You Don’t Understand! They’re Already Here!: Human Bomb #1 Review

DC’s Human Bomb miniseries, written by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray with art by Jerry Ordway, is one of those books that just sort of showed up at my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop asking the paying customers if they want to see – or smell – why they call me The Human Bomb, without a lot of fanfare. Kinda like Phantom Lady and Doll Man by the same writing team a few months ago, and their pre-New 52 Freedom Fighters before it, Human Bomb seemed like another low-publicity, low-stakes attempt on the part of Palmiotti and Gray to make someone , somewhere, give a damn about the Freedom Fighters.

And therein has always lain the problem with these books for me: I don’t really care about The Freedom Fighters. Even as a 37-plus year reader of comic books, The Freedom Fighters have always, to me, been that group that got their asses quickly kicked in Crisis On Infinite Earths, and whose members have had a couple of distinguished appearances in James Robinson’s The Golden Age and Starman. Otherwise, The Freedom Fighters was nothing more than the team with Uncle Sam, the girl with the boob shirt who isn’t Power Girl, Other Hawkman, and the dude in the stupid radiation suit.

Well, the dude in the stupid radiation suit was The Human Bomb. And that is really about all I know about The Human Bomb – I didn’t even know the guy’s secret identity until I read The Human Bomb #2 (and, having read the character’s Wikipedia page for background this review, even his identity is something new for the Post New 52 era). And I therefore have no idea if the new origin being presented in this miniseries is historically consistent with the original tale or not. But what I can tell you is that what is here is a pretty interesting, Cold War style story of sci-fi paranoia, fit into the modern New 52 world, with some detailed, damn fine art straight from the guy who inked the character in Crisis On Infinite Earths. It’s Invasion of The Body Snatchers if Dr. Bennell could blow shit up by touching it (and if you could trust the government to pay attention when you started shrieking about Pod People), and it’s actually pretty entertaining.

This issue continues the travails of Michael Taylor, a Marine Sergeant who has recently become mildly perturbed to discover that shit blows up when he touches it… which, honestly, would disturb any red-blooded American male, or at least any who owns a computer and has a folder full of porn bookmarks, if you get my drift. Anyway, Taylor is pursued by a carload of assassins, screaming what they seem to think is a Manchurian Candidate-style trigger word, and who disintegrate into what look like low-rent Terminators when exposed to explosive force. Taylor is then “rescued” by a gentleman named Samuel – a representative of some kind of organization of paranormals, based on a plantation reminiscent of The Shop from the movie Firestarter – who has provided Taylor with a suit to help control his abilities… a suit that looks remarkably like a pair of Levis and a black t-shirt. Samuel’s organization is on the trail of a rival organization, C.R.O.W.N., who has taken Iraq War soldiers, including Taylor, captive and experimented with them to make them attack world leaders to destabilize the world’s governments to make us ripe for an alien invasion. Taylor signs on to attack the bad guys, to discover that the the four “plastics” who attacked him earlier weren’t the only ones C.R.O.W.N. made…

What Palmiotti and Gray have done is take the idea of The Human Bomb, created back in the early 1940s and therefore an artifact of the early days of the Atomic Age (with the radiation suit being a dead giveaway), and used that basic concept as an excuse to tell a Cold War story with elements of the classics of that type of story, including Invasion of The Body Snatchers, The Manchurian Candidate and even Firestarter from the later years of the genre. Frankly, if by the last issue we don’t see The Human Bomb stealing a thought-controlled fighter plane to fly to NORAD to stop a computer from starting World War III by making it play Tic Tac Toe, I’ll be a little disappointed.

The story’s pace is fast. We go from Taylor in a panic to his meeting with Samuel to the attack on C.R.O.W.N. on the other side of the world, all in 22 quick pages. This requires the reader to pretty much take on faith that Taylor can come to terms with having dangerous superpowers, being all but abducted by people who merely assure him that they’re the good guys, and then follow them into battle, all without asking too many questions or expecting really any answers. Sure, at one point Taylor asks for some straight answers, but his request is conveniently sidelined for a little powers training. And given that Taylor knows for a fact that he’s been brainwashed by someone, he might be a little more discerning about who he trusts. However, while this might seem like a story problem, I’m willing to go with it for the time being, as doublecrosses and misplaced loyalties are a staple of this kind of Cold War, the-commies-are-already-here story. So for now, I’m gonna take on faith that Taylor’s credulity is gonna bite him in the ass in a satisfying way in the coming issues… but for now, you need to be aware that our hero is one really trusting sort, to the point where his behavior is really going to test your suspension of disbelief.

But overall, what we get from the book is the kind of old school sci-fi story that was so much fun catching on the Creature Double Feature and the Saturday Afternoon Movie on the UHF stations while I was growing up in the 80s: stories about aliens and secret enemies that were science fiction on the surface, but once you scratched the surface, was able the Insurmountable Enemy that Might Be Living Among Us! If you’re an aficionado of those old stories, you’ll find something to like here. If not? Well, as with those old stories, you might have to stick until the end to see it reach full fruition… unless I’m completely off-base, and this is just a fast-paced origin story where the hero believes everything that’s told to him. But I trust Palmiotti and Gray as writers enough to think that this is going to turn bad for Taylor, and in an exciting way.

Jerry Ordway’s pencils are simply satisfying, old-school comic art. His line is fine and detailed without being overly stylized; with very realistic figures and expressive faces. And Ordway spends as much time on his backgrounds, most of which are extremely detailed and full of establishing bits of business. The more overtly sci-fi elements of the story, like superspy submarines and alien cloning banks, are somewhat grounded by the overall realism that leads up to the more otherworldly stuff. Ordway’s panel layouts are crystal clear, even when he gets a little clever with his panel borders to indicate dream sequences, and his storytelling clear enough to follow even through dream sequences, which don’t have any dialogue to support them. This isn’t art that anyone will fork over beaucoup delores for on eBay, but it is an excellent example of clarity in comic storytelling, and good-looking, if straight ahead, stuff.

Human Bomb is about a character that I really don’t care about, but the creative team has done something very interesting with the blank canvas that this second string hero offers. Palmiotti and Gray have created what seems like the kind of sci-fi story you could catch on the late movie, back when the idea that the Soviet Union would stop at nothing to destroy us wasn’t just a fond memory, but something that a few generations of kids lived with every single day. And while its impact probably won’t be as strong in a post-Cold War world, if you have any kind of fondness for those old stories, you’ll find at least a little something to like here. It’s not making me care a lot more about The Human Bomb as a character, but it tickles my nostalgia bone, and that’s enough to justify my personal layout of $2.99.