I’ve already talked about 1963, the Alan Moore helmed, mid-90’s Image comics series and I wanted to share one of my favorite chapters, the mind-blowing, reality-bending “It Came From Inner Space!” from 1963 Book Three: Tales of the Uncanny. Tales of the Uncanny was basically a riff on Marvel’s classic Tales Of Suspense, with U.S.A. the Ultimate Secret Agent in the Captain America slot, and Hypernaut serving as the Iron Man stand-in. Hypernaut is a far weirder character though, and owes as much to Green Lantern and Legionnaire Wildfire, as you’re about to see. This story also represents the first and only(?) artistic pairing of Sturdy Steve Bissette (Swamp Thing, Tyrant) and charmin’ Chester Brown (Yummy Fur), an unusual but inspired choice. I like both artists separately, but I really liked this collaboration. I’ve always especially enjoyed this story for its surreal weirdness and playful subversion of dimensional physics. As with most of my reprints, this is long out of print, and as far as I know, there are no plans to reprint. And if they do reprint 1963, you should totally buy it anyway, as it is great, great stuff.
1963 is copyright Alan Moore, Rick Veitch and Stephen R. Bissette.
The Hypernaut, The Fury and N-Man are copyright and trademark Stephen R. Bissette.
5 comments:
Simply awesome.
1963 is indescribably good. Alan Moore's smart writing combined with a 100% perfect parody/homage of early Marvel, complete with fake ads, letter columns, and editor's soapbox.
Hypernaut reminds of the wife a bit - "Maybe someday I'll try a strange one like my cyber-gel form/wear that $600 dress."
It looks like Alan was doing a take on Basil Wolverton's Spacehawk to me. the cross-dimensional creature Sure looked like Wolverton art, anwyay
Hi Brian,
I've been a lurker here for a long while; your blog posts are always really entertaining and often very funny! 1963 is my favorite unfinished comic - I even have an issue signed by Veitch and Bissette!
If you don't mind, I'd like to let you know that I've backlinked you onto my blog, http://comicscube.blogspot.com. If you object to this, please just tell me, and I'll take down the link. But if you so happen to like my site as well, could I trouble you for a backlink as well? Please let me know. Either way, thanks for your time!
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