Deadshirt

There was this article in Wizard Magazine awhile back revisiting Watchmen and the effect it had on the young, impressionable readers who obsessed over it throughout their adolescence, and then growing up and giving us things like the television show Lost and Ed Brubaker’s Captain America run. It made an interesting case for the importance of engaging, challenging fiction for the youth, and the power of comics and related media to foster real, lasting inspiration in its consumers. I was thinking about this article while watching Adventure Time and drinking massive quantities of vodka, listlessly wishing I had grown up on a cartoon so hopeful and fun and beautiful. What kind of miraculous, loving adults will the core demographic of such a show grow into? Might Jake The Dog and Finn The Human be raising the generation of citizens who finally bring us jet packs, consequence-less free love and world peace? Maybe. Probably not. Last week, Paul Pope finally released his long gestating kid friendly adventure comic Battling Boy and, having read it, I can say one thing for certain: the lucky children whose parents put this wonderful slice of graphic lit ambrosia in their grubby, little hands are going to give the world something special.

Paul Pope, who grew up on Kirby and Moebius, has given the world this, a record of one of planet Earth’s capital “G” greatest living graphic novelists firing on all cylinders and crafting some of the most fantastic superhero fiction of the new millennium. Battling Boy, rooted in classic science fiction, pulp serials and Silver Age cape comics, is so great as to be a cocky, taunt-heavy challenge to positive adjectives everywhere. Enter, all ye dare, the woe begotten words who think themselves worthy enough to effectively describe the sense of wonder and heart to be found bursting from within the confines of Battling Boy‘s pages. Pope, the writer/artist/designer/Comics Gawd who gave us Batman: Year 100, Heavy Liquid, and the excellent Adam Strange strips from Wednesday Comics, is in rare form here, turning Joseph Campbell myth building into a rocket-fueled thrill ride equally suitable for young, fertile minds and cynical grown ups desperately in need of a refresher course in joy.

Mild Spoilers Follow

Battling Boy is the story of, well, Battling Boy, a young Godling sent to Earth by his father (an amazing combination of Thor, Orion and Batman: Brave & The Bold‘s Aquaman) on his 13th birthday to come of age on adventure, hunting the monsters who plague the children of the city Arcopolis. The book’s co-protagonist is Aurora West, the young daughter of fallen pulp hero Haggard West, the science fighter who leads the charge against the aforementioned monsters. The primary villain of the story is Sadisto, the masked leader of a gang of monsters who looks like The Mad Monk if he had been designed by Guillermo Del Toro. The book draws stylistic inspiration from various works by the King himself, as well as a lot of Pope’s usual European influences, and the pacing and tone of manga. You will be lucky to encounter a volume of comics as expertly cartooned and successfully realized as this.

I was lucky enough to read this book pretty blind, having only seen some preview art over the years from Pope’s blog and excitable chatter here and there from comic industry types. I avoided the litany of promotional interviews and the like until after my second read through. Understanding more about the process behind Battling Boy was fascinating and all, but reading about Paul Pope having production meetings with Brad Pitt about the film adaptation before the book was even finished or snarking at his misinterpreted quotes shooting daggers at DC Comics is all just window dressing. Perhaps if I had read any of this I would have been prepared for Battling Boy’s cliffhanger ending. The book is the first in a planned series of graphic novels (including a Battling Boy sequel, as well as a prequel and additional sequel starring Aurora West.) Honestly, 150 or so pages in and only one monster felled really should have clued me in. It feels a little bit like Kill Bill Vol. 1, where it functions as a satisfying story on its own, but then you’re left drowning in your own plentiful saliva awaiting the next installment.

Hidden beneath the story’s pop art exterior, there’s a lot of meaty subtext to chew on. As the press and the Mayor’s office try to co-opt Battling Boy’s crusade against the monsters, one can’t help but feel some commentary on the media’s propensity to control and shape the message of young artists. Although “small demigod fights monsters” sounds like a fun romp, there’s a festering nightmare crawling under this narrative’s skin, with the very real terror of shadowy, ugly evil coming out when the sun goes down and spiriting away with the city’s youth for nebulous, but foreboding reasons. The book never stoops to talking down to its audience. There’s no reason here to shield children from the difficulties of growing up and the dangers that await in the real world, not when we’re shown this towering but vulnerable portrait of a young boy working to tap into his own potential and be the light in the never ending darkness.

Despite the Boy of the title, there’s plenty for young girls as well, as we see the beginnings of Aurora West’s slightly more mature origin story, a grieving daughter driven to follow in the footsteps of her heroic father. It’s telling that the older, less super powered but more apt Aurora shines in a climax that shows just how ill prepared Battling Boy is for the task at hand. Two youths plunged into a war neither asked for by their parents’ differing circumstances with two different paths of coping and growth. In these twin narratives, Battling Boy is like a manual for the oncoming apocalypse of adolescence and adulthood, an encyclopedia on battling life’s monsters, not unlike the one the titular hero is gifted by his father.

 

There’s an infectious exuberance on display here that is as sweet like Kool-Aid, every moment displaying something to excite youths and oldies alike. When Battling Boy is given 12 shirts, each with a picture of a different animal that grants him their corresponding abilities, the kid in me squealed so hard. Who doesn’t love shit like that? His father talks like the world’s greatest cover band of Kirby dialogue and when his father parrots his amusing phrasing to the townsfolk, their reactions are priceless. There’s something here for the grow ups, too, as nothing in comics this year rivals the hive of scum and villainy seen late in the book, when Sadisto enlists the other monsters in his quest to end the threat of Battling Boy. The obvious Star Wars homage here is only outclassed by a wonderful moment with a guitar case that I just can’t spoil.

We’re a little ways off from the continuation and conclusion of this amazing story, but I’d just as soon accept new chapters every year for the rest of my natural born life. Battling Boy is the kind of comic that not only makes you wish you were a kid again, to relive that first, addictive rush of four color love, but one that makes you yearn for parenthood, such would be the singular bliss of getting to hand this book to a child and relish in their widened gaze.

Go to a store right now and buy Battling Boy. Buy three and give the other two to your nieces and nephews. Buy a bushel and donate them to a school library. The children are our future, and when the monsters come, I want to trust them to protect us. Give them the tools.