Mr. Majestic: The Early Years

You might not know who Mr. Majestic is.

Or, maybe you do, but you missed his solo series that Wildstorm published in 1999 and 2000. It’s an overlooked gem of a series that did get a trade paperback, but it’s long out of print now. Thankfully, all of the issues are available digitally at Amazon today. It’s not too late to relive their glory.

“Mr. Majestic” is a mad romp through science fiction and fantasy, brimming with big ideas and attitude, yet having a heart in the middle of it all.

The monthly series was the product of Joe Casey and Brian Holguin’s feverish minds.  It’s a trip through the biggest ideas and highest concepts, with short stories that have points. All are memorable.  

It was also early in the career of Ed McGuinness, just after his opening stint on “Deadpool” (that lasted nine issues) and a three-issue run on “Fighting American” for Rob Liefeld with Jeph Loeb.  A couple of one-off fill-ins later, McGuinness landed on “Mr. Majestic” for six glorious issues.

After his departure, the book went in another direction, bringing on Eric Canete for a three-part storyline that went in a different direction, but lacked the same snap and charm as the previous issues. It tried to do something, but I’m not entirely sure what. It just didn’t work.  The series ended at issue #9.

The rest of this article will cover the first two phases in the life of the character:  

First, we’ll look at the “WildStorm Presents” issue written by Alan Moore which many considered the best WildStorm comic up until its time.

Then, we’ll run through all nine issues of his solo series. The first six reviews began life in my old CBR column. I’ve updated them for this article. I’ve never reviewed the final three before, so that is all brand new.

Sit back, this will take a few thousand words…

WildStorm Presents: The Prequel

The short-lived anthology, “WildStorm Presents” debuted three years before the “Mr. Majestic” series.

Its first issue featured a single-issue story written by Alan Moore featuring Mr. Majestic at the end of the universe. From a writer who got early work writing short science fiction twist stories in Great Britain, the topic and structure of this story make perfect sense: Majestic and nine other life forms are left together at the end of the universe. Together, they’ll see the end.

It’s like “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”/’Restaurant at the End of the Universe” minus the gags.

Again, it’s a Mr. Majestic story populated with big ideas, both profound and funny.  One life form is a syphilis living in another character.  The remaining human in the universe is Manny Weiss, The Wandering Jew.  A random assortment of bizarre aliens fills out the ranks.

One by one, they meet their final fates, until Majestic is alone with Eucrastia, who teaches him a little about what life might actually be about, just before some golden tentacles attack and Majestic finds himself in a fight for his life, just as he led his life.

Then there’s a twist.  I won’t spoil it, but I think it’s pretty good. It works from the perspective of Wildcats/WildStorm mythology as well as, well, Biblical history.  Odd combination, right?  Only Moore could pull off something like that.

The story is strong.  While there’s a certain melancholy with it, given the inevitable end of the world that approaches, it’s nice to see a group of characters who are accepting that fate and are resigned to finding the best ending for themselves that they can.  Ultimately, each chooses their own, and it makes sense from the short time we’ve spent with them.  Moore defines characters quickly. The science through the story makes sense; I don’t know how truthful it is, but Moore presents it in such a way that you can nod and keep reading.

Moore’s narrative is florid, with well-constructed captions that feel almost lyrical. It doesn’t feel wordy at all, despite the number of words per page.  So much of the importance of the story comes across in the way Moore uses language.  It’s hard to explain without reading a large dose of it, but this issue teems with life thanks to Moore’s measured and descriptive prose/dialogue/captions.

The art is by then-newcomer, Carlos D’Anda, with inks from Richard Friend.  D’Anda does a good job drawing a science-fiction tale, rather than the superhero comics he likely signed up for when he joined WildStorm.  Majestic looks gray and slightly haggard, but still muscular and powerful.  The other characters are appropriately alien, with a good amount of detail and fine linework spread across the pages.  

This is accomplished artwork, from someone who knows how to draw ships and backgrounds and aliens and a good story.   Some of the panels are laid out perfectly, in a very specific way that looks deliberate and not just beginner’s luck.

Some of that fine line work has to be credited to Richard Friend. Friend also inked Travis Charest at WildStorm, and there are lots of little flourishes in this issue that remind me of Charest on Wildcats.  Those tight thin lines are mostly Friend’s, I’d guess.

Mike Heisler hand-lettered the comics on the artboards.  I’ve read too many modern comics lately; It’s good to go back to a time (not even 20 years ago) when lettering was an imperfect and fully human art form.  He has some large chunks of text to write out in the story, but he does a great job. The balloons are placed as perfectly as they could be, and the letters look consistent.

On the negative side, there are probably one too many splash pages in the issue, and the exposition and prose stand out just a bit too much from being grouped together into those larger panels. I didn’t notice that until I went through the book a second time for this article, so maybe it’s nothing to worry about.

Alan Moore did a lot of work at Image in the late 90s.  Some of it is forgotten and some of it should be forgotten.  Some of it is worthy of the best work he’s done in the last twenty years in comics.  This is one of those hidden gems: very high concept, irreverent, humorous, dark, and sad.

It just works.

Mr. Majestic: The Series

The “Mr. Majestic” series began in 1999, just around the time DC was buying up WildStorm.  After a particularly memorable turn written by Alan Moore, the WildC.A.T.s character debuted in his own series from a trio of young comic aspirants: Brian Holguin, Joe Casey, and Ed McGuinness.

Brian Holguin had come up through Top Cow, writing “Cyber Force” and a book called “Stone” nobody remembers that Whilce Portacio drew.  He also had a turn writing “KISS Psycho Circus” for Todd McFarlane.

Joe Casey was the new hotness — really, “Wizard” had even profiled him as he wrote comics from a laptop propped up on a tray table in his living room — at Marvel writing “Cable” and “The Incredible Hulk”.

Ed McGuinness had just come off a star-making turn on “Deadpool.”

Issue #1: “Cosmology”

The first story of the series is the most memorable to me.  Its sheer audaciousness and the ability to keep a straight face and sell itself in the face of the overwhelming number of scientific facts that would prove it implausible is astounding.  

In the opening pages, Mister Majestic discovers that the Solar System is being mapped out by a scout for an alien intelligence that plans to wipe it out.

So Mister Majestic does the only thing he can: try to fool the Big Bad Guy into not recognizing the solar system by rearranging it.

With a combination of his own alien technology, advanced earth technology, and pure willpower and might, Mister Majestic takes years to save the eventual day.

The story isn’t silly.  It’s the kind of thing you go from page to page almost chuckling at the glee with which the creators tell the story.  Just when you think it couldn’t get any bigger, any crazier, any less believable, they sell you on the next phase.  It’s all plot here. It’s big ideas matched with glorious art and a lot of prose to explain just enough to keep your head in the game.

If anything, the only weakness of the story is some overwriting from Joe Casey and/or Brian Holguin. It’s a hang-up of the entire series, but it works here.  In a science-fiction issue, the overly-explained bits of science feel right.  Sure, there are a million reasons why anything that happens in this issue wouldn’t work, but the convincing descriptions and attention to detail that I bet you didn’t think of are enough to keep you in the story.  

If that means pushing a comet out to be the 10th planet or moving the earth into the shadow of Jupiter, or using a spare asteroid to become a second Moon, this book will do it. Convincingly.

It’s audacious storytelling, and it’s pure magic.  Did I mention how Mister Majestic flies into the sun and what he does once there?  I don’t want to spoil everything; it’s good.

Casey and Holguin don’t personalize it in the typical way you’d expect such a storyline to go, either. In fact, Majestic does all his work in secret, working only with his faithful sidekick, the super-smart Desmond, and a team of extreme scientists, all of whom have pledged to keep their work with him a secret.  

It’s a long-shot play that takes years to pay off, and the book ties it neatly into current events of the 70s and into the 80s in small ways. Nixon’s resignation, for example, is meant as a distraction to Majestic’s work.  Majestic’s all-consuming dedication to saving the earth causes him to lack presence on the planet throughout the 70s, explaining bad things like the Vietnam War and disco.  It’s little touches like that which add a nice dimension to the story.

Ed McGuinness’ art matches the story. He specializes in drawing big bold characters.  His superheroes have impossibly square jaws and barrel-shaped chests. If you liked his “Deadpool” work, you’ll see a lot to like here, like he’s being unleashed from drawing mere mortals and getting the chance to draw bigger things.  Majestic in this book feels mighty and powerful.  He has a presence in every room he’s in, particularly when with a group of scrawnier scientist types.  When he flies out to the end of the Solar System or into the heart of the Sun, he feels big enough to make that work.

Like Dale Keown or Paul Pelletier, McGuinness’ lines have a roundness and softness to them that give the art volume.  Characters feel like they have depth, not just height and width. It’s an added dimension that a lot of artists don’t have. They can draw fancy figures and dynamic poses, but there are artists whose work never seems three-dimensional, and whose characters don’t “feel” like they have weight.  McGuinness’ characters do all that, which I think is a major part of the reason he’s so popular.

Inking is from Jason Martin, who does a beautiful job over McGuinness’ art. It’s very crisp. It feels technically perfect, like every line is architected the perfect way, with sharp edges and carefully limited feathering and crosshatching.  You would think someone like a Mark Farmer would work better, but Martin’s inks work in another direction to provide the same feel.

The lettering in the series is from Comicraft, and you don’t need to see the credits to know that.  It’s obviously their work at first glance.  It’s a great font for the series, though, with squarer shapes to the letterforms that are just imperfect enough.  It’s the little things that matter, like the short baseline on the “E” and the small hook at the bottom of the “J”.  The off-balance “Y”s and “N”s give the lettering an almost quirky feel, like it’s trying to look hand-drawn as much as possible. I like the font a lot.

The lettering also uses floating block lettering for the scene location set-ups in this first issue.  That would disappear in the second issue, but return for the rest of the series. You could see Casey and Holguin experiment with that from time to time over the course of the series, using occasionally more descriptive captions to set up scenes rather than just plain old locations.  I don’t know if this was in the script or a contribution from Comicraft, though.  The aesthetic was in the air at the time, particularly with Christopher Priest’s “Black Panther,” where he used it to great comedic and dramatic effect to title scenes.

 

Issue #2: “Repeating History”

Where the first issue was grand storytelling across the Solar System, Casey and Holguin bring the second issue back to earth for what winds up being a very touching and human story.  Granted, it’s filled with time travel gone awry and figures from the past popping up in the present at an increasing rate, but the heart of the story is about a father’s love for his daughter and vice versa.  But that’s just the wrapping.

The heart is the craziness that happens when pockets open up across the globe and figures from the past land in our time.  It starts with Vikings in a small English town, but quickly spreads to the point where the Black Plague returns to France and Liberace returns to Vegas.

Like I said, this can be a crazy series at times.

The humor jumps up a notch in this story, too.  While there were elements of it in the first issue, the second issue brings it up to the foreground, which several beats in place just for the laugh.  Casey and Holguin write those moments convincingly, and McGuinness’ art sells it with great deadpan, such as the British sheriff who doesn’t know what to do with the Vikings sitting in his jail, and Mr. Majestic not being of any help at all.

But the ending to the issue is where the story shines, as Mister Majestic confronts the little girl who is almost unknowingly responsible for the hitch in the timeline.  It’s a three-page sequence that tugs at the heartstrings, uses the comics medium in an interesting way to tell a story, and gives great heart to a story that had been, up until then, yet another loopy time travel story.

Or I’m just a father to a daughter, so I’m an easy mark for stories like this.  One or the other.

The colors in the issue from Digital Chameleon are bright, clear, and simple.  While there are some textures present here and there, it’s mostly a cell-shaded look, with cut-in shadows under brighter colors.  It works with McGuinness’ art, in particular, because he doesn’t need all the fancy molding and shading to give his figures volume, as previously mentioned.  The color palette feels both modern and very traditionally comic-booky. 

Digital Chameleon didn’t color key the scenes.  Most things are very literal: Blue skies, red sunsets, Majestic’s red and white costume, cold metallic computers.  I think it helps what is a very comic book-y story look like one, without being limited by earlier technology’s color palettes.

The lettering technique with the floating scene locations shows up only once in this issue, though there are a few caption boxes in the issue that could easily have been done in the floating style, instead.  The credits for issues #1 and #3 indicated Saida Temofonte’s name, whereas the second issue is just “Richard Starkings & Comicraft.”  Maybe Temofonte’s absence explains that gap in the second issue?

Overall, this issue is an effective complement to the first.  It retains some of the same big ideas but adds a very personal touch to the story that was missing, overall, in the first issue.  It’s also more comedic, playing things for gags not for how ludicrous they are, but rather because they’re staged to be funny.

 

Issue #3: “Excessive Violence: Viewer Discretion Advised”

This issue still has a high concept hidden inside of it, but is mostly about a night on the town with Majestic and special guest star, Maxine (Ladytron).  The two worked together on the WildC.A.T.s during Alan Moore’s run on that series, and this is a bit of a reunion for the two. As such, it’s filled with deeper character moments and lots of meta-messages. 

Maxine has matured, and joined a church that worships artificial intelligence and all things robotic.  She’s going to take Majestic out for a night on the town to help loosen him up.  He’s kind of like the Steve Rogers of the WildStorm Universe, keeping mostly to himself and playing things by the book.  The striped turtleneck sweater he wears on this night out is hilarious, on its own.  The gigantic superhero looking like a father from the 1950s fits.   Maxine is the polar opposite.  It’s a perfect odd couple situation for the series.

Of course, being a violence-prone cyber being, she chooses a movie theater running a “Men-With-Guns Retrospective” to get Majestic in touch with his masculine side.

The movie gets disrupted by “Brotherhood of Box”, a radical off-shoot from her church, who want her dead because she’s half-human and not mechanical enough.  Spoiler: She wins the day by threatening to destroy the movie projector.

The issue is lighter than the first two, for sure.  It wears its humor on its sleeve.  The story is relatively quick and the sense of danger isn’t that big.  That’s OK, though.  A good character piece is a good character piece, and the way the big fight of the issue is handled is novel and memorable.  And for fans of WildC.A.T.s, it’s a welcomed reunion.  Joe Casey would start his dare-I-say-“legendary” run on WildCats a couple of months after this issue.

The best meta message of the issue happens on the third page.  Majestic and Ladytron meet at the newly renamed “Mars Bar.”  You WildStorm readers may remember it from its days as the “Clark Bar,” (see the theme change there?) where a man who looked suspiciously like Clark Kent was the bartender and owner.  That’s the set-up; here’s the panel:

Realize that this series came out a few months after WildStorm had sold to DC at the beginning of 1999.  DC’s name showed up in the indicia, but nowhere else during the series.

It’s official: Jim Lee is “the little guy” of the WildStorm Universe.

Issue #4: “Being & Nothingness”

When Majestros (Mr. Majestic) came to earth in a manner not terribly dissimilar from Superman, his ship carried a second occupant: Majestrate, his son and heir.  The small boy’s body did not survive the crash landing.  With the events of this issue, Majestros is able to bring Majestrate back with a speck of stardust, and the two go off and have amazing adventures together, filled with smiles and love as well as beating up bad guys.

The problem here, though, is the law of unintended consequences. In the manner in which Majestrate was revived, a universal imbalance was created.  And now Majestrate must sacrifice himself to save the universe.

It’s a heart-wrenching issue. And it’s the one case where I wish the Big Concepts and Pseudo-Science parts had taken even more of a back seat.  The emotional drama of Majestros finally bringing his son back to life, only to lose him in such a heroic way is the power of the issue.  

The structure of the story, in which a random bloke in Australia – see?  I can throw in Australian lingo, too, writers! — plays counterpoint to Majestrate, adds a layer of randomness and entropy to the story, but also shows a mirror of the situation and how it impacts someone else in a way beyond just personifying the End Of The Universe powers.

In any other comic series, this would have been a six-issue mega-event.  In truth, a second issue devoted to this story might have helped ramp up the emotion and the impact.  As crushed as we are for Majestros, the fact that we never knew he even had a son until the opening pages of this issue makes it all look a little contrived for the sake of the plot.  

Or maybe that’s what we expect from serialized storytelling? That any story will be set up months in advance?  That any event will involve Chekhov’s Gun slightly less obviously?  That the longer the story, the greater the impact? 

In truth, this issue is probably just as long as it needs to be.  It doesn’t have time to dawdle.  The only thing that might have been cut was in taking a page out from the two-page opening tease that sets up the dramatic scientific conflict.  But that’s just nit-picking.  No page is wasted in this issue, because there’s no room for it to be.  There’s lots of backstory to cover, lots of scientific jargon to make understandable to the reader (mission accomplished!), and even some good old fashioned super-heroics.  

But the heart of the piece is Mr. Majestic’s feeling of loss and aloneness, and how he reclaims it, however briefly.

I know a few Batman fans who likely wish Damian had died this quickly, too…

Lost in the middle of the tale is Desmond’s feeling of being left out, or replaced.   He’s a perfectly capable mental super genius on his own, but he doesn’t have the physical powers of Majestic. He’s confined to some kind of high tech wheelchair, basically, but can work with Majestic to make all his outlandish theories and scientific advancements take flight.  When Majestic is distracted by his own personal mission, Desmond feels like a second fiddle.  It’s another angle that might have played out more strongly if the story had gone on longer, but as a smaller piece in the larger plot did its bit well.

 

Issue #5: “Jailbreak!”

There’s nothing utterly ground-breaking and original in this issue, but it’s still one of the strongest and funniest.  It’s all in the way Casey and Holguin tell the story.  They piece together the various bits in a way that builds up nicely to a satisfying conclusion.

This issue is the story of a prison ship stuck to a comet that’s heading for earth, its inhabitants suddenly freed and ready to do serious damage.  They are, of course, violent, muscle-bound crazy folks with what are effectively super powers. Majestic flies off to see what’s going on and, ultimately, saves the earth from some powerful-looking but nasty alien prisoners.

But if you look on the splash page where we first meet the colorful cast of prisoners, you’ll see a little nebbish/mole man in the bottom corner.  He’s the guy who operates on the fringes of the entire issue, without Majestic’s notice or any interference.  He’s the “brains” of the operation, formulating the perfect manner with which to take over the earth with its inhabitants’ express permission.

He learns earth’s “rudimentary language, albeit filled with polyglot influences and irregular cases.”

It is, he learns quickly, “a culture full of fears and perhaps easily distracted.  Obsessed with media and mass communication.”

This issue was written before the rise of “reality TV,” by the way.  I imagine some of the examples and angles the little guy might have used would be slightly different if the issue were written today.  “The Kardashians” and “Survivor” might be stronger influences.

The evil alien genius plots out his plan for world domination with this in mind and discovers the best thing to do is to take over the television feeds and speak directly to the earth’s population. 

Problem is — spoilers — he looks like Yoda and speaks even worse, in a speech filled with inaccurate jargon, catchphrases, and commercial spokesman mannerisms.  

“Let us rise up and tear down the stony walls that life and separate us. Can I get an amen on that?”

Earth’s reaction is, basically, to wonder what movie’s he’s trying to promote.  (Safe assumption, I’d say. Isn’t that why anyone is ever on a morning show?  Do those shows exist for any reason other than to promote the next big release?)

It’s a wonderful build-up with a short and powerful punchline.  The humans don’t fall for it, even when he nails the point entirely:

You need someone to tell you the truth, to tell you that you are right and your neighbor is wrong…
…to tell you how to think so you won’t have to.

His only fault is in being so direct with his message.  Without any ability to back up his message with brute force, he isn’t taken seriously and slumps back into the shadows to regroup.

Meanwhile, Majestic is trying to save the earth from the prison’s security system, which threatens to blow up the prison ship and the planet along with it.   You still get your super-powered hijinks, action, and fight scenes, but the strongest part of the issue, I think, is the part that’s played for laughs while delivering a scathing social satire.

McGuinness’ cover for the issue is, conceptually, the strongest of his run.  It’s a riff off the old “Street Fighter” video game design, complete with the “VS” font and coloring.  Ladytron and Desmond even make the list of playable characters on that front cover. 

It’s tough to rank favorite issues with this series, because I like certain issues more than others for very specific reasons. The first issue would be my favorite if we were stressing the ridiculously big science part of the series.  The fourth issue might be my favorite if we were going by the heart of the series, with the second issue a close runner up. This issue would be a favorite for its sense of humor and satire.

My least favorite issue, however, is an easy call:

Issue #6: “Why-2K”

Titled “Why-2K” and with a cover date of February 2000, you can kind of guess what the story here is going to be about already, can’t you?

It’s the weakest issue of the batch, and not just because it feels a little dated by how timely the story originally, no doubt, was.  In the WildStorm world, the effects of Y2K were catastrophic initially.  Every electric system on earth failed, and Mister Majestic had to stay up the whole night to save everyone.

That’s one page near the end.

The actual story starts earlier in the day and is split in two halves.  In the first, in a shadowy room, Desmond is set to save the world once again.  He’s to be the backup system for all the world’s most important information, secrets, plans, etc. for when Y2K strikes.  So, uhm, when every hard drive on earth spontaneously combusts at midnight, his brain will make it through with everything intact, which they can then download back off him the next morning.

If nothing else, Casey and Holguin beat Matt Fraction to his Iron Man storyline by nearly a decade with this.  (Tony Stark backed up his brain before wiping it there.)

Y2K, for you folks who weren’t there, was a real worry.  Lots of people worked lots of hours to ensure that all systems could handle the date change. And, remarkably, there were no major disasters. I can’t even think of any minor ones.  The iPhone’s alarm clock had a harder time handling the new year in its early versions than any system had on January 1, 2000.  It wasn’t a fake scare. It was real.  But people planned far enough in advance to have it fixed before that night. 

Yes, that includes me.  In my first job out of college, my first task was to fix the system I was responsible for to deal with Y2K.  As I recall, I just needed to tweak a few programs to make sure they took four-digit years, do a bunch of testing, and I was done.

But the reason this issue doesn’t work so well for me isn’t that it takes Y2K lightly, or overdramatizes it. This is a superhero comic book.  I expect that kind of stuff.  The problem is that the Y2K problem is handled in a hand-wavey fashion that makes no sense. The idea that Desmond must become a backup drive for the world’s top secrets is an interesting one, but it’s not used that well in the issue.  We get to the point where a bad guy with an electronics-disrupting gun is chasing after him.

Meanwhile, near Saturn, Mister Majestic has been stopped cold by a sextet of villainesses named The Ultravixens.  Having lured him with their siren song, they now plan to, uhm, have their way with his big strong body.  

The problem is, they’re a bunch of obnoxious twits who have silly fights over who goes first and let him, in the end, get away.  It plays a little too much like a sitcom for me devoid of the larger more grandiose ideas that the series typically trade on.  There’s no science here; there’s just dumb super “villainy” of a sort.

As an excuse to let Ed McGuinness draw some beautiful women for a few pages, the Ultravixens work. As a plot element, they’re boring. They waste time.  The point is to keep Majestic off-earth long enough for Desmond’s half of the story to happen.  Then, Majestic can fly back to earth to be the deus ex machina to save the day.

Some of the wordplay in the dialogue is cute and all, but it doesn’t feel like enough. Majestic just stands there until he wills himself free because the villains of the month were too busy fighting amongst themselves to keep him in their thrall.  I think.  He actually flies away when they aren’t looking.

It’s done with the appropriate light touch, given how ludicrous the situation is.  Ed McGuinness does some great acting with his pencil here. He doesn’t have much to do with Majestic, but he sells the moments he needs to.

I just think the story doesn’t feel important or interesting enough to live up to the first five issues.

Side note: I had a letter printed in the sixth issue, one in which I failed to mention Brian Holguin’s name and gave Joe Casey all the writing credit.  I wrote this whole article to make up for that negligence. Sorry, Brian, that it took me 25+ years to correct that.

Sorry to end this part of the run on a bit of a sour note, but even as the series’ low point, it was still an entertaining read with pretty art, and wrapped up a series that is well worth reading to this day. It stands up on its own just fine, even if you don’t have any background as a WildCats reader.

The Series Takes a Turn

The series, itself, ran 9 issues.  Those last three were drawn by Eric Canete, who would then mostly disappear into the world of animation, popping up in comics here and there.  He came back briefly at Image with “Run Love Kill” for three issues before he disappeared back into his day job. Recently, he’s been working on another creator-owned book, “Arc Athena,” which you can get through Iconic Comics.

The three issues he did to finish out the series made one complete story.  Unfortunately, while there are moments in the story where Casey and Holguin maintain the feel of the first six issues, the whole thing feels like too dramatic a shift in the tone.  It’s like they went slightly darker and more “serious” in an effort to court a bigger comics audience that doesn’t like the kind of humor and creativity that fueled the first six.

There are moments in these three issues that are worth reading, but the overall story went over like a lead balloon for me.  Part of that is because the last thing the world needs is yet another “Alice In Wonderland” reference.  I hate dream sequences and altered states and psychic plane stories.  There’s an Alice bit in that first issue that probably killed the mood for the rest of the story for me.

I love Canete’s art and soak up everything he does, but this story did not hit for me.

Issue #7: “Universal Law” Book One: “Visions”

The most obvious change is the art style.  The first six issues were gloriously drawn by Ed McGuinness, whose style is large and rounded.  His characters have great physical mass.  They have smooth lines and rounded corners.

Issue #7 features Eric Canete, whose art style is much thinner, with much sharper edges.  His angles are more extreme and exaggerated.  His design sense is second to none and he’s great at drawing architecture and robotic things.  That’s a big part of the reason why he drew the Lady Cyber-Tron one-shot that Joe Casey wrote before this.  He’s a natural at it.

I love Canete’s style and his work, but I’m sure the sudden shift was not taken well by many readers.  Canete once drew an issue of a Spider-Man title and damn near had tomatoes thrown at him for committing the cardinal sin of looking different.

I’ll be honest, though, there are parts of this issue where I could picture Ed McGuinness handling the art and making it sing. Canete makes those same scenes work well, but I almost think they’re better suited to McGuinness’ style.

The story from Casey and Holguin pushes two of my buttons that usually make for stories I don’t enjoy: Epic Cosmic Craziness and Surreal Trips to Weird Worlds, particularly Alice in Wonderland.

As much as I liked the original “Infinity Gauntlet” and the “Silver Surfer” issues of the time, I have little excitement for things like Neil Gaiman’s “The Eternals,” or CrossGen’s “The First”, or any other crazy storyline on a galactic scale where the entire universe is bendable to the will of a magical star-filled character.  Ick ick ick.   Yes, even Galactus bothers me a bit in that direction.

And then there’s the old trope where a character has a weird dream/ingests a toxin or a drug and finds himself in another world that makes no sense at face value, but likely has parallels to a real world situation if you pay attention hard enough.

Mr. Majestic beats a villain on Earth by inhaling his toxic spray and flying out into the solar system before exhaling it.  He takes too long, passes out, and comes to in Wonderland. Then he plays a super serious game of poker with some celestial character. Everyone speaks in non-sequiturs. If a beat poet said it in the 60s, someone’s probably teaching it at Berkeley. In 99% of all sci-fi/fantasy genre entertainment, it feels like the writer is trying to show off.

It would work if I hadn’t been bored by it a thousand times before.

I’ll say this, though: It gives Eric Canete the chance to draw some cool stuff in interesting ways. It reminds me a bit of the kind of work J.H. Williams III was doing in “Promethea,” which ran at the same time as this series. It’s very imaginative, even when the story is nonsensical. The design and raw drawing power cover any issues there might be with the story.

At the end of the issue, Mister Majestic returns to earth and immediately races back to his Mount Rushmore lair, to find Desmond holding some Celestial/Eternal type of character at bay with a rather large and unbelievable gun that fits into this series perfectly.

Bonus points to Digital Chameleon on the coloring, as well. They keep up with Canete’s art, offering a bright and poppy interpretation of the story that works. They recognize the kind of story Casey/Holguin/Canete are doing here and they don’t overplay their hand. It’s also perfectly suited to the strong white paper stock of the issue, which can handle bright and saturated color schemes like this so well.

Issue #8: “Universal Law” Book Two: “Across the Infinite”

I really like how this issue opens, just because it’s aware of the tropes that it’s playing with. Majestic recognizes this big scary god-like man in his realm. He knows who he is, what does, and what kinds of things he’s into. The two engage in a conversation that screams like something from a 1960s or 1970s Marvel comic starring a Jim Starlin celestial character, with over the top language from Stan Lee.

“Stand fast, Majestros! Fortune’s fickle lottery has drawn your name this day! Creation herself calls you to her fertile valley! Prepare for Demon-Days and the Night Eternal.”

Desmond is going nuts. He, standing in the place of a reader like me who doesn’t take this stuff seriously, questions what’s going on immediately in the most alliterative of Stan Lee fashions:

“Who is this meddling malefactor?! What purpose does he serve on this remote rock?!”

(Tangent: What’s with the “?!” ? It looks weird to me. I keep waiting for the second question mark that never comes.)

Majestros is being recalled to somewhere else in space to fulfill a bigger need than anything he could do on Earth. Holguin and Casey are setting up the story to feel like one of those deep universal melodramas mixed up in highfalutin’ cosmic double-speak and matters that are so great that they’ll only hurt your brain to try to consider them.

It’s a mix of influences. It feels like a shadow of Alan Moore’s linguistic cleverness is cast upon this comic, though it’s all surface level. Characters intersperse phrases that are references to well-known things in their dialogue, but for no purpose. This almost feels like Casey poking fun at stories where characters are too full of themselves.

Maybe it’s even a “Sandman” takedown, in a way? Check out the lettering in this issue. Everyone has a different dialogue font and balloon style. This was a popular thing to try at the time. Comicraft was doing it over on “The Avengers” for Marvel, and they do it here. It works for the celestial beings that Majestros is mixed in with. It feels right with characters who are so crazy and unique. It also reflects on the pure chaos of their conversations, often saying a whole lot without meaning much.

I bet none of this is in Casey and Holguin’s script. This is just me working through this story trying to figure out what is going on. This is me not being a big fan of celestial storylines or epic science-fiction/fantasy tropes where the gods talk about their roles in the universe and how they feel about it.

Maybe it’s a reference to a Kirby comic that I’m not thinking about at all?

Oh, how I liked those first six issues so much better….

But I will say this: Canete provides a powerhouse performance in working with this script. He has to design a lot of characters here, and the location he provides them with is wonderful. It mixes theatrical science fiction with a Dave Johnson high-tech flair.

In fact, I see a lot of Dave Johnson on Canete’s art in this storyline, starting with the robot character from the beginning of the last issue. Those knobby metallic parts in those specific combinations paired with the thick ink lines remind me so much of Johnson’s “SuperPatriot” work. That could just be the Savage Dragon fanboy in me reading too much into it, though.

But, then, I turn the page and see a clear Moebius influence on his work, with an almost impressionistic influence on his simple, yet colorful design work.

The colors are from Digital Chameleon still. They’re not flashy, but they do add to the art and use a number of techniques that became more popular once computers made them easier — like cutting in colors and adding soft glows, though that’s mostly by fading colors out on the edges.

Canete’s art in this issue blends an attempt to create new worlds and awe the reader with the location along with attempts to create cool comic pages. You see a few cases of characters breaking out of a panel to become anchor images for specific pages. It’s necessary since most of this issue is talking. heads. They’re very interesting heads in an interesting place, but still — that kind of stuff can get boring after a while, no matter how many fonts you use.

Issue #9: “Universal Law” Book Three: “Visions”

And then Eric Canete was half gone.  Canete splits this issue with Toby Cypress, who is another good artist, but whose style is completely at odds with anything else this series had ever seen.

The book comes limping to a close as Casey and Holguin lay it on thick with the scrolly captions and the celestial nuttiness.

In the end, Mr. Majestic is transformed, granted bigger powers and knowledge of the universe, and must leave the earth.

I suppose that’s one way to end the series.  It definitely puts a period at the end of the sentence, even if it’s one that feels so different from how the series began. I prefer the beginning, obviously.

This is the issue where all the excesses I don’t like in a comic like this really come out to play. It’s so bad that the caption boxes tell you explicitly that they should be read as poetry out loud.  It all gets a bit too presumptuous for my tastes.  It’s painful to slog through.

It also feels like, perhaps, the series ended sooner than expected. Parts of this issue feel like we’re being told stuff that would have otherwise been dramatically shown. The characters even break the fourth wall once or twice to lay things out to readers.

Over the course of writing this article, I’ve read the final three issues three different times. Believe it or not, I’ve come to appreciate them a little bit more on each reread, but I still am not a huge fan.

Introducing the Series

Let’s end the discussion of the series now with its introduction.

The text page of the first issue introduced the series with a piece by Joe Casey and Brian Holguin.  I didn’t notice it until after I had written all the previous reviews.  This means I got to see if their goals lined up with the results.  I knew what I thought the book was doing and what its accomplishments were. Now, I could better see the authorial intent.

I think the two lined up nicely, making the series an even bigger success than I had given it credit for.

Here’s a quick excerpt:

Done right, it would be a book where the only limitations would be our own imaginations.  A book that delivers galaxy-spanning tales of adventure and heroism, from the edge of universe to the core of the atom. A book that expands the possibilities of comic books instead of reducing them.  A book that drives a stake into the heart of the cynicism and seems to pervade today’s comic market.
No more reluctant heroes who wear their dysfunction like laurels. No more constraints on the type of story that could be told in a comic. No more whining about what superhero comics AREN’T doing.  We were gonna put our money where our mouths were. It felt right.

It’s clear that they accomplished what they set out to do. Reading that today, though, it also feels like these two fresh-faced comic book writers didn’t take long into their careers before realizing the problems with doing superhero comics at Marvel and DC.

Getting These Issues Today

“Mr. Majestic” was collected into a trade paperback in 2002.  It is, sadly, out of print.  I would love to see a nice (maybe even over-sized) hardcover presentation of those first six issues.  With the changes in DC from the New 52 and beyond, I doubt DC really wants to remember this series, though.  It didn’t exactly set the world on fire the first time, and here I am asking for a high end reproduction. I’d be insanely lucky to get a trade paperback.

Thankfully, it’s still available digitally in single issue form at Amazon. Those first six issues are an easy recommendation from me. If you fall in love with the character or you’re a Canete Completist, then picking up the last three issues is a good idea, too.