January 2024 – In My Not So Humble Opinion

It Came from the 1990s: House of Secrets

As I’ve stated on several occasions, one of the reasons why I like to do these “It Came from the 1990s” features here on my blog is because the decade unfortunately has a reputation for having produced an inordinately large number of bad comic books. They allow me to spotlight some of the genuinely good, interesting, enjoyable comic books that came out between 1990 and 1999.

Keeping that in mind, it’s perhaps surprising that until now I haven’t written about any of the books released by DC Comics under their Vertigo imprint, as these were considered to be some of the most innovative books published during the 1990s. Then again, the Vertigo books were often very esoteric, with much more of an emphasis on mood & atmosphere than on straightforward plotting. I’ve felt that the odd, often cryptic, writing on the Vertigo titles does not lend itself easily to the sort of write-ups that I do here. Nevertheless, I’m going to give it a go, and cast my gaze back at the first six issues of the House of Secrets series, which were released in late 1996 and early 1997.

The original House of Secrets was an anthology series published by DC which ran for 154 issues between 1956 and 1978. The title is undoubtedly best known for its 92nd issue, published in 1971, which featured the acclaimed short story “Swamp Thing” by Len Wein & Bernie Wrightson, which was soon after spun off into an iconic ongoing series.

When House of Secrets was revived by writer Steven T. Seagle and artist Teddy Kristiansen at Vertigo in 1996, they took direct inspiration from the title and made the centerpiece an abandoned, haunted house wherein a mysterious supernatural courtroom known as the Juris operates. The Juris uncover, put on trial and, if the defendants are found guilty, sentence human beings for the various dark secrets they keep. This bizarre grouping of entities very much operates according to a strange blue and orange morality that is understood only by themselves.

Our entrant into this weird domicile and its mystical jurisprudence is a cynical teen runaway who calls herself Rain. Spinning various dark, twisted tales to explain why exactly she has fled from home, Rain is the quintessential unreliable narrator, a disaffected teenage Baron Munchausen.

Arriving in Seattle and invited to crash at the eponymous House of Secrets by fellow runaway Traci, Rain is drafted by the Juris to serve as a “witness” to their trials. In spite of her world-weary facade, Rain possesses a sense of right & wrong, and an empathy for others, and she finds herself interceding on behalf of the defendants who are at the mercy of the Juris’ often-bewildering laws and enigmatic judicial pronouncements.

Seagle & Kristiansen introduce the characters & concepts of House of Secrets in the first five issue story. “Foundation” of course has the dual meaning of referring to the central premise of the series and referencing the physical feature of a building upon which the entire structure rests. “Foundation” is colored by Bjarne Hansen & Heroic Age, lettered by Todd Klein, and edited by Shelly Bond née Roeberg. Richard Bruning designed the title logo.

Issue #6 is “Meeting – An Other Rooms Story” which is an aside from Rain’s personal narrative. Tony Zeder, a young man who struggles with alcoholism, is summoned / dragged from his first AA meeting to the House by the Juris, who seek to expose the secrets that lie at the heart of his addiction. Kristiansen provides the cover, with interior artwork by guest artist Duncan Fegredo.

I feel that Seagle did a good job writing a group of very flawed and at times unlikable characters. Rain is frequently unsympathetic, yet nevertheless is still a compelling protagonist. Tony in issue #6 is a very damaged, tortured individual.

Kristiansen does superb work designing the characters, especially the unsettling Juris. His work has a genuine atmosphere to it, which is vital for a series where the setting of the House is such a strong central element to the entire series. Fegredo’s art for “Meeting” really brings to life the physical & emotional torment of a man struggling with both substance abuse and horrific inner demons. Both artists evoke disturbing moods with their contributions to the series.

House of Secrets ran for 25 issues, coming to a close in December 1998. It was followed by a two-issue miniseries House of Secrets: Facade in 2001. Why did I only read the first six issues of the ongoing series? Well, back in the Fall of 1996 I was just starting my junior year of college, but I was still very much a sheltered suburban kid who lived with my parents and hadn’t experienced much of life. I really could not relate to characters such as Rain and Traci who were thrust out into the world and had to survive on their own. The characters & situations Seagle & Kristiansen depicted felt very alien to me, almost as strange as the Juris themselves.

I definitely became more, shall we say, worldly in my 20s and 30s. I certainly got to know people like the ones that Seagle wrote about. I got into relationships, some with people I probably shouldn’t have gotten involved with, and experienced the disappointment of those I trusted letting me down. I’ve experienced the emotions & struggles, the love & hate, that comes from being intimately involved with another human being.

Oh yes… I discovered alcohol in my early 20s, and very quickly made up for lost time when it came to drinking & partying, landing in my first AA meeting a mere 13 years later. While I thankfully did not experience the traumas that drove Tony Zeder, I can very much identify with the physical, mental & emotional agonies of the character, the damage he caused to himself & others, and the difficult first steps that needed to be taken in order to get sober, the painfully raw emotions that I had to deal with once I stopped numbing myself with booze.

And, yeah, I also see a lot of what my significant other no doubt had to deal with in the experiences of Tony’s wife Angela. Such things can be a sobering reminder, both figuratively and literally, of where I’ve been & what I’ve done, and what I might end up going right back to if I’m not careful.

So, yes, in my mid-40s, re-reading the first six issues of House of Secrets last year, I definitely came away with much more identification than I had found the first time around. At some point I will probably seek out the rest of the series. I’m certainly interested in experiencing the rest of the story that Seagle, Kristiansen, Roeberg and their collaborators had to tell.

There was a House of Secrets Omnibus, collecting the entire 25 issue series, the Facade miniseries, and material from the Vertigo: Winter’s Edge special, published by DC / Vertigo in 2013. It’s long out of print, though, and copies are quite expensive. Fortunately most of the original issues can be found for affordable prices on eBay, if you are so inclined to check it out. I get the impression that, unlike some of Vertigo’s longer-running series, House of Secrets sort of fell under the radar. Perhaps it’s worth a reappraisal.

Star Trek reviews: Strange New Worlds — The Scorpius Run

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds season two ended on a MASSIVE cliffhanger. Due to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, production of the next season was significantly delayed, meaning we probably won’t be getting any new episodes of SNW until 2025. Fortunately, we have comic books to help fill the void.

IDW Publishing previously released the four issue Star Trek: Strange New Worlds –The Illyrian Enigma in late 2022. While it was a decent story, I feel it was ultimately hampered by being set between the first and second seasons on SNW. As such, any efforts by Captain Christopher Pike and his crew to clear the name of Lieutenant Commander Una Chin-Riley were bound to meet with failure, because of course that major plotline was going to be resolved in the television series itself, and not in a tie-in comic book.

In contrast, the new, just-completed five issue miniseries Star Trek: Strange New Worlds – The Scorpius Run is a self-contained story set at some point within the second season, telling a completely stand-alone adventure.

Exploring the chaotic area of space known as the Scorpius constellation, the Enterprise encounters Zephyx, a crime lord with access to advanced technology that grants him seemingly god-like powers. In true Star Trek fashion, Zephyx forces spaceships to compete in an incredibly dangerous race through the constellation. The prize for winning is survival; everyone else is fated to be destroyed. The Enterprise crew now finds themselves coerced to participate in the race.

The Scorpius Run is co-written by Mike Johnson & Ryan Parrott, with Parrott assuming solo writing duties on the fourth and fifth issues. Art is by Angel Hernandez, colors are by Nick Filardi, and letters are by Clayton Cowles.

Johnson & Parrott take full advantage of the comic book format to present a tale that, even with present-day budgets & special effects, would have been difficult, if not impossible to pull off in life action, presenting a dynamic race through dangerous & weird cosmic phenomena. That certainly includes the ship-eating asteroids! This is definitely a story where the series title Strange New Worlds lives up to its name.

The pair also have a really good ear for dialogue, writing Pike and the rest of the Enterprise crew very much in character. There were a number of occasions while reading this miniseries that I could definitely “hear” the actors’ voices in my head. In the fourth isssue Parrott gives Pike a really great inspirational speech that I could totally imagine Anson Mount delivering with earnestness & gravitas.

Like a lot of SNW fans, one of my favorite characters is the wry, sarcastic Lieutenant Erica Ortegas, pilot of the Enterprise, played by Melissa Navia. And like a lot of fans, I’ve wanted to see Ortegas get much more to do. I’m definitely on Team #MOretegas and I thought it was great to have a story where Erica’s expert skills played a key role, and she got to deliver a number of deadpan one-liners.

Hernandez does a great job capturing the likenesses of the characters, in many panels achieving dead-on accuracy. Drawing characters in licensed comic book titles is an underrated skill; readers expect a remarkable degree of photorealism, and the slightest mistake can completely ruin the depictions. I feel it is as much a matter, if not more so, of capturing the personalities & mannerisms of the characters as it is accurately rendering the actors who play them on television.

Hernandez also excels at depicting all of the alien races & spaceships and the bizarre hazards of the race, effectively aided by Filardi’s coloring. There are some sequences that are really vibrant & dynamic.

As with practically every comic book series nowadays, The Scorpius Run was released with several variant covers. For issue #2 I picked up the variant featuring Ortegas by artist Megan Levens & colorist Charlie Kirchoff, who provide a great portrait of Navia’s character. And for issue #3 I got the variant by the incredibly talented Jamal Igle, who draws the Enterprise flying through a cosmic storm. It’s Igle’s first time drawing anything related to Star Trek. I hope he has more opportunities in the future. I’d definitely like to see Igle’s depictions of some of the ST characters.

The great thing about IDW is that, unlike most publishers, they have a full-sized gallery of all of the variant covers for a comic in the back of each issue. So, no matter which one you happen to pick, you get to view all of them.

So, if you’re a Strange New Worlds fan, and the long wait for new episodes is getting you down, I certainly recommend this miniseries. It’s a lot of fun.

Godzilla Minus One

Godzilla Minus One is the newest installment in the Godzilla movie franchise from Toho Studios. Written & directed by Takashi Yamazaki, Godzilla Minus One is a reboot / reimagining of the original Gojira which was released by Toho in 1954.

The movie opens with a prologue set during the closing days of World War II in the Pacific Theater, with the main body of the story then set in the second half of the 1940s in devastated post-war Japan. The main character is Kōichi Shikishima (Ryunosuke Kamiki), a failed kamikaze pilot who returns home from the war emotionally crippled by memories of his cowardice. Through Shikishima, Yamazaki explores the themes of post-traumatic stress disorder, survivor’s guilt, and national shame.

Just as it was in the original Gojira, the Godzilla creature is depicted as the personification of the atomic bombs the United States dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Already bombed back into the stone age, a slowly-rebuilding Japan now faces further destruction at Godzilla’s hands. (The title Godzilla Minus One refers to the fact that after the war Japan had seemingly been reduced to an absolute zero point, and as such Godzilla’s attack now manages to bring the country even lower.)

Godzilla is also something of a white whale figure for Shikishima. What was merely implied in Gojira is made explicit here: Godzilla was a surviving prehistoric creature that inhabited the waters surrounding Odo Island for decades or centuries before being horribly mutated by America’s nuclear tests in the Pacific Ocean. The prologue on Odo Island sees the creature surface and attack a Japanese garrison, with a terrified Shikishima failing to act to save the soldiers & mechanics stationed there.

Already weighed down by the guilt of those who died on Odo, Shikishima’s trauma is compounded when two years later the now-titanic, radioactive Godzilla attacks Japan. Feeling that he failed to kill the creature when it was still an ordinary flesh & blood being, Shikishima becomes determined to now destroy it.

Yamazaki’s story equally distributes the blame for Japan’s fate. The Imperial Japanese government is rightfully criticized for its culture of glorified death in which so many of its citizens were cheaply sacrificed in the name of nationalism & conquest, leading to the country’s ruination. The United States is also called out for its continued post-war testing of weapons of mass destruction in the Pacific, and for its unwillingness to deal with both the literal and figurative fallout that affects Japan.

It instead falls to a group of military veterans turned private citizens to organize and find a way to stop Godzilla. Brilliant, eccentric naval engineer Kenji Noda (Hidetaka Yoshioka) devises a bold, audacious plan to destroy the creature, one that he hopes will not require the loss of any more human life to succeed.

As with Shin Godzilla in 2016, Godzilla Minus One restores Godzilla to his original status as a lumbering radioactive horror. The creature is simultaneously scaled back to its original 1954 height of 50 meters, or 164 feet, while giving it a more effective screen presence than ever before. The scenes of Godzilla attacking Japan are genuinely terrifying. Amazingly, Godzilla Minus One was made on a budget of only $15 million USD, demonstrating that if you have top-notch creative talent then you don’t need to shovel hundreds of millions of dollars into a genre movie to get it to work.

One way in which Godzilla Minus One succeeds over Shin Godzilla is in its focus on human beings. Shin Godzilla was at times weighed down by the interminable scenes which satirized the Japanese government’s unwieldy bureaucracy and its inability to quickly respond to a grave crisis. In contrast, Godzilla Minus One puts its focus on the people on the ground, the war veterans & civilians dealing with Godzilla’s rampage. Yamazaki’s script effectively develops Shikishima and the other characters, making them feel like real-life multifaceted people.

Godzilla Minus One is being considered by many to be one of the very best entries in the entire Godzilla series. I agree, it’s definitely a well-made, effective movie. It’s also very fast paced, feeling much shorter than its 125-minute runtime. I feel that it picks up the ball from the very good but uneven Shin Godzilla and delivers a powerful, engaging story populated by compelling characters. If you’re a fan of Gojira and the other early Godzilla movies from toho, then this is a must-see.