1. The Monk's Escondita Gang
Occurred in Corto Maltese: Ballad of the Salty Sea (1967-1969)
By Hugo Pratt


It starts off impressively enough: legends of a mysterious island and a gang of pirates led by some sort of evil monk.



Working beneath him are some of the most memorable characters in all of literature, let alone comics: Rasputin: the mad Russian who truly believes he is as important and terrifying as the man whose name he borrows, Cranio: the shifty native underling with the smarts and cunning to run the organization all on his own, Slutter, the German officer so obsessed with honor and duty that he obeyed his superiors right into a shady piracy scheme that has him working alongside some of the most dishonorable criminals he has ever met while the lives of two innocent kids hang in the balance, a few less forgettable members, and (of course) Corto Maltese: the proto Han Solo who is only an underhanded scoundral when his sense of righteousness doesn't get in the way.

The real surprise comes when, as we get to know each of these characters better, we discover that each of them possesses vulnerability and a soul. Stranger still, they actually care for one another (whether or not they would like to admit it) when they aren't trying to double-cross and kill one another, and those feelings even extend to their ruthless leader:



Corto's time on the island of Escondita is the very centerpiece of the entire four decades of ensuing stories. It's Corto's Avalon, that time and place that could never last and yet is never far from his thoughts. Corto was no villain, but working with The Monk and the others against European war ships (circa World War I) in an effort to stay away from the madness of modern society was an escape he cherished, as did he cherish the lost souls who worked with him. And, while Corto is a tremendously memorable protagonist, I would argue that both The Monk and his tragic backstory, and Slutter and all that happens to him (Oh God! Read the damn book already, people!!) far upstaged him.

These characters were beautiful, and they were villains, but sometimes they weren't wrong.

I think I used Batman/spirit in a previous 12 Days event. Did we do one on favorite team-ups or x-overs previously? If not, it was for some other Best/Favorite event we did here on the forums in the past.

-M

1.  The Four (Planetary) 



Evil analogues of the Justice League are a dime a dozen.  Evil analogues of The Avengers are far from uncommon.  But there have been far less...far far less of The Fantastic Four.  Warren Ellis and John Cassaday give us the best in The Four, the main antagonists in Planetary.  Randal Dowling, Kim Suskind, William Leather and Jacob Greene took America's first flight in to space.  They approached The Bleed.  And they came back...changed.  But these aren't any cosmic adventurers who will help save mankind.  Dowling had already been the creator of Science City, where all the evil experiments we remember from 1950s Sci-fi B-movies took place.  Suskind was the daughter of a Nazi rocket scientist (damn Nazis).  William Leather was robbed of his heritage as the child of a Century Baby by his mother's infidelity.  And Greene...well he just appears to have been a general asshole.  

The Four, for reasons that would become clear toward the end of the book, suppressed mankind.  They suppressed scientific progress.  They hid artifacts that would have changed mankind.  Rather than cosmic adventurers...they were the fire retardant of mankind's growth.  And that...to me...is where Ellis grabbed something that I've mentioned a number of times and ran with it.  I've long held to what Icctrombone calls "Slam Bradley's Law of Superheroes" that being that superhero comics are inherently silly and trying to make them make real-world sense just makes it more apparent that they're silly.  We've seen plenty of attempts to show what would happen if there were super-heroes in real life...with greater and lesser success.  But that's not really what Ellis is doing here.  Ellis, I believe, is looking at super-science.  And why the Marvel and DC universes CANNOT exist as they do.  And I've hinted at this...but I'm just now really thinking about it.  

Take Pym Particles for one example.  The existence of Pym Particles completely changes the nature of transportation and commerce in the world.  They simply do.  The ability to mass shrink items means that you transport far greater quantities in the same container.  It changes the entire structure of the world.  And don't tell me that they can't mass shrink things.  In a very early issue of Fantastic Four Reed shrunk (whether with Pym Particles or an identical method he invented (I believe he stole them from Hank)) an entire planet's population and transported them across space in a single space-ship.  You think the airplane changed the world...this turns it up to 11.  Unstable Molecules.  All those other super-scientific gadgets and concepts that come up all the time.  The worlds of the MU or DCU should not look like our world.  They can't.  So why do they?  

Well we know why.  Because readers want to be able to identify with the world.  And writers tend not to actually think things through.  Because Aunt May should not be living in a run down home in a very familiar suburb of NYC.  It should be far closer to The Jetsons than The Honeymooners.  Ellis gives us The Four as the explanation.  They have suppressed mankind's growth.  They've hidden the science and the magic that will take us beyond where we are.  Instead of being the start of a brand new universe...they are the endpoint.  

1.Fatal Five (Adventure 352-353)

"To the Death"*


     

This doomsday story, pitting the Dirty Dozen (less seven) aligned with the Magnificent Seven (less two) against the Sun-Eater, a force of Nature/creature/ deity feared in every corner of the galaxy.

A (rare for its time at DC) two-part saga, the team-up made in hell is a near perfect all-time favorite of mine, from the ominous mention of a doomed Legionnaire on the cover of Adventure 353 to the eerie, unhuman Validus, Mano and Tharok, the sociopathic Persuader (name could have been better), the magisterial Emerald Empress, and the utter desperation of the Legion as they are forced to trust these evildoers as allies.

The threat was believable, the villains despicable without a hint of having even a nugget-sized heart of gold among them -- Validus excepted. All were new, all were creations of the young Jim Shooter, who was bringing new life to the Legion.

The heroes, on the other hand, were a decidedly motley and underpowered crew. They would have to try to save the universe sans Brainiac-5 and Saturn Girl, as well as the rest of the Legion. Only Superboy (natch!), old reliable Cosmic Boy, new kid in town Ferro Lad, Sun Boy, and the fabulously useless Princess Projectra were left to defend the Alamo against the ravenous Sun-Eater, a Galactus-level antagonist more like a Marvel entity, something unheard of at DC in those days, in a story told on a cosmic scale, also more Marvellian than DC-esque .

Young Jim Shooter combined the best of Marvel with the best of DC in this finale (I had neither bought nor read the first half) and in a saga that today would have been a 12-issue mini-series destined to be collected in a trade, told a story of heroism, courage, treachery, and derring-do on an epic scale. In a time at DC that even a two-issue story was a rarity, this could have been expanded by two or three issues and would have been even greater.

Still, it was as good as it got in 1966. No muss, no fuss, no merchandise tie-ins, no rapes or mind-wipes, no grim grittiness or painfully self-conscious world-weariness.

These heroes and villains just got the job done. And so did Jim Shooter and Curt Swan.

Great comic, thanks to a superb team of dastardly villains, generous dollops of treachery, evil, sentiment, and heroism.

*Battle 56

Brilliant choice! I would never have thought of it, but it's a most excellent one!

I had The Four on my short list.