Lester Dent’s Doc Savage. Bob Kane’s Batman. Will Eisner’s The Spirit. Legends all – and now they come together, along with Richard ‘The Avenger’ Benson, another pulp hero, and will Eisner’s other great creation, The Blackhawks, to take on a megalomaniacal villain [is there any other kind?] who plans to bring the world peace. By force!
First Wave is a handsomely packaged compilation of the one-shot Batman/Doc Savage Special and the six-issue First Wave mini-series. It’s a world where the art deco thirties of Doc Savage’s New York City, the grimy corruption of Gotham City and the whimsical darkness of Central City can co-exist – if not peacefully. It’s a world where dirigibles and jets co-exist are both frequently used; a world where cars look like they could be from any period between the thirties and the present, and two-way radios and cell phones are both current technology.
This is a world where technology and magic just might co-exist but Doc Savage is the closest thing there is to a superman – and Batman carries [and uses] a brace of .45s.
The idea of combining Doc Savage and Batman at the beginning of their careers – and tossing in The Spirit – is a good one. All three have elements of darkness in their pasts – Savage’s father died early in his career; Batman became the Dark Knight in a direct response to the murder of his father, and The Spirit, formerly Denny Colt, spent a week dead before donning the famous blue mask.
The book opens with the Batman/Doc Savage special, in which world-renowned hero/philanthropist/scientist Dr. Clark ‘Doc’ Savage Jr. visits Gotham City with an eye to ridding it of its ‘Bat-Menace’ – the murder of a criminal lowlife has been made to look as if it was committed by Batman. As must be the case for the First Wave series to happen, Savage learns that Batman is innocent – of that crime, at least – and seeds are planted leading into the six-part tale to follow.
The encounters between Savage and Bruce Wayne/Batman are extremely well done. Each encounter allows the reader to learn more about the characters in ways that they can’t – though they do learn as they go. Writer Brian Azzarello handles their intelligence and resourcefulness beautifully and artist Phil Noto has a kind of pulp feel to it – despite a muted palette, it feels colorful and very much in the art deco mode.
For the six-part Final Wave mini-series proper, Rags Morales [Identity Crisis] takes over the art and brings his combination of technical expertise and gift for defining character through motion to a rousing tale that fairly sets the heart to pounding.
First Wave opens with a scientist fleeing through a jungle – chased by a robot! What the robot does once it catches him is both horrifying and foreshadowing.
Certain revelations in the Batman/Doc Savage Special lead Savage and Batman to begin investigating something called The Golden Tree. Interwoven into the story is a sub-plot about Doc’s father, Clark Savage Sr., having died of an unusual disease. This leads to Doc having his father’s body exhumed – only the coffin contains sacks of yellow sand in bags imprinted with red handprints.
Doc sends his aides, Monk Mayfair and Ham brooks to enlist the aid of Richard Benson, The Avenger. Anyone who is familiar with the nature of Benson’s unique gifts may be able to hazard a guess as to what Doc asks of him.
Meanwhile, in Central City, a detective named Dolan is persuading The Spirit to interfere in an illegal delivery that thrusts him into the path of the mercenaries known as The Blackhawks.
Here is when we meet Anton Colossi and John Sunlight – the brains behind the plan to force peace upon the world. It involves a manmade, submersible city and weather control – but there are always problems. Like Colossi’s mama issues and Sunlight’s careful segregation of cells within The Golden Tree organization [which causes some trust issues for colossi – he seems to be a psychological wreck, one the trademarks of pulp and Golden Age comics villains].
First Wave feels like a classic pulp magazine of the thirties and forties brought screaming into the modern world, but refusing to completely succumb to the blandishments of the present. It moves like a bat out of hell; has particularly savage villains, and has a timeless spirit.
Sometimes it doesn’t take much to build a world that works for readers. We never meet all of The Blackhawks and both Richard Benson and the silver-haired Rima the Jungle Girl only have small roles to play – and Vicki Vale has barely a cameo – but they add to the creation of a world that has some substance to it.
Some of the visuals that make this blend of time periods into a unique whole include a lovely panel of a dirigible tied to the Gotham Airship station in the Batman/Doc Savage Special, or our first look at the robot, with its thirties’ serial look, in book one of First Wave.
Tidbits reinforce the believability of this world, like a sequence where Bruce Wayne talks with Alfred about setting up communications between him and Alfred when he’s ‘working’ – choosing two-way radios because ‘they can’t be hacked.’ In a couple of panels, Brian Azzarello establishes a world where thirties’ tech walkie-talkies and computer/cell phone tech exist comfortably in each other’s company. When we finally visit the super city of Colossi’s devising, it looks like a cross between Wayne Boring’s fifties’ take on Krypton and Stargate Atlantis.
The title First Wave refers to the featured heroes being among the first wave of pulp and comics heroes – and the first time they’ve been worked into an adventure together. The result is good enough that it wouldn’t surprise me to see a series of mini-series/graphic novels utilizing these characters, with other additions as inspiration dictates.
First Wave is a real blast – in any time period!
Final Grade: A