Challengers of the Unknown gets a Howard Chaykin revamp, in the form of a new six-issue miniseries.

Although when I say revamp, it's really more of a ground-up reinvention based on the fact that Chaykin kind of liked the name.  Or so it would appear from his interviews.  Personally, I know virtually nothing about the original version of the property, so I'm just going to approach this on its own merits.

I've always been rather ambivolent about Chaykin's work.  On the one hand, he's clearly ambitious, he's a great artist, and he's not afraid to take risks.  There are plenty of plus points.  On the other hand, he also seems to have some odd thematic obsessions with sex, a tendency to bang on about politics, and a back catalogue of comics that seem determinedly hipper-than-thou.

This issue marks a departure from the formula.  There's no sex.  Otherwise, it seems to be the usual combination of elements that I ought to like, and factors that prevent me from doing so.  Chaykin seems to be starting work on a conspiracy plot (though frankly, god only knows what all this stuff about dreams is, and why four of the characters turn up in the same building at the end).  He has running commentary which takes the perfectly legitimate approach of parodying the right-wing bias of Fox News, but does so in a crassly obvious way.  ("Every one of these liberals should be publicly executed.")

And then there's the characters.  The lead characters.  God, I hate them.

"My name is Zach Dyamond.  I'm a videoartist, brawler, downtown party animal - Artforum calls me a poster child for pissing all over contemporary culture."  No, seriously.  The rest are even worse.  Tessa Crowne is "an extreme athlete, libertarian bohemian and wild woman."  Rydell Starr is "middle America's nightmare come to urban ebony ethnic life."  Yes, it really says that. 

All of them come across as absurd pile-ups of ridiculously hip virtues fed through a filter of clunky politics and cod philosophy.  No doubt the absurdity is partly intentional, unless Chaykin has truly lost his mind.  But it doesn't matter.  I hate them the moment they step onto the page.  Every one of them sounds like the sort of loathsome self-absorbed prick you strive to avoid at parties.

Middle America's nightmare come to urban ebony ethnic life.  I ask you.

It would be unfair to say that Challengers of the Unknown is stupid.  But it's nowhere near as clever as it thinks it is, and that makes it even more aggravating.

Rating: D+

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