VURT YOUR ENTHUSIASM (23)
By:
September 22, 2024
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of science fiction novels and comics from the Eighties (1984–1993, in our periodization schema). Series edited by Josh Glenn.
AMERICAN FLAGG! | HOWARD CHAYKIN | 1983–1989
It’s 2031. America is a fractured nation ruled by behemoth corporations, terrorized by militarized cults, and hypnotized by messages piped subliminally into always-on televisuals. The planet is scarred by climate change. The government is an absentee landlord, having retreated to Mars. Only one man can save the day: a former TV star named Reuben Flagg. Rendered professionally redundant by CGI actors, Flagg instead fights crime when he’s not shacking up with one femme fatale after another (or maybe the other way around). He’s been conscripted by a private police force called the Plexus Rangers, the military wing of the sort of mega-corporation that doubles as atmospheric bogeyman in dystopian fiction. This is the world of the comic book American Flagg! (indeed, the exclamation point is part of the title).
Actually, it’s 2024 as I type this, and… well, things are somewhat familiar — from the employment threat of AI, to the privatization of police work, to the rampant media misinformation, to the ravages of a warming planet, to the anarcho-capitalist vision of leaving Earth behind in favor of an unregulated reboot on the red planet.
Actually, it’s 1983, and mainstream American comics need a shot in the arm. The world-weary metafictions of Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns are three long years away. Only one man can write and draw fans out of the superhero doldrums. This auteur’s name is Howard Chaykin, and at age 33 he manages to foresee both the above futures. Over the course of 12 bold issues, he forges in American Flagg! a true science fiction comic: a sumptuous vision of the dim future that is 2031, complete with a talking cat, robot sidekicks, satellite-powered election tampering, and ballistic pharmaceutical weaponry, and populated by characters with names like Medea Blitz and Sam Luis Obispo. American comics are rich with superheroes, less so with solid scifi. The closest English-language comrades of Chaykin’s Flagg arguably appeared in the long-running magazines Heavy Metal and 2000 AD (notably Judge Dredd) and in shorter-lived Deadline (see: Tank Girl).
American Flagg! will go on for dozens more issues, first from Chaykin, then courtesy of a rotating cast of contributors (among them J.M. DeMatteis, Mark Badger, and Watchmen’s own Alan Moore), but it’s Chaykin’s initial run that stands out. It has the power of a blockbuster movie yet bears the self-evident imprint of a single individual’s creation (credit as well to letterer Ken Bruzenak, who is if not the fifth Beatle then the second Chaykin, thanks to his dynamic visual sound effects).
Like the unflagging Flagg, Chaykin doesn’t make things easy for himself. His pages are complex hybrids of action scenes, film noir politics, and pervasive advertising. He draws with a combination of macho posturing and delicate pointillism: part Spain Rodriguez, part Drew Friedman; part Tom of Finland, part David Chelsea. Televised news reports provide recaps at the start of each issue, and the stories are as embroidered with logos as is the bleak future in which they unfold (words in the spoken dialog are frequently affixed with a playful ™ symbol). This is, foremost, media about media, and Chaykin and Flagg dramatically expose the conspiracies of their respective realities side by side.
VURT YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Mark Kingwell on SNOW CRASH | Mandy Keifetz on THE GENOCIDAL HEALER | Matthew De Abaitua on SWAMP THING | Carlo Rotella on THE PLAYER OF GAMES | Lynn Peril on GEEK LOVE | Stephanie Burt on THE CARPATHIANS | Josh Glenn on DAL TOKYO | Deb Chachra on THE HYPERION CANTOS | Adam McGovern on KID ETERNITY | Nikhil Singh on THE RIDDLING REAVER | Judith Zissman on RANDOM ACTS OF SENSELESS VIOLENCE | Ramona Lyons on PARABLE OF THE SOWER | Jessamyn West on the MARS TRILOGY | Flourish Klink on DOOMSDAY BOOK | Matthew Battles on THE INTEGRAL TREES | Tom Nealon on CLAY’S ARK | Sara Ryan on SARAH CANARY | Gordon Dahlquist on CONSIDER PHLEBAS | Alex Brook Lynn on VURT | Miranda Mellis on STARS IN MY POCKET LIKE GRAINS OF SAND | Nicholas Rombes on RADIO FREE ALBEMUTH | Adelina Vaca on NEUROMANCER | Marc Weidenbaum on AMERICAN FLAGG! | Peggy Nelson on VIRTUAL LIGHT | Michael Grasso on WILD PALMS.
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