to build a new, more powerful tripod, and the idea that, having realized he physically can’t survive on the surface, Gash has gone off his rocker and just wants to cause as much destruction as possible. But the devil’s in the details. All that business with Boyd and Meat ditching the plane to avoid immigration, with Gash leaving Sniv behind to cover his entrance — with the whole change of setting to America in the first place. None of it is justified particularly well in the story. I think probably Gash’s plan and motivation as told aren’t what they were originally going for. Perhaps they had been hoping for a longer run and had to rewrite things to bring the story to a close in issue six?

Brooks Hagan’s art, as before, has a lot of very nice scenes, and for the most part it does a good job at telling a meaningful, if somewhat abstract, story. But there’s a lot of fight scenes in this issue, and that’s where this art style just doesn’t hold up. The gap where we don’t see Boyd between when he blows up a carload of brethren and when he turns up mortally wounded is a serious oversight: we should reasonably expect Boyd to get the worst of any direct confrontation, what with him being just one person, a full-blooded human rather than a hybrid, and, as he is wont to say, not nineteen anymore. But what we actually see is him getting the drop on them in a really profound way, so we ought to have seen some foreshadowing that his luck wasn’t going to hold out.

And Meat’s fight with Melina, basically the climactic battle of the issue, is a confused mess. Again, the idea is good. The double-feint of having Meat pull a gun, then having the gun turn out to be a distraction is a great idea, but it’s undercut by the extent to which I can’t fucking tell what is going on in these panels.

Our ending ads this time feature The Jackaroo, which I think is adorable Australian slang for a journeyman cowboy, and which the ad copy describes as “Crocodile Dundee meets The Spirit,” but literally everything about this ad suggests to me that it is about masturbation. Also featured is a three-issue adaptation of the 1960s TV series The Invaders (Which may not have ever been published; it’s not mentioned in wikipedia and googling it gets you lost in things about the much more famous Marvel comic of the same name. There’s also an ad for another Wells adaptation, The Time Machine. Which appears to star Kenny Loggins as the Time Traveler and the most ’80s-looking fascists in black-and-white comic art ever to appear outside of the music video for “Take On Me”.

Next time, we’ll finish this up, and all will be reveal- Well, actually I think we’ve gotten all the reveals we’re gonna get. So next time, we’ll finish this up with more ambiguous and messy action scenes.