High Roads #1-6
Published by: Image Comics/Cliffhanger – 2002
Written by: Scott Lobdell
Illustrated by: Leinil Francis Yu
Like an Indiana Jones movie where the eponymous hero is replaced by four bumbling misfits, High Roads grabs hold of you and swiftly propels you, happily entertained, from its humble beginning to its epic ending.
High Roads is the story of four strangers—an American soldier, Hitler’s former American mistress, a diminutive British actor, and a disgraced Japanese kamikaze pilot—during the waning days of WWII, as they band together in pursuit of a piece of appropriated Nazi treasure—and a better life for themselves—and are, in turn, pursued by Nazi assassins intent on killing them.
The six issues—published by Image’s Cliffhanger imprint in 2002—move by at an impressive, action-packed, clip reminiscent of the great film capers from a time before the ubiquity of the modern-day monotonous explosion-laden “action flick.” Rather than sustaining a sequence of peaks with no valleys—lessening their impact—writer Scott Lobdell injects periodic lulls in the action which likewise serve an expository role, with each character given a flashback to contextualize and sum up both who they are and why they find themselves in their present predicament.
Lobdell’s plot is straightforward, if not simple, yet has plenty of ins and outs, ups and downs, and what-have-you, to keep the reader engaged and invested. The humorous dialogue sometimes seems inappropriate given the situation but, despite that, helps to keep the characters lighthearted and keeps the events fun, even as the stakes get raised ever higher.
For much of the series, artist Leinil Francis Yu turns in a bravura performance with minute and intricate attention paid to automobiles, trains, and castles, interesting page layouts, and a few homages to Travis Charest. As one of the more prominent artists of the 2000s, Yu’s influence can be felt today in such disparate pencillers as Gary Frank and Stuart Immonen. Some of Yu’s projects, however, tend to lack his more detailed rendering style, dynamic page layout, and believable backgrounds, machinery, and props—New Avengers comes to mind which was beleaguered by too many characters per panel doing nothing but talking for pages at a time. He has also, at times, taken to leaving much of the heavy lifting to the colorist—sometimes forgoing inking entirely—to varying degrees of success. His best works—Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk, Superior, Silent Dragon, and High Roads—though, warrant spending time digesting the pages, not merely reading the narrative. It can be recreational to simply flip through each issue—either before, or after, completion—to simply appreciate the art. The coloring in High Roads, by the digital-coloring collective Avalon Studios, compliments the art style perfectly, embellishing the line-art while still respecting the fact that, for certain artists and readers, the ink-line is sacrosanct.
High Roads is almost appropriate for a general audience. If nothing else, the depiction of Adolf Hitler wearing only a bib and a diaper asking to be spanked by his mistress makes High Roads inappropriate for a younger audience, but just plain funny to an older one.
Recommendations:
Fans of the writing in High Roads may (or may not) want to check out Lobdell’s run on Marvel’s “X-Men” spinoff Generation X, which he co-created with Chris Bachalo. Generation X features a teenage superhero team enrolled at Charles Xavier’s school for gifted youngsters during the mid-1990s. Much of it suffers from the syndrome that afflicted many of the “X-titles” in the nineties: every issue needs a fight, every issue needs a bad-guy, and every team has to have personalities that clash for the sake of both drama and humor. However, there are moments of cleverness, such as an issue where (spoiler alert) a young man is harassed—and almost killed—for being a mutant, but it turns out he was merely a severely disfigured regular human, and, because of man’s paranoia, he was treated like a threat for no reason other than his appearance—hitting home the ethical messages of inclusion, understanding, compassion, and opposition to oppression which so often undergird the “X-titles.” The morality plays found among the titles bearing Xavier’s mark exceed even the rather shallow “truth, justice, and the American way” ethos of Superman in terms of cultural relevance and impact. As Chris Claremont put it so succinctly, “God loves, man kills.”
Fans of Yu should definitely check out his aforementioned best—Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk, Superior, and Silent Dragon—as well as almost anything by the incomparable Travis Charest (after he solidified—and before he abandoned—his signature style, that is)—most famously, his run on WildC.A.T.s and the visually stunning crossover WildC.A.T.s/X-Men: The Golden Age (which, coincidentally, was written by Lobdell). Charest’s influence-to-fame ratio calls to mind that of Arthur Adams in the mid-to-late nineties—before he was reintroduced to a new generation once his disciples had, in turn, become influencers.
Superior features a great reimagining of the old Captain Marvel and Miracleman archetype of a young kid swapping his body for that of an adult superhero, written by the reliably clever and inventive Mark Millar as part of his MillarWorld publishing imprint.
Silent Dragon is a story of samurai and the Yakuza—fighting to wrest control of a futuristic Japan from the hands of a corrupt governmental regime—focusing on the one man at the center of it all. It is well illustrated by Yu, and Andy Diggle’s story has enough unexpected turns to keep the reader guessing and, finally, surprised by the ultimate outcome.
Ultimate Wolverine vs. Hulk, written by Damon Lindelof—of Lost fame—focuses on the oft-revisited, oft-rehashed, rivalry between Marvel Comics characters The Hulk and Wolverine—which began in The Incredible Hulk number 181 with Wolverine’s first ever comic book appearance. Lindelof’s treatment is, at times, more realistic than these characters’ past encounters—especially in regard to the physical ramifications of such an altercation for the much, much, much smaller and weaker Wolverine at the hands of the much, much, much larger and stronger Hulk (most notably pages two and three of issue one)—and, at others, perhaps less—Wolverine’s talking severed head being held captive by S.H.I.E.L.D, for example.
Brian Bigelow
October 17, 2018
