A Distant Soil, #25

This may seem a bit unbelievable, but I can pretty much remember buying every comic I own. I’m not saying I recall the date, time, and type of clothing I wore; I mean I can look at a comic and remember what motivated me to buy it. A storyline I was interested in, a writer/artist I liked; something a friend recommended. And I know this is the case because, as the exception proves the rule, I look at A Distant Soil #25 and for the life of me I can’t remember why I bought this thing.

My first thought was that it was a recommendation from the old Warren Ellis Forum, back when every day on that old message board brought you a recommendation of new comics to try. That was around 2000/2001, when Warren was in his prime and people were treating his Old Bastard’s Manifesto like it was manna from Heaven and everybody and their retarded cat were promoting comics that weren’t about super-heroes.

I don’t know what the battle lines are like today, but at the start of the 21^st century, there was a culture war within the online comicbook community. It was fifteen years since Maus, Watchmen, and The Dark Knight Returns, and comics were getting regular mainstream press. Neil Gaiman’s Sandman was still the darling of the literary literati and the general sense was that comics, at long last, were ready to be embraced by the world at large and put on equal footing with novels, cinema, and television as a valid entertainment and artistic medium. The conflict was over how the comicbook industry could bring about that magic moment that would catapult comics out from derision and into legitimacy. A very vocal faction believed that, if it were going to happen, it wasn’t going to be because of the latest super-hero story, but rather comics that dealt with themes and issues more in line with serious literature. The denizens of the WEF, to over-simplify matters, were part of that faction, and Warren’s Old Bastard’s Manifesto was a rallying cry to champion comics that had absolutely nothing to do with super-heroes.

Like any good hierarchy where a vocal minority clash for the moral high-ground, snobbery begets snobbery. So while the “comics are more than superheroes” camp decried stories about people dressed in “spandex”, so did the super-hero fans scoff at the lowly titles that were so unpopular that they could only be published by small-press companies, with budgets so small they couldn’t afford to print in color. I know it’s absurd, but that’s what you get when you argue with people who know Batman’s shoe size (it’s twelve and a half).

Which brings us back, finally, to A Distant Soil. A Distant Soil was not about super-heroes. It was solely the work of one creator (it’s creator, Colleen Doran both wrote and drew the series), it was a sci-fi/fantasy story as opposed to super-heroes, it was created by that rarest of species: a female comicbook creator , it had a relatively small following, which meant it made only a small profit, and it published in black-and-white.  In short, was exactly the kind of comicbook the people of the Warren Ellis Forum championed, and the kind of story the majority readers of comics wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole.

The basic premise was this: two children, a brother and sister, from the planet Ovanan possess special powers. The sister, Liana, has the ability to be an Avatar, your basic King Arthur/Jesus archetype. They are protected by the current Avatar, who happens to be the leader of a resistance group fighting against the oppressive Ovanian rulers. This current Avatar, Rieken, enlists a group of humans from Earth to help protect the children and fight against the evil Hierarchy. Political intrigue, religious overtones, and questions about sexuality and gender identification ensue. 

It is, to be honest, fairly standard sci-fi fantasy stuff. I didn’t find the story or characters particularly compelling. The intrigue that took up this particular issue—a failed assassination of a major character by a supposed ally, the aftermath of the death of another characters, and what I assume was a love triangle between the Avatar, his male bodyguard and a woman who is clearly important within the world of the story but I couldn’t tell you why—lacked any emotional gravitas for me. Granted, I was coming in on the middle of the action, but neither the dialogue nor the characterizations had any emotional resonance for me.  While the artwork was fine, there was, for me, a jarring lack of shadows; it gave every person and scene a lack of depth and made it even harder for me to accept the reality of the world the series exists in. A good story brings you into itself and invests you emotionally. As I read this issue, I was constantly aware of being a reader, being on the outside looking in, and I didn’t feel any effort being made to welcome me inside. Reading this issue 13 years after I first bought it, my opinion of it remains unchanged.

And maybe that’s why I’ve spent most of this entry talking about the Warren Ellis Forum instead of the issue at hand: like reading A Distant Soil , I was always on the outside of the discussion, looking in. I read that message board, for the most part, passively (I did post on occasion, but I was never any part of what made the WEF what it was). But I was emotionally invested in what the WEF was about. And when it was about comics--differing opinions aside--it was clear the people on that forum loved comics as much as I did.

Two last semi-random comments before I close this out:

Firstly: this issue contains a back-up feature, Colleen’s adaptation of a Neil Gamin short story called “Troll Bridge”. Her penciling style is radically different from the rest of the comic; the lines are much looser, lots of shadows and moodiness. I liked her linework much more in the backup than the main feature. I think the fact that she is capable of such range as an artist is a testament to her ability, even if one of those styles didn’t work for me personally. If this entry is ever discovered by any fans of the series or Doran in general, I’d be curious to hear their thoughts on her as an artist.

Secondly: For all my linking of this comic with the WEF, that place wasn’t what made me check the series out. Issue 25 came out in the summer of 1998, a good two years before I started lurking on that message board. Thinking about it now, the most likely reason for me buying this was that it was something I picked up when I went to that year’s San Diego Comicon, but even that is just a guess. So I guess I’ll just have to live with a little mystery.

Up next: 

“Hey, whatcha reading?”

“What?”

“Whatcha reading?”

“Oh, some comic by this guy, Bendis. Brian Micheal Bendis. About Goldfish.”

“The cracker?”

“What?”

“Goldfish. You know, those cheese crackers in the shape of fish.”

“No, not Goldfish the cracker. Goldfish the con artist. Besides, I’m more of a Ritz man, myself.”

“Wow, why you got to be such a—“

“Fucking wise-ass?”

“I was gonna say ‘smart-alec’. I wasn’t going to curse.”

“Well, we are talking about a comic that’s written by Bendis….”