There are two kinds of comic book characters: those that are owned by their creators and those that are owned by corporations. Virtually all of the famous superheroes fall into the latter category. Superman, Spider-Man, Batman, and their ilk all appear in multiple comics each month, with their adventures chronicled by a legion of writers and artists, so as to maximize profits for the companies that hold their copyrights.
Martha Washington is a great example of the other kind of character. She debuted in the 1990 series Give Me Liberty, written by Frank Miller and drawn by Dave Gibbons, and has since appeared in a handful of other comics. But each and every one of her stories sprang from the minds of Miller and Gibbons, which made it possible for Dark Horse Comics to collect them all in a single volume: The Life and Times of Martha Washington in the Twenty-First Century.
In this 600-page compendium, we see Martha’s birth on March 11, 1995, and we see her death 100 years later. In between, we see her escape Cabrini Green, the Chicago housing project/prison where she was raised; enlist in the Peace Force, a paramilitary version of the Peace Corps; battle terrorists trying to raze the rainforests on behalf of the fast-food industry; fight in the second American Civil War, a conflict with at least seven different factions; and save Earth from a controlling computer program.
That’s a lot to digest in a short amount of time, as I have since the paperback version of this collection was published last month. And there’s no doubt that this book could hurt a small dog if you accidentally dropped it. But if you tried to collect every one of, say, Wolverine or Wonder Woman’s adventures in a single volume, you’d have a book as big as a minivan.
Miller and Gibbons packed a lot of cool sci-fi concepts into Martha’s life, including a sinister surgeon general who believes disease is a crime punishable by death; a U.S. president reduced to a brain floating inside a R2D2-like structure after an assassination attempt; and the fast-food industry’s giant killer robot, which bears an unmistakable resemblance to Kip’s Big Boy.
But I think the operative word in the title The Life and Times of Martha Washington in the Twenty-First Century is “times,” not “life.” Martha feels like a cipher, merely a tool for the commentary Miller was trying to make about our politics and culture. He and Gibbons never really took time to give her a personality. Even though I’ve now read every single one of Martha’s adventures, I don’t feel like I know her.
TODAY’S NOTABLE RELEASES
Blackest Night: This is a hardcover collection of the blockbuster series that had the Green Lantern Corps teaming up with Red Lanterns, Blue Lanterns, Yellow Lanterns, etc., against the evil Black Lanterns, leading to a funny analogy by formerly Dallas-based cartoonist Scott Kurtz.
Batman: Odyssey No. 1 (of 6): Neal Adams, who had a legendary run illustrating Batman in the 1970s, returns to write and draw the Caped Crusader.
Avengers: Children’s Crusade No. 1 (of 9): Fan favorite Allan Heinberg, a writer for Sex and the City and Grey’s Anatomy, is back in the comics game for the first time in four years.
Marvelman Family’s Finest No. 1 (of 6): The character also known as Miracleman, who starred in an acclaimed 1980s series written by Alan Moore, has been dormant for more than a decade.
X-Men No. 1: Oh, look … Marvel’s renumbered the X-Men again … [yawn] … and they’re fighting vampires this time. [yawn]
