20th Century Men
While I let my expectations with established talent dictate a lot of what I read, there’s something to be said for picking up a comic from creators I’m unfamiliar with and being entertained by it. This has happened before and it’ll happen again. Of course, there’s always the chance that you might wind up with something that’s either completely disappointing, or a waste of your time, or both. Which is what we have with “20th Century Men.”
Written by Deniz Camp with art by Stipan Moran, this is an Image title that had an interesting solicitation. In that it boiled down to a Soviet war hero in iron armor, a super-powered American President, a female Afghan freedom fighter, and an insane American cyborg soldier walk into a bar one day. Only the bar in this case is Afghanistan circa 1987, right around the time Russia was invading the country (badly) in real life.
But hey! The fact that the story has some sci-fi and superheroic flourishes to it should enliven what was all around a sorry chapter in Russian and Afghan history, right? That would be true if I felt that there was actually a story being told here. “20th Century Men” only feels like it has opinions on its characters and what they’re doing. That’s not a bad thing, but the narrative never comes together well enough to give you a reason to care about these things.
Worse still is that it feels like a lot of what Camp is writing about is either accepted wisdom or patently obvious with regards to the major players here. Russia’s grand socialist plans for its people being waylaid by corrupt generals and politicians? Been there. America being a force that boils things down to good or evil for the sake of perpetuating a forever war? Got the T-shirt. The people of Afghanistan being forever at the mercy of other world powers despite their best efforts? Must be Tuesday. If you disagree with any of these ideas, what you get here isn’t likely to change your mind. If you agree, then you’re likely to be bored regardless.
Not that you’ll be charmed by its cast, either, as they’re all largely one note. Iron soldier Platonov only carries the air of tragedy around him as he carries out his orders even though he’s doomed for failure. The American President is all bluster and HOO-RAH! as he beats the drums of war back home, even as he realizes he’s just a cog in a great war machine. Azra is Female Afghan Freedom Fighter with no more agency or interesting things to do beyond what that title suggests. As for the crazed cyborg killing machine, well… at least he gets to have his dick out (in silhouette) on the volume’s back cover.
None of these characters have any depth to them beyond the descriptions I’ve given them. Which is a problem since the majority of the story revolves around them. Camp does actually do a little better in regards to his supporting cast, which gives us the volume’s most readable parts. Particularly the bits involving Krylov, the journalist, and the hulking Soviet sniper known as the Giant.
They get a lot of time together in the middle part of the story as Krylov finds himself attached to the Giant’s company to report on them for the papers back home. Even though “20th Century Men” bills itself as a sci-fi/superhero story, these scenes dispense with that pretense and have some real war story drama to them. They may follow a familiar path of Krylov getting his eyes opened to what it’s really like In Country, but they’re also the most straightforwardly written parts of the series and the most engaging as a result. In fact, the creators could’ve stripped out all of the sci-fi/superhero aspects of this story and it wouldn’t have changed much, if anything.
It would’ve given artist Moran less interesting things to draw, though. Not that he needed these things to make the story look good as the man delivers art that is far better than this series deserves. He employs a wide variety of styles to illustrate each scene: sometimes in conventional sequential panel-to-panel progression, others in double page spreads that have the story flowing in interesting directions, and panels paired with text with only a picture or two to indicate what’s going on. All with art that changes chameleonically from scene-to-scene, boasting an incredible level of detail and some impressionism that would make Sienkiewicz proud.
It’s work that makes me hope that Moran goes on to bigger and better things from here. As for Camp, I find it amusing that someone who worked on this politically-driven, clearly personal, and opaquely told story is now working on the “Children of the Vault” tie-in miniseries for the “Fall of X” storyline over at Marvel. We all have to pay the bills, but I don’t think anyone would’ve expected to see the writer doing that after a story like this.
That may sound petty, but I was really let down by this. If nothing else, “20th Century Men” has set a low bar for the next comic I pick up from unknown creators to clear for me. Everyone else should just go read the manga that this miniseries’ title evoked but failed to equal in any way when it came to telling its story: “20th Century Boys.”