Imperial #1 & #2
I read both of these issues right as the clock expired on 11/07 which is as close as I’ve come to violating the Comic A Day rule I setup for myself this first week of November.
These books found their way into my bag because of Steven T. Seagle who wrote and designed this series for Image. My willingness to pick up Steven T. Seagle’s books stems back to the late 1990’s when his “House of Secrets” book, that he worked on with the fantastic Teddy Kristiansen, had a strong hand in helping me figure out my relationship with comics once I decided that superheros weren’t really going to do it for me anymore. Later I’d read his Sandman Mystery Theater issues with lovely monstrous art by Guy Davis (this is the Golden Age Sandman, not the Gaiman Sandman) that was sort of super hero adjacent or pulp hero-ish and it showed me that there were people doing things with traditional comic book tropes and patterns that could still be innovative or at least entertaining on a more “adult” level with just amping up the violence like Dark Knight or trying their best to ape Watchmen (there was a lot of that going on in the late ’90s. People trying to cash in on the next fad)
The plot of Imperial seems pretty basic and redundant at first. A super powerful being reveals to some poor slob that he’s retiring/expiring and that the power stored in him or some secret object sees something in this seemingly undeserving successor. The two of them (Imperial, the powerful and Mark, the successor) question the logic of the power, in the crown in this case, but try to work together because the world needs the power of Imperial to keep it from being destroyed.
Another trope being played with here is the “My Fair Lady” scenario. By the end of the second issue we already see Eliza (Mark) learning something from Henry Higgins (Imperial) but Henry is starting to learn lessons from Eliza too! Oh, isn’t it heart warming? They’re starting to become human instead of caricatures right before our eyes!
So double the tropes and cliches….sounds great! The little wrinkle that is thrown in is a hint that Mark might be hallucinating the whole thing. Imperial first appears to Mark as he’s scattering his estranged father’s ashes on a mountaintop and we soon find out that there was drama at his job about letting him leave to fulfill his father’s wishes. On top of all that he’s in the final throes of wedding planning, which can be very stressful. There are a couple more hints that this is all in his head dropped over these two issues. I know that Seagal tends to play mind tricks, or rather, make things less concrete. Open it up for questions to be asked.
The art inside is a super polished version of Love and Rockets style in a full color palette. Oddly, the inside front and back cover are treated like pages of the comic in both issues. I don’t think I’ve seen that before in a mainstream monthly floppy comic. I’m not sure what it means but I think it’s odd enough to mention.
I’m operating on faith that there will be some payoff here. There’s a hint of it here, but mostly it’s just an interesting trope fest at this point. I’ve only got one more issue in my box at home and I’m not sure how many there are in total (I know it’s a mini-series) but if something doesn’t pay off just a little in #3, I may forget to look up the final few issues.
Comic read on 11/07/2017 on the couch at home.
