Comics: Hercules #1!

Yesterday’s comics featured – as they now tend to do on an almost alarmingly frequent basis – the first issue of a new series, in this case Hercules #1, written by Dan Abnett and drawn by Luke Ross (the credits also include the rather hilarious line “Hercules created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby”). I bought it with fear and trembling, since the track record of Marvel Comics at re-envisioning their classic characters is spotty at best.

But I was pleasantly surprised: Abnett here gently updates the character about as well as such an update could be done. No violence is perpetrated upon the 60-year history Hercules has as a Marvel character (to put it mildly, this hasn’t always been the case: over the years, Hercules has been violated, de-powered, dumbed-down and conceptually neutered so many times you’d think he was every female superhero ever). True, he’s given a slight visual re-tweeking, but not only is it very slight (basically, he gets pants)(and a disastrous man-bun that looks every bit as ridiculous on him as it does on every 2015 douchebag who’s trying to make it popular), it’s also acknowledged: at one point, we see our current Hercules looking at a glass case containing his old traditional outfit, with its leather leg-lacings and odd ear-flaps.

This Hercules lives in Astoria and performs “labors” for fees, although his fees seem to take the form of “propitiations” – the two little boys who hire him in this issue to confront the disguised monster dating their older sister offer a Japanese trading card, for instance (there’s a wonderful little scene where we see him carefully add it to his collection).

While the boys are walking with him to their apartment, we get a good sample of the issue’s largely grounded dialogue (in a splash page that’s very well done by Ross, although considering the fact that this issue costs as much as a solid lunch, three splash panels in 15 pages might be a smidge too many):

“You’re really Hercules?”

“Yes, but that is just a name. I am also Herakles. Before that, I had other names.”

“What other names?”

“Old names. Names that were old by the time writing began. Names that were sung. I go by Hercules. I’ve become an adjective. Foolish to ignore that kind of recognition.”

And after he’s confronted and defeated the monster boyfriend, the boys ask him who taught him to be a hero, and he answers: “I picked it up as I went along. I labored at it. When I was becoming … what I am, there were no other heroes around to teach me.”

That idea – that Hercules was the first super-hero – is simple and winning, as is the issue’s underlying theme that Hercules is now willing to adapt to the modern world, using high-tech gear in combat in addition to swords and maces. And I’m hoping the presence in this issue of “The Forgotten One,” one of Marvel’s lamest characters despite the fact that he was an Avenger for about ten minutes, means there’ll be plenty of interaction here with the rest of the Marvel Universe.

So: a sigh of relief. A character-relaunch that succeeds on all counts. I won’t get too comfortable, mind you – this is still a company with its creative head mostly up its aesthetic ass – but I’ll buy the second issue.