#21 (August 1988) “The Earth Is Red”

Cover Corner Box features: Paideia insignia. This will be true for quite a few issues in a row, so I will stop mentioning it until that changes.

The Story: We open on a frame story in which Jason Edwards, a human soldier (non-Morituri) tells his tale in an interrogation room. After his army squad was slaughtered, he disguised himself in civilian clothes (a serious violation of the Geneva Convention, but the aliens probably don't subscribe to that anyway) and was captured along with some other humans. A captive boy is executed in retaliation for the Morituri’s recent destruction of the Stark Fist’s spaceship (which occurred in issue #7). The humans are put to work doing janitorial work on the Horde spaceship.

One day, a captured transport docks with the Horde spaceship, carrying a cocky shipful of Morituri. Toxyn meets Edwards, who comandeers a Horde tank which he drives around the spaceship, picking up the other Morituri and causing general havoc before detonating the Horde ship and returning to Earth.



Toxyn and Edwards fall for each other romantically, but it’s all for naught, as she has her Morituri moment and explodes.



Back at the conclusion of the frame story, Edwards agrees to undergo the Morituri treatment himself rather than be executed as a deserter. Because what else would you do with a desertion-prone soldier, except offer him super powers? Perhaps this shows how desperate Earth is getting.



My Two Cents: A new day begins for this series under writer James Hudnall, penciler Huw Thomas, and inker Tony DeZuniga. I’m not familiar with any of these gentlemen. Hudnall went on to create a series called Harsh Realms that was made into a TV show by Chris “X-Files” Carter, but he’s fallen on hard times more recently, losing a leg and having no recent income beyond disability. If you like his work on this series (which I confess I did not at first, but appreciated more by the end), consider donating to help his expenses here. 

The tone is very different from Peter Gillis’ work. We get lots of exposition about the Horde. They are divided into a thuglike Yurkaa class and a ruling Volsenn class and speak the Va-Shakk language. They now have foreign names like Wek-Kuu and Gurto instead of British names like Gentle Inquirer and Hammersmith. Also, the distinctive font used for alien speech disappears on page 14 but returns in future issues. Both the art and the dialogue have taken a distinct turn for Silver Age, and I wonder whether the new creative team was under instructions to do the old “everybody talks about their superpowers all the time” exposition.



That said, the “interrogation frame story” while hackneyed worked fine. The Morituri failed in their objective of capturing a high ranking Horde officer, but they did get to blow up an enemy capital ship. It would be nice to have some notion have how many ships like that the Horde have; they just keep coming, as dictated by the immediate needs of the story rather than an over-arching plan.

Hudnall immediately begins introudicng his own new charaters and killing off Peter Gillis' characters. The beginning of the issue had a nice moment of foreshadowing in which a security guard watches a Strikeforce Morituri “video comic” in which Toxyn says that it is “my turn.” It is indeed her turn to die this issue. It’s also reasonably prescient of Hudnall to recognize that in the future, people would read comic books on electronic tablets. In issue #27, we’ll see another of these tablets, manufactured by Sony, but this one is a Panasonic.

What, Hudnall doesn’t work for Breitbart anymore?

James Hudnall is a serious alt-right activist, who blogs profusely about how Obama ruined the United States and was the worst president ever, how the borders are wide open, how the democrats are clowns in the pocket of special interests, and who writes for Breitbart. He and Val Mayerik used to publish quote unquote political cartoons that merely mocked the Obamas,  for example by picturing Michelle pigging out on sausages while advocating healthy habits. Real high brow stuff.

I’m sorry to hear he might have fallen on hard times, but it’s hard to feel anything beyond the most basic empathy for a fellow who champions pretty much everything I loathe about the right. 

For the most part, it doesn't. My biggest criticism of Hudnall on this run is he ends up with a Marty Stu protagonist and sort of misses the original rotating cast spirit of the series. Still, he does a solid job, and Electric Undertow (which should have been called "Strikeforce 2: Electric Boogaloo") proves worthwhile as well.



Regarding Hudnall's politics, it is weird to consider how the guy who wrote Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography could be a raging conservative. I wonder if his politics changed later on, or if maybe he does his political writing for a paycheck.

That's too bad about the politics/conspiracies. It is kind of amazing there are people who do believe in any politicians actually, I sometimes wonder about some who seem to if they really do. You find out sometimes the people with signs and balloons and all that are actually paid, Trump had some to start at least, and Doug Ford in Ontario, Canada (now Premier of that province) too. And yet it seems to be a thing to call children and their parents from school shooting incidents paid actors? So messy out there.

I still liked the original Espers, but yeah, making fun of Michelle Obama for supposedly being fat (seen altered photos) really speaks for itself. Dumb. I don't even want to bother commenting on Trump's skin color or hair; why? If I don't respect or like someone who would do that why would I become the same? 'Obummer' and 'Frump' and all that, if you have something serious to say you don't need to make fun of the names even. So I guess I would think less of Hudnall more for the very low level of commentary if you can call it that regardless of the subject.

Another artist I used to know spends part of every day seemingly ranting on twitter in the opposite direction even replying to Trump's own tweets. he crosses the line with the insults now to the point I'd worry the FBI might just visit him, but the further back you go on his account the calmer he used to be! I probably agree with him politically a lot, but he used to be someone that never seemed to have any interest in politics that I knew of, and yet what I read was genuinely shocking. He has work, he could focus on that as something positive... it's like they get seriously derailed. Do they ever come back? Another artist friend before he died was alienating everyone as a real extreme gun rights and Christianity person. You could swear the old person who was Jewish and leaning toward the radical left/Nader/Green completely disappeared. He was very strong in character back then, and then became even more pungent let's say later but without the humor and a lot of real military style guns), became all absolutes and survivalist; it may even be his tumor effected things?

Sorry to go off topic so long here. Just thinking about some comics people who got sort of 'radicalized'. I can't imagine ever using comic or cartoon stories for any specific political or even dogma purposes, politics seeming so changeable and temporal for most for one thing, it'd end up pretty dated you might think. You live long enough you'll see what is left or right do complete place trades.

I don't mind so much that a comic would have realistic violence, deaths, whatever as it looks out of place in four colors with typical superhero comic art. It seems like maybe a more realistic art style should go with it, what I'm seeing here looks fairly basic cartoony and it hits me like funny animals with the boobs and having human sex interactions... 'retarded' kind of in the dictionary sense of the word being useful to describe something. If these were the old super people established as something created mainly for kids in the '30s to '60s it also can seem very wrong to me. I even felt that about Denny O'Neil's Green Lantern/Green Arrow, and Gerry Conway's Spider-Man. I know O'Neil genuinely meant well, but Speedy shooting up on a cover... at least the Neal Adams art fit that kind of story, can you imagine if say Sal Buscema had been the artist? That's kind of what some of these Morituri pages look like. But as I said, at least it isn't with older established characters, it was created to be this. Still, form follows function for me, why is this form necessary for this function? If I want to tell a story of adult nature for adults I'm going to do it with colorful costumed super powered people? I'd stick with the naughty undergrounds fro that, at least they knew they were breaking rules and provoking simply to provoke.

You've definitely saved me from buying these. Too much graphic violence in a simple style desensitizes, becomes a joke; just some kind of weird mistake from a time of a lot of weird mistakes. As an adult this kind of adult super comic doesn't seem to have been very well done here nor had the time put in it would've needed. Maybe the earlier issues were better by the books creators though.

I don’t know, but I certainly had no clue as to his political views just from his comica.

Today, however, there is a comic he would be perfect to write: Space Force!

The Horde seem alot less unique in the panels you've posted under Hudnall.. did they get rid of the nostalgia gathering stuff as well?