Planet of the Capes
w: Larry Young; a: Brandon McKinney
ISBN: 1-932051-20-1
$12.95, 80 pages, B&W/Color
There are a million and one reasons why Larry Young & Brandon McKinney’s Planet of the Capes shouldn’t work. The plot is a shambles, for one thing. We see things happen and we have no idea why they’re worth seeing–there’s no through line, there’s no narrative drive, there’s no weight that pulls us from one scene to the next. The characters, and we’re using that term loosely, are ciphers, just the latest in a ever-lengthening line of Batman/Captain America/Superman/Wonder Woman/Hulk/Green Lantern/what-have-you manques. The art is almost confrontationally ugly, the kind of style you see in dollar-bin back-issues of bad 80s Marvel & DC books, complete with lousy paper stock and the glorious color of the black-and-white glut. And the whole thing, of course, is merely the latest pisstake on the superhero genre by a smartass indie guy, which, although not quite as unnecessary as another straight superhero book, is still pretty goddamn unnecessary. (What the world needs now is not another Brat Pack.) No, it shouldn’t work at all.
But it does.
A creepy, uncomfortable graphic novel, Planet of the Capes follows the–see, I was tempted to say “adventures” there, but it’s really just a bunch of crap that happens for no real reason–of four supertypes: A Batman-cum-Captain America knockoff named Justice Hall, who is the latest raven-themed vigilante in a line of such individuals dating back to Ben Franklin (the raven is the national bird in this, the Federated States of America, and I certainly got a kick out of finding out why); quasi-bad-girl Kastra, an alien princess type with the usual amorphous telekinetic/energy-based powers that women superheroes always get saddled with; the Schaff, a rampaging Hulk stand-in who is himself the result of an accident in which two other superheroes (the Green Lantern-ish Red Fez and Kastra’s father, an intergalactic warrior leader) were physically melded together; and the Grand, a Superman figure about whom we learn next to nothing, beyond the fact that he’s a bona-fide asshole. After we’re introduced to all four characters (via an autograph-seeking kid who couldn’t be more transparently a mere plot device), we see them get blown into an alternate dimension, where planet Earth is superhero-free. In very short order, all four “heroes” end up dead. (No, I’m not spoiling anything–it says so in giant block letters right there on the back of the book.) How this happens is where they story hooks you.
On Young’s website he says that each of the four superheroes represent not just a super-archetype, but a faction of the comics industry. I’m not going to sit around guessing who’s what (beyond the obvious conjecture that the Grand represents modern-day superpublishers)–I’m far too taken aback by how perfectly Planet demonstrates how the excess baggage of the superhero genre, unless it’s being handled by extremely gifted men and women, makes great art so very difficult create. In the heroes’ world, their behavior is readily understood and tolerated, if not fully accepted, but with a flick of the switch no one they meet can make heads or tails of what the hell they’re doing or why the hell they’re doing it. It’s a reaction I’m sure you’re familiar with–you probably felt it last time you read a lousy superhero comic, one where the characters did things simply because, well, that’s the way things have been done for the past sixty years. The result of such by-the-numbers obesiance to convention and cliche, Planet shows us, is soulless, ugly, and ultimately destructive. (So too, naturally, is at least one of the heroes in the story. Getting there is half the fun.)
But none of these ideas would stick if there wasn’t something to the work itself, and there is. The book features a terrific four-color flashback to the event that created the Schaff, with a compelling wordless sequence that (in a rare move for the book) gives the scene some real heft. The final act takes place atop a dam, with wide-open spaces of sky, sun, and water giving the impression that these characters really have been freed from their constraints, and could go do something either very bad or very good at any moment. And the final confrontation between the two sudden nemeses is surprisingly forceful, all squinty eyes and lantern jaws and unexpected, horrendous violence. Again, Young was smart enough to leave this key sequence silent, and again McKinney imbued it with a sense of dread that enables it to work without simply relying on audience memories of similar confrontations.
Planet of the Capes is likely to be one of those books that either works for you, or doesn’t. (A quick look around the comics blogosphere should tell you that.) With its slapdash plot and largely empty characters, I’m sure some people would feel cheated by the $12.95 pricetag (that’s three bucks more than your average manga volume, for a whole lot less story). But Planet is a solid, squalid little book, and if you’re in the right mood, it’ll tell you a lot of things you’ve wanted to hear about far too many supercomics. “We’ve been had” is the message, and this nasty, brutish, and short supercomic is the messenger.