There's never enough... of Howard Chaykin's humor.
In case you missed the 90s, Howard Chaykin did a little Malibu miniseries called
Power & Glory, where America tried to create their own superman in an experiment that just went wrong in so many different ways. Dynamite Entertainment is releasing a new collection of the mini that includes a one-shot followup that Chaykin did as well. I just recently tried to reread my original Malibu-published collection and, to be honest, this is minor Chaykin at best. The themes and ideas he explores are mostly rehashes of
American Flagg!, just disguised as a "superhero" book. After the originality of
American Flagg!,
Time2,
Blackhawk and
The Shadow,
Power & Glory just feels kind of old and ran down. It lacks the punch that
American Flagg! still has 20 years later.
But as I was paging through the collection, I had to laugh at the original cover pictured here, featuring one of the main characters kicking in television sets. You see, at the time this was coming out, Chaykin was making a living as a television writer, working on shows like
The Flash and
Mutant X. He was creating heroes for television, just like his plot in
Power & Glory was trying to do. Only the hero of P&G is a vain, unheroic doofus, just the kind we usually send up the flagpole and salute. Chaykin's main character (who's name I can't remember right now,) is the typical Chaykin stand in, cut from the Reuben Flagg cloth. He's probably the hero that Chaykin wants to be. And he's kicking in TVs, which is probably where Chaykin made most of his money from.
Oh, that wonderful Chaykin irony at least lived on through his covers if not through his actual story.
This isn't an awful book but it does suffer from being run-of-the-mill. I'm looking forward to revisiting his
Midnight Men when Dynamite gets around to collecting it and I've been wanting to reread his
Thrillkiller stuff at DC lately.