Into the breach - a defense of Chuck Austen!

For the past few months, Chuck Austen has become the go-to guy for shitty comics writing in the comments of various posts. Back a while, Friend Of The Blog T. wondered if he would ever see a defense of Austen that was heart-felt instead of just a knee-jerk reaction to all the Alan Moore Love on the Internets. Well, to all out there who agreed with him, your prayers have been answered!

Now, Chuck Austen has a lot to answer for in Hell. After I faithfully bought Uncanny X-Men for 15 years, it was Austen who finally drove me from the title. He almost killed Miracleman with some truly horrid art, art so bad he couldn't even put his real name on it! Anyone connected with any Elektra solo series is going to spend a little time in Purgatory (before the Catholic Church does away with it, that is, and yes, I'm including Peter Milligan in that, even though I like his writing a lot). Austen's takes on the Avengers and the JLA are apparently enough to cause people's heads to spontaneously explode. And I've heard that they had to create a new, separate space in Perdition just for his work on Worldwatch. So he has much to justify when he comes before that Great Comic Book Critic in the Sky. However, he can always point to the one piece of work that doesn't cause rectal bleeding: U.S. War Machine.
 
 

This, my good friends, is a truly great read. Remember the good old days at Marvel? Jemas and Quesada were mad scientists, throwing everything into the test tube and seeing what bizarre concoctions they could, well, concoct. We got Morrison on Marvel Boy and then on X-Men. We got Milligan and Allred on X-Force. We got Alias. We got the whole MAX line, which has, I guess, pretty much died, but gave us Fury and Supreme Power and The Punisher and this fantastic series. Not everything worked - Casey/Churchill and then Austen on Uncanny X-Men, The Brotherhood - but the point is, they tried a lot of new stuff. The turn of the century was a heady time at the Marvel offices. Out of that spirit came a hard-nosed look at Tony Stark and his armor-building capabilities.

War Machine seems like the kind of thing Austen does well. It's a tense, morally ambiguous, politically charged thriller, and it's surprising that Marvel and DC kept giving him superhero books when it's clear he's good at this sort of stuff. It begins with Jim Rhodes getting caught up with A.I.M. terrorists on the freeway. They're just driving down the road with a hostage, and Rhodes happens to be flying by in the War Machine armor. He tries to rescue the hostage, but bad things happen. It always annoys me in comics when there is no collateral damage - the Hulk always destroys abandoned towns, that sort of thing - but here there is collateral damage, and you might not like it, but it's certainly what happens. This just shows that Austen is not interested in making this a "fun" read - he wants you to be uncomfortable and consider what happens when A.I.M. terrorists and War Machine start shooting at each other on the freeway. Tony Stark fires Rhodes, of course, even though it's quite obvious that he shares the blame for the incident with Rhodes. Rhodes ends up working for SHIELD, who are setting up a "War Machine" unit - they have various suits of armor that they've cobbled together and they want Rhodes to command it. A great deal of fighting ensues. Lots of bloodshed.

The interesting thing about War Machine is that it addresses race. It does so in a far less obnoxious way than, say, Black Panther apparently does (I only read the preview for issue #1 that was posted on-line, so I can't say if it has remained as ham-fisted as that was). When Rhodes confronts the terrorists in the beginning, he hesitates taking action because they're black. The mission his unit goes on is against HYDRA, which has been taken over by a white supremacist, and Rhodes and his team have to deal with the implications presented by his master plan. There's also a redneck on the team, who's not exactly racist, just a bit ignorant. He learns his lesson, but it's not in an annoying, "after-school-special" kind of way. The way the characters interact and change is organic, so it's a fascinating read.

There is a lot of violence in the book, and some of it is presented graphically, but again, it's something that Austen doesn't glorify but doesn't shy away from either. There's also a lot of drama, too. Will the SHIELD guys rescue Parnell's wife? Will they stop HYDRA in time? How is Doctor Doom involved? Doom shows up late, because HYDRA is operating in Latveria, and he proves, once again, what a bad-ass he is. A MODOK is there, and so is Darkhawk. Darkhawk is a truly goofy hero, but Austen makes him viable and even scary. He also pokes some fun at superhero culture, as Darkhawk is kept in a virtual reality world where he is a provisional member of the West Coast Avengers. "Continuity" in this world is very important to him. It's not mean-spirited at all (well, maybe a little), and it fits well within the context of the story. Darkhawk, in this title, is crazy. Not a bad thing.

(Speaking of continuity, I have never figured out where things fit in the MAX Universe. Alias obviously takes place in the "real" Marvel U. I guess The Punisher is in the Marvel U. I doubt if this does. It uses some of the characters and some of the personality traits of the Marvel U. (Tony Stark drinks, for instance, and we're supposed to know the backstory), but it seems like it takes place in the "real" world. Who knows. I don't care that much, it's just something interesting.)

Anyway, if you like ultra-violence, interesting race questions, thrilling rescues and attacks, some clever fun lines, pretty good art (not great, just pretty good), and a lot of twists and turns, check out the trade paperback of this. It probably won't make you change your mind about the awfulness of most of Austen's work, but it might make you say, "Hey - he's not a complete hack!" And if you can't overcome your Austen hatred, just pretend that Garth Ennis is writing it. That should do it!

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