The comics are chosen completely at random and apart from a four week lead-in period, even I don't know what I'll be looking at in the weeks to come!
BLOODY MARY: LADY LIBERTY #4 - December 1997
Mary Malone - an ex-special ops soldier - has been drafted in along with her old comrade The Major, to get into New York city which is being held by Achilles Seagal and the cult he's created, the Branch Achilleans. There he's set himself up as a divine leader and is busy impregnating as many of his female followers as possible, ostensibly to usher in some new world. Tasked with taking him down, Mary gets to his headquarters, the Empire State Building, where she finds an old foe, the Vatman, waiting for her.
Once a connoisseur of the finest wines, Mary's previous outing (in Bloody Mary) had left him without a lower jaw or the ability to savour his favourite - or any - vintage.
Thankfully, when things look bleak, Mary's aided by a sniper who manages to take out the pistol the Vatman holds on her, allowing her to land a kick to the head which knocks away his prosthetic jaw:
With him dispatched, Mary, joined by the Major, finds Seagal broadcasting a message of hope to his followers. They force him to admit on camera that there's nothing divine about him, that he's simply a sex addict taking advantage of his followers' faith to indulge in as much sex as he wants. With that message released to the members of the cult, Mary and the Major take care of one last detail:
And they all live happily ever after. Well, the good guys do, anyway.
It's certainly not Garth Ennis's best work - far from it - and should be viewed, along with the earlier mini-series, as a black-humoured romp with no special message or real meaning to it. It really is little more than a vehicle for Ennis to poke fun at religious cults and their leaders, at the same time once again proclaiming his love for New York City.
On the plus side, though, it does have the art of Carlos Ezquerra and I will cheerfully read just about anything by that man.
Hmm. I remember the old ads for the original mini in Wizard back in the day. This one looks decent enough though. That Helix imprint really just did not have a chance did it?
ReplyDeleteHelix lasted, I think, roughly half an hour! I think the hope was it would be the sci-fi answer to Vertigo but when your main line routinely publishes stories featuring superpowers, time travel, aliens and spaceships why do you need a sci-fi imprint?
DeleteBlimey, never heard of this - Vatman was the name of the character invented by the British governmen to explain Value Added Tax in the early Seventies. Thrillingly.
ReplyDeleteGood Lord - who on earth in government came up with that?!
DeleteAnd I think only Ennis or Ezquerra completists would seek this out, Martin, so I don't think you've missed much!