Trade Winds - Doctor Thirteen: Architecture and Morality

Posted by Graig on September 21, 2007

(DC)

Paranormal investigations, grandiose adventure, metafictional narrative, obscure DC characters, and, well, fun isn’t exactly what one would expect from Brian Azzarello, given his rather hard-boiled track record and his gruff convention persona, but with his Doctor Thirteen story the 100 Bullets writer has crafted one of the most enjoyable reading experiences to come from the mainstream universes in a while. It’s comics at its best, providing not just entertainment, but also some satirical commentary on the industry, and an inside joke-ish, gentle ribbing at his contemporaries.

Pulled from limbo, Doctor Terrance Thirteen is a single father and a paranormal debunker. His daughter Tracy is the Fox Mulder to his Dana Scully, although Terry has to reach much deeper to explain away what he witnesses. Here’s a guy living in a universe where Martians and Kryptonians stop alien invasions while the King of Atlantis and Princess of the Amazons beat up mythical beasts on television, and he explains it all away as mass hallucinations and television trickery. Delusional and blissful in his self-imposed ignorance, Terry, with Tracy in tow, is called to investigate a plane crash site where the survivors tell tales of a Yeti eating the unfortunate. The adventure spirals out from there as Terry discovers Anthro, a caveman frozen in ice, meets a Vampire, and boards a ghost pirate ship to chase after his daughter who was kidnapped by talking Nazi gorillas, all the while, Terry hysterically tries to explain away everything he’s seeing.

Seething in the background of this adventure are the Architects who prove to be an even bigger threat than the Nazi gorillas. The Architects are the shapers (or is that re-shapers) of the universe, more powerful than Parallax and Extant and Darkseid and Neron combined. The Architects decide the fate of every being in the universe and it becomes apparent that Captain Fear, The Haunted Tank, Infectious Lass and the others who joined Doctor Thirteen on his journey are all in a desperate struggle to justify their existence, or they will be blinked out of reality, back to limbo, gone and once again forgotten.

Spoiler Warning
Written as a back-up feature to Tales of the Unexpected, a rather dull Spectre-centric mini-series that ended earlier this year, this story quickly surpassed its lead-in amongst the comics bloggerati, and it’s no doubt the championing from the on-line collective that brought about the trade. The Architects, though never overtly stated, are the quartet of creators who were given the task of developing the latest “New DC” via 52, being Greg Rucka, Geoff Johns, Mark Waid and Grant Morrison. Azzarello both develops them into caricatures - a motley, quibbling quartet - as well as, perhaps enviously, makes light of their role as universe shapers. As time moves on, and there’s distance from 52 with new creators taking a lead role in forging DC’s path, it’s really only in this specific context that the story might lose some longevity (but then the Julius Schwartz jokes in Ambush Bug are still funny over 20 years later so what do I know). Whats more, Azzarello channels each of these creators into Doctor Thirteen, playing with Morrison’s love of metafiction as well as revamping obscure characters, Waid’s heartfelt investment in the oddest corners of DC’s history, John’s continuity obsession, and Rucka’s ability to unfold a mystery, skirting around continuity and history to tell a self-contained story. Doctor Thirteen is at once all these things: a love note to characters lost, a reinventing of them, a probe of the real and surreal “world” in which they exist, and a ties-free tale that can as much adhere to continuity as it can exist outside of it.

If the layers of meaning weren’t enough, Azzarello highly charismatic characters are brilliantly formed under the pen of Cliff Chiang, easily THE talent to watch out for in 2008 (next taking residence on the new Black Canary/Green Arrow series). His clean lines with hints of Anime influences are perfect for this series, where the colors (expertly provided by Trish Mulvihill) really need to pop, giving a highly nostalgic four-color sensibility with a modern, diverse palette. Chiang’s characters are perfectly detailed, never over-rendered, and he draws some of the best faces and reaction shots since Kevin Maguire. Altogether it’s a beautiful and entertaining book from the Alex Toth/Super Friends-inspired cover through to Chiangs’ fantastic sketchbook pages in the back.

5 out of 5 Vikings