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Reign of the Elvises

Another column - the first of the "Truly Awful Comics" columns (found here) somewhat rebuked the creators of a really dreadful story printed in Image's Bloodstrike #5. I doubt reader reaction to either the story or my description of it will significantly affect the professional reputation of its writer, the diverse Keith Giffen, because his work spans humor (Ambush Bug, contraversial comedic treatments of previously serious subjects (Justice League) and contraversial grim takes on previously light-hearted works (L.E.G.I.O.N.). Giffen, it seems, can write exactly as well as he wants to write and in whatever style he wishes to write.

I find Giffen at his strongest when engaged in parody, such as his story in Image's Trencher #3. The Trencher concept, as one could glean from a set limited to issues 2 through 4, includes a reanimated cadaver named Gideon (the Trencher) who acts as a kind of bounty hunter who collects souls. He receives telepathic instructions from an intelligence named Phoebe, who locates his targets, plots escape routes, and sometimes animates parts of his body that get blown off (so that he can collect all his parts and repair somewhere to repair himself).

Most of his gigs confront him with myriad inconveniences like having to walk from California to Las Vegas, getting shot a lot, having arms, legs, and head blown into adjacent counties, and fights with lots of gunfire, noise, and explosions.

Trencher happened to appear while the "Death of Superman" and its follow up story arc, "Reign of the Supermen," remained fresh in the memory, and Giffen decided that this story deserved his attention. Therefore, Gideon received an assignment to collect the soul of Elvis.

Although Giffen did not append a conventional title to this story within the obligatory splash-and-credits page, one might refer to this piece as "Reign of the Elvises."

The Cyborg Elvis

At first blink, one may fail to see how the death of Elvis Presley relates to the death of Superman, but Giffen shows us throughout this work. Early on, Phoebe informs Gideon that Elvis' soul had fractured into four components that inhabited four separate bodies and that Gideon must, therefore, track down all four of the new Elvises.

Gideon's first hit involved rather subdued violence for this title; Gideon took three bullets to the face (drawn as shell casings rather than slugs; one must wonder if cartoonists who draw "big gun" stories actually have any experience with firearms or if the shell-casing as embedded projectile just represents a convention of the form). He thereupon responded by unloading his firearm several hundred times in the direction of his first target.

The cyborg Elvis did little to cue me in to Giffen's intent here; Trencher, and Image titles in general, contain so many cyborgs that seeing mechanical prostheses suggests no more than seeing a character in a cape or a mask. However, if you scrutinze the scanned sample above, as the cyborg Elvis reposed in death, you may notice that the pattern of his division between flesh face and mechanical face does accurately reflect the composition of the cyborg Superman in "Reign of the Supermen."

The Baby Elvis

I hadn't caught on what Giffen intended as Gideon located his second target, the "Baby Elvis" that parodied the new Superboy introduced in the aftermath of Superman's "death." After all, out of context, no particular resemblance inclines one to look at a diapered infant with a guitar and think of the girl-chasing Superman-clone.

Here, perfectly in form, Gideon and Phoebe argue about plans, although this exchange twists the normal reaction, with Phoebe arguing for action and Gideon refusing. The normal argument involves Gideon's tendency to cartoonish overkill in handling some target who has managed to annoy him by blowing off one of his arms or putting a few shells into his face.

The resolution of this second "hit" would disappoint if Trencher stories included only the requisite fights, explosions, and gore that do constitute most of its content. However, a reader could enjoy the peculiar plot twist of Gideon ignoring a target and Phoebe having to prod him on to violence. Giffen takes advantage of this plot point to foreshadow the figure who leads the other Elvises behind the scenes.

The panicky mark provides this insight by his hopeless efforts to preserve his own life with a phone call. As Gideon and Phoebe argue about the matter, Baby Elvis desperately calls some as-yet unidentified figure (with the requisite distinguishing haircut) about his own impending doom. The unnamed leader, however, argues that Baby Elvis does not really stand in mortal danger; and Gideon's behavior bears this out.

In a completely uncharacteristic move, however, Gideon refuses to snuff the bediapered troubador and moves on to the third target. This makes sense from a storytelling perspective as well, since few readers would readily laugh at some scene where a baby's guts explode all over a page in loving, dripping, fragrant detail; even readers of hyperviolent pieces like Trencher have some boundaries. One would therefore save such a scene for the likes of a G'War concert.

The Armored Elvis

Gideon thinks, at this point, that he might have some break from the mayhem that defines his career when he sees a vertically challenged Elvis fleeing for his life, but realizes that his fate seldom includes anything so easy when he sees the robotic Elvis monster chasing the sawed-off would-be Presley.

Something seems particularly snide about the monster's glittering chromium jellyroll haircut and all the gold and rhinestone ornaments affixed over its surface; here we see the high form of Giffen's hilarious ability to create truly mean- minded parody. One wonders if anyone who misses Presley would get the joke.

Readers who suspected all that went on within the pages of Trencher limited itself to gory gunplay, fistfights, and explosions that frequently set pieces of Gideon flying off toward the horizon (with the remaining pieces chasing after them in hopes of some future reassembly) had a treat seeing how Gideon deals with the armored Elvis. I won't post a picture of this truly horrible scene, but my conscience does allow me to describe it: Gideon reaches up the "seat" of the armored Elvis and pulls out a mess of bones and guts through the armhole.

Again, the context more than anything reveals this Elvis as the complement to DC's Steel character, an armor-wearing character that shoots railroad spikes and bludgeons with a steelworker's mallet. The resemblance (theoretically) becomes stronger as Gideon realizes that the shell contains flesh and he pulls that flesh out through a hole only large enough to admit his arm.

The Eradicator Elvis

When Trencher finally encounters the last of the Elvis heirs, one begins to suspect what provided his inspiration. Consider his treatment of the "Eradicator" Elvis and compare it to Jackson Guice's "Last Son of Krypton," the Superman with big shades on. This character's first full-panel appearance cued me in to Giffen's intent rather late in the story (Gideon has dealt with three of the four Elvises already). Seeing the Eradicator Elvis flying out in his costume with the big early-seventies Elvis sunglasses suggests that Giffen, when he first saw the Eradicator, must have said "Those glasses make him look like Elvis," and used this idea as the seed of a story.

Shamelessly - and probably giggling himself unto incontinence - Giffen mimicked several of the memorable poses in which the Eradicator / Last Son of Krypton appeared in the "Reign of the Supermen" storyline, although the very quirky style of Giffen's art in Trencher sometimes makes sorting out detail difficult. But all the elements confirm this: the big stupid shades, the costume, the poses, the glowing hands.

He disposes of this, the kingpin of all the reincarnated Elvises, by throwing some powder into the Eradicator Elvis' face; when nothing seems to happen, this arrogant overlord begins to boast. Then the powder explodes, releasing some tension; the reader at this point receives the reward of the lovingly-depicted pile of bleeding entrails with bones sticking through it that should have appeared panels ago.

Recycling for Humor

The best recycling in comics tends to occur when someone originally intends to lampoon someone else's (or, sometimes, one's own) work. Sometimes these efforts produce one-shot parodies (which seems the likely fate of the "Reign of the Elvises" concept) or things subsequent writers should have left as one-shots ("Funky Flashman"). Sometimes these parodies even become ongoing characters (such as Marvel's Squadron Supreme).

The parodic approach remains much less subject to criticism because artists who recycle for humor expect the reader to recognize the pilferage and trace it to its source, in the process recognizing the new perspective provided by disrespectful treatment. Giffen made this one work by making the reader realize what he had appropriated, that he had appropriated it, and how derisively he had grafted the death of Elvis Presley onto the much-hyped "Death of Superman."

A lampoon that works should evoke at least a little guilt at the cruelty of the caricature, and this piece, like the Don Simpson's parodies of Silver Age comics conventions, succeeds in just this manner.