Ironwolf: Fires of the Revolution (1993)
The Setting: Howard Chaykin substantially revised the setting when he re-imagined Ironwolf within the world of
Twilight. The original series (if three issues in a dying title is a series) featured three planets: Earth (seat of the Empire Galaktika), Ilium (home of Ironwolf), and Rorvik (an obscure planet far from the “inner worlds”). The Empire ruled an unspecified number of worlds, and Ironwolf, aware of the existence of many other inhabited worlds beyond the Empire, feared that it would expand.
But things are different in this reboot. The prologue of
Fires now says that these three planets, even the one called “Earth,” are somewhere way out in space, cut off from the rest of the galaxy. One of them is called “Earth” for sentimental reasons, but it’s not our Earth. Even though Ironwolf visited “Arizona” and “The Grand Canyon” there in
Weird Worlds #8. Never mind that part. This “Triad” comprises the only three planets in the Empire now, and knowledge of any other planets has been lost in the generations since colonization.
Our cast of returning characters includes Ironwolf (who now has a first name Brian), Shebaba, Tyrone, Empress Erika, and the vampires Warra and Omikel. The drugs Orphan’s Blood and Mikah also figure into the story.
The Story breaks down pretty neatly into a three act structure:
Act One: Brian Ironwolf, a nobleman-turned-socialist-revolutionary, leads an unsuccessful aerial glider assault on the castle of his evil brother
Tyrone, assisted by his trusty lieutenants
Shebaba and
Robin Goodfellow. Unable to secure the valuable forest of anti-gravity trees, Brian sets the forest ablaze. (Didn’t he already do that the last time he faced Tyrone in
Weird World #8?)
At an Empire/Rebellion peace conference, Brian’s crewman
Jonathan Hotspur offers to betray his master to ingratiate himself with Empress Erika.
In a successful ambush, Brian’s ship
The Limerick Rake is destroyed, Shebaba is decapitated, Goodfellow is lost, and Brian awakens from a coma seven years later with his legs barely functional. The Empire and Rebellion have formed a coalition Commonwealth, but former Empress Erika is still a major player, and she dreams of uncontested rule. By playing the “seven years later…” card, this is now a soft reboot in addition to the retcon of its setting
Act Two: But all is not lost. Soon enough while hobbling around town, Brian rescues Goodfellow from some thugs, and the two begin plotting their comeback.
Warra the lady vampire helps them gain entrance to Erika’s masquerade party at which Hotspur is in attendance, but his bodyguards thwart Brian’s revenge attempt.
Then Warra betrays Brian, murdering Goodfellow and helping Tyrone inject Brian with Mikah, the addictive drug which turns its victims into musclebound ogres of short life expectancy.
Act Three: Brian is rescued by
Calico Greeneyes the beast-man and his human partner
Damaris DeMedici. They take Brian to a hospital where a treatment with
Methuseloid wash leaves him in his right mind, with functional legs once again. Also, immortal. Calico refers to the "torching of Ilium" from
Weird Worlds #10.
Hotspur has come into the possession of a quantity of Methuseloid extract which can halt the aging process. This MacGuffin of great price is the object of Damaris’ pursuit. A brief encounter with
Twilight character (and Chaykin stand-in)
Homer Glint clues Brian in to the broader galactic realities and convinces him to join the quest as well. But Erika acquires the Methuseloid extract first, murdering Hotspur in the process.
Accosting Warra at gunpoint, Brian and friends learn of Erika and Tyrone’s collusion to seize power on the anniversary of the armistice which created the Commonwealth. At a political gathering, Erika makes her move and prepares to ingest the Methuseloid fragment, attaining immortality.
But Brian is there to intervene, and after a suitably cinematic set of battles, including two parallel swordfights, the good guys have won, the masses are clamoring for Brian to be their reluctant king, and he declares his ambitions to re-integrate his society with galactic culture outside his three-world system.
My Two Cents: This whole story has a delightful cinematic feel, almost as if Chaykin were writing storyboards for a potential film version, especially with the
mano-a-mano finale. Mignola's art is wonderful as well, especially for the creepy vampires Warra and Omikel.
I first read this without the benefit of
Weird Worlds and found the avalanche of proper names daunting. Most of the men in this story have black hairs, beards, and similar attire, which didn’t help. But reading the earlier Ironwolf stories helped a lot. So, do that first.
Chaykin has said that
Ironwolf is a catalogue of his own obessions. There are several drugs running around here. Hotspur is addicted to Orphan’s Blood, which makes one brave. Ironwolf is forcibly treated with Mikah, which makes him incredibly strong but deranged. Then Methuseloid Wash reverses most of those effects, returning him to peak health and granting immortality. How do drugs figure into Chaykin’s other stories?
Brian’s socialist values are mentioned repeatedly during this series, surely reflecting Chaykin’s own political outlook. That can’t have gone over well with the public in even the waning days of the Cold War. The message is that political solutions to the capitalist/socialist conflict are worthless, just leading to the effective victory of capitalism. Most stories about the evils of one form of government end with the successful revolution but don't go on to show the difficulty of setting a viable alternative in place. As Emma Frost said about one such attempted rebellion in
New X-Men:
The incorporation of Homer Glint into the narrative connects this story more clearly to the world of
Twilight and also allows Chaykin’s in-story avatar to get some quips in. He is also the venue by which Ironwolf learns of the greater galactic struggle and pledges to intervene. If he thinks Erika is bad, just wait until he meets Tommy Tomorrow.
