The MaximortalNew Edition by Rick Veitch

The MaximortalNew Edition Reviews

• 
  Rex Hurst

  This is a somewhat confusing story of a super powered baby coming to Earth sort of and being adopted by Earth parents before being scooped up by the US military Sound familiar? Of course it does A redone origin of a character who might morph into the Superman analogue True ManThe clever irony here being that Superman is a mythological ideal while True Man reveals a darker nature to humanity the yin and yang in concordance which prevents the better angels of our nature from taking flight While in essence it is a retelling of the origins of Superman it is a completely uniue story and it raises one very important uestion If a child has super strength invulnerability and heat vision how do you discipline him? How do you prevent him from destroying everything in a fit of childish rage? The age of reason is seven that's a long time to put up with a superbratIt retells with slight alterations classic events such as the creation of Superman by Siegel and Schuster them being screwed out of their fair due by their publisher Walt Disney's rise to power based on his cartoon the congressional witch hunt into comics William Gaines crashing on speed while speaking before said committee and the creation of the comics code authority pushed by superhero publishers forcing out the popular horror and crime comics This is all done in the context of the advent of True Man
• 
  Shawn

  Not perfect but definitely ambitious examination of the impact of the concept of The Superman and Superman on the unconscious of the world Thus all aspects of the Superman myth here True Man are touched on his creators being screwed over his impact on comics history in general Hollywood legends about actors who take the role Nietzsche's concept that predates the whole thing the public's reaction everything Mixed in with this are lurid and grotesue details I'm still left wondering what purpose the scatalogical material serves although I have some ideas cosmic comic book stuff True Man literally creates himself in a wonderfully bizarre conceit even some Grant Morisson esue fourth wall breaking It's a fun bizarre kooky package brimming with creativity fans should also attempt to hunt down Veitch's THE ONE another odd look at superheroes Really the only weak part is interestingly the one part that ties the book directly into Veitch's proposed King Hell Heroica universe specifically the previous title BRAT PACK which is itself a wonderfully lurid if occasionally misguided examination of all the twisted possibilities inherent in the concept of teen sidekicks uite a few years before it became trite to be dark and ironic about such things The BRAT PACK tie in seems abrupt and forced out of tempo with the rest of the bookHunt it down if you want some idea how the rich soil of modern superhero comics was fertilized by very creative people
• 
  John

  This review is in response to the announcement of Rick Veitch returning to the King Hell Heroica after a 20 year absence Which stands as an ambitious five volume series examining both the comic book industry and the superhero concept He announced on Monday that Boy Maximortal Book 2 will be coming out soon To put it bluntly comics were a medium born from pornographers gamblers smugglers and gangsters Yet the cradled within their four colored pages one of the most beautiful concepts of the 20th century or is it? My review is essentially MaximortalBrat Pack Special #1 The Maximortal Book 1 MBP Special #2 and the Bratpack Book 4 As one can tell their is a clearly defined architecture to the books yet it's incomplete Rick Veitch is one of those yeoman creators he was one of the artists on Alan Moore's Swamp Thing and eventually took over the book but was heavily censored leading to Gaiman and a few others from uitting the book as well He's a creative visionary but the corporate masters tend to suash his choicesAs such much of these series are taking dismal glances ie Siegel and Shuster of how the corporations have mismanaged their gods and their people Bratpack is basically looking at the absurdity baffoonery and irresponsibility of the Teen Sidekick notion with most superheroes other than True Man the Superman Achetype being deviants fascists perverts etcThe book posits that Superman is a concept that exists outside of time and space A perfect ideal that if it didn't exits would need to be created He's channeled by two characters eerily similar to Siegel and Shuster However his story is not one of immediate loving devotion to humanity He kills his parents because he doesn't know his own strength and is actually used as the atomic bomb in the Manhattan project The meta narrative is shaping up outside space of time against his greatest enemies; Doctor Blashpemy whose goal is to ridicule the superhero concept and El Guano Who is essentially a shit fetishist who corrupts however he interacts with
• 
  Mark Desrosiers

  OK now I get it this is a bizarro world history of Superman as if he were conceived by his actual creator Friedrich Nietzsche Watch for Fred's cameo as a mustachioed Cossack spit roasting a mammoth at the beginning Blending fantastical weirdness with thinly disguised fact it's both an indictment of the back biting comic book industry and a mythical world historical excursion on ApollonianDionysian lines complete with cameo appearances from Albert Einstein Robert Uppenheimer and Sherlock Holmes who dies a cruel death here Macrohistory plus micro geekery The action heavy style and level of horrific nastiness maggots crawling out of faces a pot boiling with poop etc clearly work as an homage to EC comics Which makes me wonder if the Maximortal is Veitch's vision of what would happen if The Vault of Horror were exhumed to expound with zombie wisdom upon comix tragedies and the role of superheroes in modern society Strange eerily significant mostly fun
• 
  Andrew Alper

  I think this is one of a handful of Must Read American comic books If you grew up reading comics if you fantasized about super powers as a child If you like having long held preconceptions challenged and being stolen down a very horrific rabbit hole amidst your own begrudging laughter then this comic will surely please since it does all those things well It also serves as a very readable study of postmodernity and nostalgia and guano Imagine if Joseph Campbell and George Lucas were kidnapped and locked in a mythical candy factory and had to eat their way out It is kind of like that Or imagine if Alan Moore and Bob Burden wrote a much darker and terrifying version of The Watchmen but decided it would never get published It's really good I should warn you that one of my other must read comics is The Flaming Carrot
• 
  Phayvanh

  I realize this the I read Rick Veitch that his stories tend to veer towards the abstract and transendental This is no exception The art of course his usual standard fare The story however intermingles many different stories in US history It helps to know how Superman was created and the players in the development of the atom bomb Veitch does include an afterword to this edition which will steer readers to those stories alluded to if they are not already familiar wiht themYou might not understand or get the end of it But read it anyway In some hundered years or so maybe the creations you bring forth into this world will save you
• 
  D.

  I just re read this for the third ? time I love the way Veitch combines underground comic sensibilities meditations on the nature of creativity superheroes and b movie horror movie tropes into something uniuely his own I don't have much to add that other reviewers haven't already talked about but people looking for something completely different that the usual comics mainstream would do well to check out Veitch's work and MAXIMORTAL is a great place to start
• 
  Neven

  An extremely bizarre story blending the history of the Superman character with a psychedelic religion and a mad often juvenile but always passionate philosophy uite well written if extreme in every possible way
• 
  Justin

  a shit worshipping time bending rumination on the nature of creativity and superheroes and people stepping on each other to get ahead
• 
  Don Jaucian

  I read this because someone brought it up when Brightburn came out It shares the basic premise what if Superman turned out to be an evil superhero The Maximortal though is than that it is many things at once a thinly veiled story of how Superman's creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster get screwed by a publishermogul similar to Walt Disney by owning the rights to their works and getting filthy rich off it; it is a pointed satire featuring Truman Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project; and the cyclic and mythic nature of storytelling The art here is great an upside down version of pulp fictioncomics gloriously detailed and disgusting when needed there's a character called El Guano whose powers are derived from actual shit I'm sure there are references here that went over my head being a novice comic book reader but Veitch's world is so richly detailed and lovingly told that I've often felt as if I were with the characters down in the muck and hoping that their miseries would soon come to pass