It’s the 30th anniversary of Image Comics, the company that arguably changed the way the comic book industry does comic books. We started out in their publication history in April, moved on to May, and now we’re in June. There were two issues published in June, and the first of those is Youngblood #2, the sequel to the book we started this whole thing off with.
This one isn’t going to make much more sense than the first one did, other than the fact that Rob Liefeld loved him some pinups.
Dedicated to the King
The book was dedicated to Jack “The King” Kirby, so there’s a character in here named, affectionately, Kirby. It starts very simply with a really awesome hero shot, because that was the order of the day. This was the ’90s. The story also has a prologue.
This is another one that Rob Liefeld wrote himself, and the characters look far better than they speak. There’s a lot of corniness, and a lot of really borrowed looks. I say that because it’s kind of hard to do what they were trying to do at Image Comics and not borrow from the existing lore and world. So the first thing you have is this team who’s very much reminiscent of a lot of the others. They borrowed heavily from, I want to say, his New Mutants run for this one.
The team is after someone named Darkthorn (the awesome names continue, by the way), and they’re fighting someone appropriately called the Death Squad. It’s very, very cocky, and of course every frame and every panel is a very effective shot.
This whole book shouts Jack Kirby as an influence, because that’s how Jack Kirby was. He was a guy who felt something should be happening in every panel. Something exciting should be going on. There should be something viscerally, visually interesting for people to look at each and every time. Same thing here. They’re fighting, and you’ve got this Beast slash Wolverine looking guy who’s like, the Death Squad has never proven a match for Wildmane. Then there’s this one chick who looks sort of like one of the Morlocks from X-Men doing the same for Battleaxe, and then the big guy goes, Grey has finished off the last of them. I think that’s pretty much everybody talking in third person at this point.
Eventually they find the guy, this Kirby, who by the way bears no small passing resemblance to Jack “The King” Kirby. Of course he’s got some big old giant honking Rob Liefeld guns that look amazing and super fantasy sci-fi, and that’s probably about as much detail as you’re ever going to get out of this artist. I liked this.
Darkthorn Is Darkseid in a Purple Suit
Then you meet Darkthorn, a character I don’t know that we go much past. None of these characters are really that important. But he’s doing his best Darkseid impression, because Darkthorn basically looks like Darkseid recolored. He’s all red skin and purple suit, and his stance is with his arm behind his back. There’s some guy who looks almost like Ebony Maw behind him, in all these classic poses. Again, every shot is a posed shot.
Apparently the Disciples are after the Berzerkers, and all of this is leading to what inevitably becomes the title page of this book, which is “Prophet.”
How You Fake Fifty Years of History
The reason Marvel Comics was able to do Captain America coming back from the dead, if you will, is because they published Captain America back in the ’40s. It’s not a hard leap to establish story and say this is all from that. When you don’t have that history, you have to do what this book does.
So we meet Prophet, who is John Prophet, and he’s in a cryogenic stasis chamber. Of course it’s a glorified giant two-page spread turned sideways, because an 11 by 17 sheet of paper isn’t enough. You’ve got to really go all out. You get to see Youngblood, the away team we saw in the previous book, all in a very cool sci-fi looking lab. Again, I don’t know how you fit anybody in this lab.
John’s in water, I assume, and we get a full page where you find out his history: how they selected him, and how he was eventually the subject of a human experiment by a guy named Dr. Wells. I guess Dr. Wells is like the mad scientist in Rob Liefeld’s little universe. It’s funny, this is really reminiscent of some of those video games, Master Chief and the Halo games.
I Don’t Know Who You Are, So We’re Going to Fight
The group is like, oh, I guess we’ve got to babysit this guy and deliver him to whatever. Cougar’s not happy about the whole thing. But it ends up being Cougar and his partner, the Kahtonian guy who’s a big warrior person. When you don’t know characters’ names, you kind of need someone to say their name from time to time, and they don’t really do that.
Him and Cougar are the ones responsible for securing Prophet in his tube. Cougar touches something he’s not supposed to touch, and next thing you know the alien warrior guy is thrown back in some really cool Kirby bubbles, Kirby crackle. And then, because why draw any of this, you suddenly have Prophet out. I’m assuming his cryogenic tube exploded. Maybe they’re outside, maybe they’re not. It’s kind of difficult to tell. But somehow we’ve segued into some really cool heroic poses and a lot of forced close-ups, and you get the classic “I don’t know who you are, so we’re going to fight.”
Around here we start noticing there’s a new set of captions that look different, a little computer-y. I’m conjecturing, because of where they’re placed, that Prophet has some sort of onboard AI, something he’s asking questions of or that’s asking questions of him. It’s like, prime directive, eliminate Disciples. Are the subjects identified as Disciples, question mark. And the answer is unverified. We don’t know. So he just starts fighting them. Well, actually, they start fighting him.
Cougar’s the first one to take him on, and he gets knocked out. The Kahtonians’ finest warrior tries to take on Prophet, and it’s just back and forth, all very super heroic poses.
Bro, Just Stick to What You Know
I feel like someone told Rob, you’ve got to have more hash marks, man. You’ve got to have all these little hatching lines like Jim Lee does. But he didn’t really know how to do them. And I’m like, bro, just stick to what you know, which is you have zero musculature, just make it look good on the page.
And that’s what he does, because this whole thing is one big fight. You have scene after scene of them talking, and you see all the various characters coming out of the woodwork. Eventually Riptide shows up, and I guess she’s in the desert or something. Brahma shows up and hits the guy really hard, and you hear the computer voice going, oh my gosh, damage sustained, and all these things. Prophet’s like, oh, we’ll defeat you, blah blah blah.
It’s Berserking Time
Then all of a sudden these dudes show up, these Rob Liefeld bots. I say Rob Liefeld bots because they look just like all the robots Rob Liefeld does. You get this two-page spread, and suddenly Prophet’s like, oh, okay, because these guys claim to be the Disciples. His little onboard AI goes, query: Disciples confirmed. And now, like magic, he’s on their team.
Youngblood is facing off with these guys, and lo and behold, in rides to save the day: Kirby and the Berzerkers. It’s the classic giant hero group pinup shot. “Name’s Kirby. These here are the Berzerkers.” And by the looks of things, we definitely have to say “it’s berserking time,” because everything had to have a time, or something clever.
The little caption says next issue: the Berzerkers, Prophet and Youngblood versus the Disciples. And then, of course, ‘nuff said.
So there you go, now you know, and if knowing is half the battle, you’re halfway to being the know-it-all that I know you are.
That’s going to do it for this issue of Youngblood. Next in June was Spawn #2, so be on the lookout for that one. Right now, because of the Image Comics 30th anniversary, we’re just covering the books that were on my pull list, so hopefully you enjoy it.
Let me know if you like some of these, or if there are other stories from that era you want to hear about. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above. And never forget, everybody loves a know-it-all.
