The Destroyer #8 - Marvel

I would've preferred to start reviewing Marvel's Destroyer magazine with #1, but this was the first one that came to my door(via eBay, of course), and my blogs are like cable news--they crave content, so bear with me...

Like yesterday's Robocop 2, I had never even heard of this magazine, as was momentairily confused--this Destroyer guy is Remo Williams, right? From that movie a few years back that Fred Ward starred in? So why is Marvel doing a magazine about him now(well, then)? Was Remo's popularity peaking around 1990? Questions, questions.

Anyway, even though I was not versed at all in the Remo world, I was able to follow along pretty well in this issue, since even though its obviously part of a larger story, this issue's plot is pretty self-contained.

Remo is part of this super-secret organization called CURE, and is given an assignment absurdly simple:

Any questions?

Anyway, Remo refuses to do the job, so another member of CURE, a guy with a hook for hand(!) named MacCleary, goes to do it for him. MacCleary is captured, and then Remo(and his belittling martial-arts master mentor, Chiun) have to go in to rescue MacCleary before the very existence of CURE is revealed.

The script is by Will Murray, and surprisingly nifty art by Lee Weeks and Brett Blevins. I don't mean "surprisingly" as in I'm surprised Weeks and Blevins' art is good, but more because, a lot of the time, licensed properties in comics weren't always given the most thought re: creative teams. But the art here is tight and uncomplicated, and there's a Joe Kubert-esque leanness to Remo that I thought worked really well.

Remo and Chiun do rescue MacCleary, sort of, and the whole thing ends in a spiral of ever-increasing violence--a house blows up, a guy gets some fingers to the eyes, MacCleary slits his own throat with his hook!

The only thing I thought that marred the book was the occasional break for some political proselytizing about how America has the moral right to kill people--even sometimes innocent people--to protect its image as the leader of democracy, blah blah blah. Regardless of whether I agree with that point of view, it sort of stops the book cold--you've got secret headquarters, death traps, all sort of typically silly comic book-y stuff, and then a chunk of knee-jerk right-wing PoliSci. Whatever.

(I'm not saying comics--even adventure/superhero comics--can't support political themes in their stories, but just that in this issue the material is jammed in with a crowbar. I'm not sure if this is writer Murray's idea or simply his best attempt at representing the source material's POV)

Despite that(and all the bloodletting), this story maintains a certain dark humor-ish tone, especially in the Marvel Universe Handbook-style character pages in the back, drawn by no less than Bill Sienkiewicz! I love this one of Remo, chowing down on some tasty junk food.

The Destroyer magazine lasted a total of nine issues--Marvel gave it the old college try, but around 1990, if you weren't wearing a cape, mainstream comics fans pretty much weren't interested.