Hectic Planet (née Pirate Corp$)

I normally post these type of things in the European Comics thread, but this is not European. Also could not find a thread where it really fit, so New Thread button it is.



William Gibson once said that all science-fiction is actually about the present rather than the future. Hectic Planet is a prime example of this. It's a short series (8 issues and 1 special) written and drawn by Evan Dorkin from 1987 till 1997. Followed by 3 short stories in 2001 (later collected as “The Bummer Trilogy”). Most of it by Slave Labor Graphics, but the original 4 issues were first printed by Eternity Comics and the 3 short stories were first published in Dark Horse Presents with more issues promised back in 2001 to fill the gap between the last regular issues and the short stories, but they never showed up AFAIK (not living in the US made this comics hell to find for me, but I finally managed to get the trades after various attempts).

For those who are not familiar with Mr. Dorkin, he's mostly known for his creations Milk&Cheese, The Eltingville Club (currently published by Dark Horse) and Beasts of Burden (co-created with Jill Thompson, again published by Dark Horse). He's done some work for the big two, most famously the World's Funnest one-shot (see image), but most of his work is done for Slave Labor Graphics and Dark Horse. He's also worked on the TV show Space Ghost: Coast to Coast.



Like several sci-fi series (Firefly, movie version of the Guardians of the Galaxy and many others I'm sure), it starts out with the misadventures of a crew of lovable rogues, piloting a small spaceship, doing crime, but not serious crime. As crew-member Harlie explains to their passenger T.A.N.C. “We do not kill. With technology as it is, we do not have to. It's why we remain in business. It is how we can live with ourselves.”

The ship is called the Jersey Devil, named by its captain, the cockroach-like alien Ron Chitin, after the hockey team he used to be a goalie for (before goalies with more than two arms were banned on Earth). Ron is a good man, who feels responsible for his crew, but forced into a life of crime for various reasons (see Charlie below.)

Furthermore we have:

• Datsun (a duck-like alien (+1 to antropomorphic ducks in comics and cartoons. Why are ducks so popular? Maybe time for another post. Back on topic) who is the team's medic and was also the team doctor for the Jersey Devils, Ron's confident and the 2nd in command.
  
• Harlie, one of the few survivors of a planet that was blown up. Short, pacifist and a man of few words.
• Charlie, the pilot, who looks like an alien, but we later find out is the amnesiac victim of a near-fatal accident. Most of the team's income goes to his ongoing medical bills.
  
• Halby Durzell, the token human and our point of view character in most Hectic Planet stories. A self-insert of Dorkin? Maybe a little, but Halby is not a hero and his self-centered behaviour in later issues annoys his crew mates mostly. Then again, those who have read Dork know that Dorkin does not have a high opinion of himself either.
  
• And last but not least, Renesco Blue, (who despite his last name is actually a purple alien with no visible eyes, nose or ears, but occasionally with antenna.) a former roadie for the band “The Mad Planets” (more below) and Halby's best friend and roommate. He also has become the mascot of the series, probably because Dorkin found him easy to draw.
  

Halby, Harlie and Charlie, that is bound to be confusing.

The Jersey Devil is one among a large group of small pirate crews (Dorkin drew two pages that show the various Pirate Corp$ clubs of Sector 19 and there are 38 of them, divided in an East and a West group, with names like “The Practical Smokers”, “The Flying Daves”, “Sister Mary Poppinjays” and “The Crew that Cannot Be Named” amongst many others.), but the only important one to the story (apart from the Jersey Devil, of course) are the Screaming Retina Gang, lead by psychopath with a short temper and an even worse memory, Vroom Socko. Also known as the guy the Jersey Devil crew sold a spaceship without an engine (bad idea!) and now their sworn enemy.

Back when the series was still Pirate Corp$, the first story deals with Ron and his crew being arrested and forced by governor Fleidermaus (mustache, monocle, smokes cigarettes on a holder... classic villain material) to find the home planet of a newly discovered species. The 3 members of this species that are found about an escape pod are small, adorable and most importantly mute, but the logs of the ship contain a reference to “The Source of All Life”. Something which obviously interests all criminals in Sector 19. To ensure their cooperation, T.A.N.C. is sent along; large, heavily armoured and armed. Is it a robot, a cyborg, 9 dwarves in a mechanical armour? We never get to find out as the focus of the series changes.

The name Hectic Planet is therefore far more fitting as from the fifth issue onwards as the Source of All Life story is resolved, the series moves away from the sci-fi adventures of a crew of space-pirates and focuses more on Halby and Blue living on the Earth in 2074, constantly broke and dealing with the crazy society of 2074. Their visit to the supermarket to buy food for the crew or Blue's day in a police station would not have been out of place in Ellis' Transmetropolitan. Another focus is on relationships, at the beginning of the second trade Halby breaks up with his girlfriend Else LeGrande, daughter of one of the richest men in the galaxy (adopted daughter according to her, but then again... Else lies.), who repeatedly sends robots to protect his daughter from suitors and bring her back home. Without Else, Halby gets very, very depressed and his feeling sorry for himself annoys his crew mates to no end (as most of them have their own problems. And really, their problems are a lot worse, but they don't whine about it constantly). The three short stories all focus on failed relationships (one for Halby, one for Else and the final one for a character not mentioned above, but who is part of another new focus of the series).



Remember how I begun this piece mentioning Gibson's theory that all science fiction is about the present? The third focus for the series, post Pirate Corp$, is ska. Both Halby and Blue are big ska fans and there are many pages devoted to future ska bands and gigs that Halby and Blue visit. Dorkin is aware enough that Ska will probably be not the major steam of popular music at the end of the 21st century, so he has Blue state explictedly that he and Halby are not into regular popular music, but prefer retro music. During their visit to the supermarket, mentioned before, Halby and Blue meet and befriend Page, Chow-Chow (the main character in the third short story) and Harm, members of the girl-ska band “The Trombone Girls”. The Trombone Girls basically replace most of Ron's crew as characters in the series. At this time Dorkin was making most of his money by doing posters, covers for CD's and records for various Ska-bands (the trades include a lot of this artwork, see also a sample below. Renesco Blue appears on a few of them) and doing reviews of gigs in comic-form together with Kyle Baker (the only reason I know Kyle Baker is African-American). Those reviews are not reprinted in Hectic Planet BTW, they are in Dorkin's anthology work “Dork”.



So all in all, we have a bit of Firefly, a bit of Transmetropolitan and a bit of Kevin Smith's Clerks (the original one, not his attempts to rekindle the flame years later) which together forms one of my favourite comic books and I really hope that Dorkin gets around to doing those issues that link the original series and the Bummer Trilogy.