Well, now - perhaps a few words on Joe Casey? Is that something people might like?
I’ve spent a fair amount of time discussing Joe Casey, over the years. Not as much as some. He’s got a voice as a writer. A really strong voice, even as he’s an extraordinarily potent collaborator. Writes a different kind of comic for every kind of artist he works with. That’s a rare skill in this industry. Artists seem to like working with him, inasmuch as he’s always been able to get good people to draw his stories.
This is a strength going all the way back through his Marvel days, his first Marvel days. I’m sure he’ll be back there at some point or another. He’s most recently popped up at DC, of all places, writing a General Zod miniseries for an excellent artist, Dan McDaid. It is only on account of the fact that I would rather drink hemlock than know one jot more about General Zod than I already do, that I have so far abstained from this series. I’m sure I’ll catch up with it.
That’s not the only new work Casey has on the stands. As of this writing he’s also two issues deep on a rando relaunch of Chap Yaep’s 1990s Youngblood character Dutch - a series that, based on what I’ve seen, touches on a few of the themes explored in today’s reading, albeit in a more strait-laced contemporary fashion. A cousin of sorts to Image's recent Local Man by Tony Fleecs & Tim Seeley, another series predicated on the incontrovertible fact that the Image generation is entering middle age.
But ah, dear reader! Did I not as well purchase Spawn #1 from Walmart upon release, eons ago? Trust, these matters hit close to your humble narrator.
Casey appears intent on returning to the thick of it, so I say more power to him. Keep trying to freak out the squares the best way you know how. Looking back, if it feels like he had a lull, it might just be relative to the fact that he’s had a productive millennia so far. Maybe not a new book on the stands every month, but just about. Much of it was released through Image - like Gødland! We never talk about Gødland anymore. It was amazing, a perfect meeting of two unique talents in Casey and Tom Scioli, coming together on a project of great ambition. It lasted from 2005 to 2012, which is probably three times as long as anyone thought it would. Put out another long series called Sex with Piotr Kowalski, 2013 to 2016. Another very solid series from Image’s extraordinary moment of dominance about a decade ago.
Anyway, back to Casey working with artists. He started off a bit spoiled in those terms. According to my calculations, literally—as in literally literally—the second published comic book credited solely to him as a writer was drawn by José Ladrönn. How did that ever happen? It did! I bought Cable #51 at the end of 1997, because I bought Cable. Cable was readable, if you were bad with money.
No one at the time was ever expecting Cable to actually be... you know, good. What happened was, inexplicably, in 1997 they hired James Robinson to write Cable. This was back when James Robinson was James Robinson, riding high off Starman. Well, Marvel got James Robinson at his zenith and plugged him into rando mini-runs of Cable and Generation X. Why would you do that, Marvel 1997? Poor judgment. So of course Robinson only stuck around on Cable for half a year, beginning with issue #44. Half of that run was writing for Ladrönn. But Robinson was out with issue #50, and they needed someone to write Cable. Well, put that Casey kid on it. Who’s Casey? No idea.
And it’s a good thing no one was paying attention, or they might have realized in the moment just how good Ladrönn really was. He is frankly a better caliber of artist than the American comics industry is accustomed to entertaining. That he drew as much Cable as he did—just shy of two solid years, I believe—was remarkable. Most of those comics were written by Joe Casey. It’s to Casey’s credit that he realized immediately the nature of the situation, even if the editors didn’t seem to, and ran with it as far as he could. He figured out how to write comic books by writing comic books for José Ladrönn to draw. You’d probably pick up a few things yourself under the circumstances.
His first handful of credits are piecework, scripting or sharing scripting duties on titles like Alpha Flight and Wolverine: Days of Future Past. His next major assignment after Cable starting cooking was a bit of a cursed chalice, but is worth mentioning for being perhaps my personal favorite work of his: the last seven issues of vol. 1 of The Incredible Hulk. A mini-run wedged between the sturm und drang of Peter David’s final movements on the series, and the discordant, abbreviated fit that was John Byrne’s second coming. Into the middle of that miasma steps Joe Casey for half a year with Javier Pulido and Ed McGuinness. Yeah! Pretty wild! Fantastic little set of stories, wonderfully sentimental in the way only the Hulk can be. Plays around with some deep Marvel lore to boot; no small thing at a time when Kurt Busiek and Mark Waid were still in ascent. A love letter to the character sat at the heart of a tempest. A genuinely charming run of comics that doesn’t last long enough to wear out its welcome and knows precisely how to use its allotted space. That’s what Joe Casey can do, when he puts a mind to it.
He does a Wolverine one-shot with Óscar Jiménez, Black Rio, around this time - cover date November 1998. Nothing but aces down the line. To be fair, Marvel realizes what they’ve got with this guy: he’s a dependable performer, trusted by now to plug holes in scripting on the mainline X-Men titles. In the space of a little over a year and a half he goes from being a nobody from nowhere to being the guy who did Cable with Ladrönn, prior to them both being replaced by Rob Liefeld. But: the good news is that Casey had a berth following that rather improbable implosion. He was set up to launch a spin-off from Cable, a new iteration of Deathlok based on a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent supporting character. Drawn by one of the best artists the company has ever had, Leonardo Manco, at the absolute peak of his late '90s imperial period. Yet another killer artist on the ledger for Casey.
Do you know how many issues that run of Deathlok lasted? One of the company’s best books on the stands for every month of its release? Eleven issues. Two more than Automatic Kafka, at least, but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Jon Babcock, written by Joe Casey.
Why did Deathlok fail? It might have something to do with the fact that the company decided to commemorate the launch of a very good title with the launch of a number of very poor titles to buttress. They built up a line of comics around Deathlok called "M-Tech," one of Marvel’s periodic attempts to do something with their robot characters. Sadly, no one really cares all that much about robots qua robots, so you’d probably have been better off just printing the good Deathlok book and not getting tangled with the rest of the crap. But what do I know? I’m just the poor sod who was sitting on the sidelines, rooting for this Joe Casey guy who seemed to have a hot hand leading up to the turn of the century but couldn’t catch a break.
Oh well, at least he’s got that X-Men: Children of the Atom project coming up, with Steve Rude. Absolutely certain to be a milestone. A continuity-light, high-concept reimagining of a beloved character’s origins, with a top-shelf artist? Seems like a very '00s Marvel idea. Too bad it was still 1999. Marvel goes out of their way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory quite often, certainly, but never so assiduously as they did with Joe Casey. Somehow or other the vibe was just off, y’know? He got the nod to write Uncanny X-Men in 2001 when they were revamping the line. Should have worked... but for the fact it didn’t. Grant Morrison's New X-Men was destined to have the spotlight all to itself for that period. Casey has admitted it wasn’t the right fit for him.
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We run down the litany of near misses and market flinches that was Casey’s early career for one reason, and that is to provide crucial context for what follows. Joe Casey, it must be said, could not get arrested in comics for years, despite being demonstrably one of the most talented writers around. He moseyed over to DC sometime after the turn of the century. Wrote a lot of Superman comics, certainly. Came as close as he ever did to a signature run in the mainstream with his Wildcats revamp - part of a set of Wildstorm relaunches that were definitely beloved by everyone who read them, but which were ultimately read by very few. This is the period that gives us Automatic Kafka, surely the greatest comic book series ever to be canceled after exactly nine issues.
Joe Casey was severely undervalued by the American comic book industry, and we know this as a verifiable fact because then he went to Hollywood and started making enormously successful children’s television cartoons with a few friends who were, it should be noted, similarly undervalued. Ben 10 was created in 2005 by Man of Action, and Man of Action is Casey, Joe Kelly, Duncan Rouleau, and Steven T. Seagle: all creators active at Marvel in the late '90s, all poorly used by the company at that time. Good job, Marvel! Always a strong and steady hand in the field of talent development.
All of which brings us back to the figure of Joe Casey stalking the racks in 2024, a seemingly renewed force. He can do probably anything he wants at this point. He could be writing prose or screenplays, but that is not the character of his published output. With all the resources of success at his disposal, he keeps making comic books. One must respect that, I believe. It’s an expensive hobby.
We again briefly look back - now to Butcher Baker the Righteous Maker, a 2011-12 series by Casey with artist Mike Huddleston. Eight issues of all-out mayhem, I assure you. If you have never had the pleasure, Butcher Baker is about the last ride of an old superhero, a truck-based patriotic hero from the '70s and '80s who got tired of everything and walked away in the early '90s. Retired to a life of sybaritic excess, until one day visited in his stately pleasure dome by the former Vice President of the United States, accompanied by Jay Leno.
As someone with both a deep love for many things Joe Casey has written and a deep respect for the man’s accomplishments, I feel justified in delivering the verdict that Butcher Baker is one of the most wretched comic books I have ever read. It is crass, yes, and ugly. Neither of which are necessarily deal-breakers, but having now read Butcher Baker in its entirety twice in my life, I find it a thoroughly unpleasant text precisely because the most objectionable elements: all the gruesome signposts of sex and violence and unreconstructed hyper-masculinity that he’s trying to shock us with seem enormously affected, as seen through the distance of time. It’s a book about a bad mood trying really hard to pretend it’s having a great time. In fairness, that was actually a pretty common sensation as we settled into the doldrums of the high Obama era.
At the risk of seeming flip, Butcher Baker very much reads like the kind of thing you’d get really excited about writing if your day job was concocting scenarios for children’s television. The book itself knows it’s a put-on, a performance that wants more than anything to be seen as shocking and disreputable. Why, you can say "fuck," and even show peoples’ wangs just flopping around. So many wangs flopping around in that comic. Wangs all day long. Little shriveled sausages swinging in the breeze.
It looked quite nice, I must say. Mike Huddleston is a talent, and Butcher Baker was an expansively imaginative book to look through. Credit must also go here to longtime Casey collaborator Sonia Harris, one of the most gifted graphic designers the industry has ever seen. Why she’s never been snatched up by a larger firm is completely beyond... oh wait, yeah, I know why. It’s because this is comics and no one gives a shit if the book looks good. Bingo!
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However, I’ve come around slightly on Butcher Baker. Even as I maintain that book is a blemish on the souls of its creators, it was important for one reason: its existence enabled Casey to return to the scene of the crime, so to speak, with an unexpected sequel. Junior Baker the Righteous Faker is a direct sequel to the first series while also at the same time being as unlike its predecessor as possible. I’d say it’s a better book, but it’s trying something so different that the comparison doesn’t even really make sense. The first book is an action story that owes much of its plot to Smokey and the Bandit, right down to the presence of a dead ringer for Jackie Gleason as Sheriff Buford T. Justice to serve as secondary antagonist throughout the series. The sequel is a bittersweet drama about a man searching for purpose.
Butcher Baker was a story about masculinity. Once upon a time, you see, the trucker was a figure of unimaginable virility in American culture. Burt Reynolds was a sex symbol, and if you don’t know who that is just Google it... wait, does Google still work? I dunno. Go down to the library and look up Burt Reynolds in the encyclopedia. Anyway, you don’t have to take my word for it that truckers were a big deal in the 1970s, I can prove it with comic books: truckers were such a big deal in the 1970s that even Marvel got in on the action, publishing 12 issues of U.S. 1 starting in 1983 - the year Smokey and the Bandit Part 3 hit theaters, so you know that bubble was well and truly popped. U.S. Archer was a trucker who was also kind of a superhero, and his series was notable mostly for a few nice Michael Golden covers.
Junior Baker is a sequel premised on a return to the site of the original story like a forensic investigation of a crime scene. Many years ago, something very strange happened and the rest of the world was left to puzzle it over. The protagonist of Butcher Baker was a violent man who liked to have a great deal of sex in between killing people for Uncle Sam. Daniel “Dizzy” Baker is the son of that man, having grown up in the shadow of a completely absent father. There was no purpose to the endless treadmill of fighting and fucking, in hindsight, just a bunch of energy spent in the pursuit of... something or other. No one’s really sure anymore because everything is falling apart. Pointedly, it’s not falling apart because of some grand supervillain conspiracy. I can promise you there’s no master scheme from an old foe of Butcher Baker waiting at the heart of a massive scheme. No, their world is falling apart because our world is falling apart, or at least it seems like it on any given day.
The shrillness of the original Butcher Baker has given way to the nuance of growing older and facing personal limitations without euphemism. Oh, there’s a mystery at the heart of the world, sure. All the superheroes disappeared years ago, and something keeps pulling Junior to discover the truth of the matter: that they all relocated to South America, tucked into a corner of the map to play out their infinite recursive secret wars, taking a page right out of Marshal Law. They are of no consequences to anyone left alive.
Arguably the least interesting aspect of Casey’s later work is the ubiquitous presumption of metacommentary permeating his every move. It’s a particularly nasty habit of his generation of writers, the “big statement” as default. Sure, sure, you can read these stories as allegories for ways of approaching genre fiction. I’m not going to draw you a diagram. Butcher Baker invites such readings, as does its successor. They spend time to talk about the phenomena of superheroes in the past tense, positing the movement as a thing that happened, a mood that has definitively passed. The rest of us are left to stumble around in the present looking for meaning in what’s left.
Dizzy is a schlub, basically, who has no idea what to make of the fact that his dad was one of the most powerful, violent and virile superheroes of all time, and also at the same moment one of the most useless sons of bitches who has ever drew breath on God’s green earth. Junior Baker is a story about coming to terms with the past, sifting the ruins of what has come before, and realizing there’s altogether no need to carry that baggage into the future.
I mean, I've already described the story, but what's it really about? Well, Dizzy’s a reporter working for a Buzzfeed clone. He’s got a suitable niche writing garbage supernatural clickbait, a vocation which allows him the freedom to work on more important stories related to the aforementioned absence of superheroes. He gets sucked into, like I said, something that appears to be a massive conspiracy, some kind of confrontation at the heart of reality - but the immediate effect is that he goes to a lot of trouble to avoid being around for his pregnant partner, who has to give birth alone while he’s off gallivanting south of the Equator. Using his past as an excuse to avoid the future. Sound familiar?
The art for Junior Baker is from a new name to me, Ryan Quackenbush. This is a very nice-looking comic book, full stop. In another era I would say it was a nicely painted comic, but this was most likely produced all or partially in the digital realm. I found myself reflecting on the first true generation of painted comics that followed in Sienkiewicz’s wake in the late '80s, stuff that would have been published under the Epic imprint, or from Karen Berger’s office around the same time. Elektra: Assassin rewired a lot of artists’ brains and we’re still dealing with the consequences, I think.
There is much to celebrate in Quackenbush’s use of color. Each scene uses a distinct palette, with emphasis on oranges and blues. Casey throws a lot at the wall here, giving his collaborator room to draw just about every kind of variation you can imagine in the space of these five issues. There’s flying trucks and a woman giving birth in the back of an ambulance. Flashbacks to the adventures of a pair atomic super-villains, dying in the present day. Not a challenge for the faint of heart.
But that’s Casey for you. He’s still got an eye. He finds good people to work with and gives them carte blanche to produce beautiful art in his wake. Imagine that.
Does Junior Baker fall apart in the end? I’m of two minds about it. Without going into to excessive detail, the story doesn't tie up all that well. The end of the last issue sort of devolves into mush, as the god Helios descends from the heavens to perform an extended colloquy on the nature of life. But, the theme at work here is also very clearly telegraphed. It’s not an issue of the story getting away from Casey, it’s a matter of the story itself winding up in a place very different, perhaps, from where the reader might have otherwise anticipated or wanted. The series only truly comes into focus at the very end, as Daniel Baker holds an infant in his arms and affirms the solidity of the domestic - returning to the real after five issues of getting slowly dragged into the detour of the unknown.
Really? That’s how we’re ending this whole cycle? Casey’s choleric mood from 2012 gives way to a peaceful acceptance of the rhythms of change? Huh, seems like. I’m not going to ding the man for ending the story with a picture of a man holding a baby. That’s a perfectly fine way to end a story. Symbol of renewal, and all that. A bald-faced move towards sincerity from a creator who spent decades learning how to be arch, so maybe we can be kind about it. Does it work? It’s kind of floppy, to be honest. But it’s also very much the ending the book was building towards. The grand metaphysical showdown is a man coming to grips with change, albeit as midwifed by the machinations of a few random cosmic entities.
As someone without children, who most likely will never have children, this all elicited more of a genuine reaction from me than I would have anticipated. If you’re under 45, I’m sorry, move along. These are feelings for old people. But they’re real feelings. Welcome to the only game in town.
