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They are the Eggmen?

There are many reasons why the Beatles became the phenomenon that they were; sure, they had ambition, imagination, and instinctive songwriting skills- but another was that they were presented to the public as four distinct personalities: personable, chipper Paul; caustic, impetuous John; sly, demure George; and humble, lovable Ringo. They became larger than life archetypes, rather than ordinary humans, heroes to many. So of course, a logical extension of this is to imagine them as super heroes…which was done, to an extent, as far back as the Yellow Submarine animated film, in which they were summoned to rescue the denizens of Pepperland from the evil Blue Meanies. However, to the best of my memory, while I’ve seen many appearances and references to the Four Lads from Liverpool in comics over the years, I’ve yet to see one in which they were portrayed as costumed adventurers. The stars of Greatest Hits, the “Mates”, aren’t exactly John, Paul, George and Ringo doppelgangers…but they’re close enough for our purposes anyway.

Crusader (super-strength and invulnerability), the Solicitor (Batman-like, a “razor-sharp strategist” and expert fighter) , the Vizier (Magic guy a la Doc Strange) and the Pete Best of the group, Vizier’s brother Golem (super-strong and pliable kind of a mashup of the Hulk and Plastic Man)- who bows to marital pressure and leaves, soon to be replaced by Zipper (super-speedster), who replaced Golem like Pete was replaced by Ringo- make up the Mates, and we’re shown many of the early details of how they “came together” and found fame. Next issue, I kid you not, they travel to America. Also dovetailing this narrative is the story of one of the Mates’ sons, a film director named Nick Mansfield who hasn’t had a successful movie and is reduced to helming the likes of “President Dog”, a little masterpiece about a talking dog who gets elected to the White House. He’s being strongly urged to make a movie about his Dad and his cohorts, but he’s resistant to the idea for reasons yet to be revealed. So not only do we get fanciful pop-music-informed superheroics, but a generous helping of movie-industry satire as well.

That sort of thing is second nature to writer David Tischman, who used to serve as Howard Chaykin’s mouthpiece on books like American Century and Bite Club- he does a good-enough job of capturing the distinctly British tone of other writers who’ve ploughed this particular field such as Warren Ellis, Grant Morrison and Mark Millar, but it’s infused with the cynicism of Tischman’s old mentor Chaykin, especially in the current-day scenes. I’ve never really been a fan of his work; couldn’t get into Century for the life of me (I think the art didn’t help at all), kinda-sorta liked the first Bite Club miniseries but hated its follow-up, and the tarted-up revisioning of Angel and the Ape left me mostly cold. But here, without Chaykin, while he still doesn’t have a true writing voice he does seem to have everything working well- the humor is generally amusing, and the dialogue is naturalistic. Make no mistake, this may half take place in the mid 1960’s, but there’s no Austin Powers-type shenanigans- Hits is mostly presented with a straight face, with perhaps a wink and a nod from time to time. Probably the best thing that Greatest Hits has going for it is the outstanding art by Glenn Fabry, whose illustration work on the Vertigo comics adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere flat out blew me away. On interiors, using pen and ink, Fabry has a deceptively static style, reminiscent of similar artists such as Brian Bolland, Steve Dillon and Chris Weston- but there is a vitality to his ink line and a facility with his staging and figure work that rewards closer attention and his sense of humor, along with his imagination, shine through. I thought Neverwhere was one of the best series of 2005-2006, in large part because of the wonderful job Fabry did.
I’m a little surprised they didn’t put this out under the Vertigo Pop banner, apparently that no longer exists. I’m not 100% certain that a comics-buying public that rejected Vinyl Underground and previous Vertigo Pop! series such as Tokyo, London and Bangkok, not to mention Image’s Phonogram, can be counted upon to buy this in anything more than the kind of numbers that we’ve come to expect from the run of the mill Vertigo imprint product…especially with such a vague, non-descriptive title and very little promotional push, not to mention a mostly unknown scripter and an artist who has a terrific reputation but is primarily known for his cover work, and whose previous interior work didn’t pump up sales for that title, either. I’m not terribly optimistic about Greatest Hits becoming anything more than a low-selling footnote in the history of the imprint, but don’t let that stop you from checking this out, especially if you’re fond of the Beatles- we’ve seen this sort of arch superhero stuff before, in many places, but the British Invasion/Fabs slant is a bit different, and the art is excellent. That is, you can’t, you know, tune in but it’s all right, that is I think it’s not too bad.

Greatest Hits #1 (of 4)

“Come Together”
Written by: David Tischman
Art by: Glenn Fabry
Colored by: The Hories
Lettered by:Todd Klein

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