Howard Chaykin is a comic book artist who came to his powers when the industry was in flux. He started in the ’70s, when the Comics Code power was waning (but not quite spent) and the comic book companies were flailing to maintain relevance, and more importantly, sales.
Buy Lost Marvels No. 2: Howard Chaykin Vol. 1: Dominic Fortune, Monark Starstalker, and Phantom EagleAnd he needed work. Marvel had the license for a ’70s movie that needed tie-ins, so Chaykin drew the first ten issues of Marvel’s Star Wars comic book. Did this sort of work suit Chaykin? Well, as of today, Googling “Chaykin” and “Star Wars” finds an article with the title: “Star Wars Poisoned my Career.” So, I guess not.
So, this collection, Lost Marvels No. 2, from Fantagraphics does not focus on the artist’s most popular books. In fact, they might be some of his least popular. In the collection’s introduction Chaykin is quoted about his most personal work collected here: “Nobody bought it.”
That’s the Dominic Fortune miniseries from 2009, published by Marvel MAX. That was an adult imprint of Marvel Comics that mostly petered out in the mid-2010s. Dominic Fortune is one of three heroes focused on in this collection, along with Monark Starstalker and Phantom Eagle.
But this is not really a superhero collection. The first comic is the Monark Starstalker, in an issue of Marvel Premiere. That was a comic series that would be a kind of holding ground for characters Marvel liked but weren’t at the moment popular enough for their own series. It’s also occasionally where Marvel would showcase new characters, like Chaykin created Monark Starstalker. He’s a space-faring bounty hunter with no real connection to the larger Marvel universe. It’s more in line with ’30s pulp sci-fi than then-contemporary comics.
Dominic Fortune did exist in the Marvel universe and is a much more personal character for Chaykin. It was his self-conscious attempt at making a hyper-masculine Jewish superhero. He doesn’t have super-powers per-se, so he’s more of a Batman figure. But Chaykin (as an included excerpt from the Marvel Official Handbook attests) places him in strategic important places for the Marvel Universe. This included being a champion of little Steve Rogers, fighting off bullies that would harass the future Captain America.
There’s another issue of Marvel Premiere included here from the ’80s. Fortune fights carnies, for some reason. It plays like a kaleidoscope episode of Magnum P.I. However, the meat of the collection is the two complete collected series after.
The Dominic Fortune mini-series posits the thrill-seeker as an apolitical man of fortune, but when he sniffs out a Nazi plot to overtake late ’30s America, all his pretense of neutrality goes away. The four-issue series combines history, Hollywood, and a lot of unbelievable violence that culminates in a direct attack on the White House and FDR himself.
The other miniseries involves the Phantom Eagle, apparently a WWI hero I’ve never heard of but who just serves as a lynchpin for Garth Ennis to write about war. Ennis is most famous these days for penning The Boys, but in the ’90s and ’00s he was well known as a writer who moved through superhero circles while thoroughly hating superheroes. Of course, reading The Boys could tell you that.
His despise of cheap comic-book heroism comes through loud and clear in War is Hell: The First Flight of the Phantom Eagle (2008). Chaykin is the artist here, and his skills are readily apparent. Though he’d been in the business for more than 30 years at this point, there was nothing dated about his character designs nor the brilliant technical drawing of the several WWI fighting planes he has to draw for this series.
War is Hell‘s premise is simple: a rich American pilot, Kauffman, wants to get in on the action of WWI. He’s expecting duels and fair combat. What he gets is the terrifying hellscape of real war. I’ve never seen in any medium as grim a depiction of how horrible air combat could be. In movies, it’s anesthetized with bullets hitting planes, and those planes falling out of the sky.
War is Hell graphically depicts what happens to the occupants of those planes. In his first sortie, Kauffman fires at an enemy. He doesn’t hit the plane; he hits the pilot and decapitates him with his bullets. This isn’t the sort of combat he’s expecting… but it’s real war. And he needs to get used to it. Chaykin didn’t write this five-issue series, but it follows his own philosophy of pushing the American super-hero comic to the edge of its expectations, and beyond.
It’s important to note that the majority of this collection is republishing Marvel Max comics, which are intended for adults. Graphic language, nudity, and especially violence is replete throughout. Just going on the stories, War is Hell was my favorite of the collection. The Dominic Fortune miniseries was clearly more personal for Chaykin, and while his comic book storytelling was impeccable, I wasn’t as convinced by the plot or the dialogue.
But I’m happy that these interesting, gritty books have been collected by Fantagraphics. Howard Chaykin has had ups and downs (just ask him), but he’s been a constant source of idiosyncratic interest in the American comic scene. I’m glad to see his work, from any era, making it into a prestigious collection.
