After his unexpectedly rapid removal as president of Image, Jim Valentino has taken his colleagues' hint and gone back to the drawing board.  The result is the normalman Twentieth Anniversary Special, commemorating 20 fabulous years of Valentino's parody series.

Okay, if you want to be nitpicky, the series actually ran from 1984 to 1986, and other than a couple of one-off stories, it hasn't been used since.  And the character actually debuted in 1983.  But that's not the point, is it?

While the original normalman series tended to pick a particular target for parody in each issue, this is all about industry commentary.  normalman used to be the one non-powered person on a world of superheroes, until they blew the planet up at the end of his series.  His quiet life is interrupted by his dimwitted friend Captain Everything, who's been given his very own comic from Image.  They set off to promote it.  And that's basically it.

To describe it as a story would be stretching matters - it actually just kind of stops abruptly, in what seems to be a reference to Valentino's own sudden dismissal.  Basically, this is 19 pages of Valentino letting off steam at the industry.  They visit a stupid and complacent comic store owner who doesn't care about advertising or reaching new audiences.  They go to San Diego and find that nobody's really interested in anything other than free stuff and pointless stunts.  There's also a few enjoyably gratuitous swipes at industry personalities - a ranting Mark Alessi, and the grumbling, irrelevant Johnny Burnout.  ("He loves to tell everyone he's divorced.")  It's all refreshingly tactless, but very funny.

For the normalman completists among you, there's also a reprint of "normalman Goes Hollywood", a 9-pager from Epic Lite #1 back in 1991.  normalman nearly sells his story for a TV show, but they change it beyond recognition.  Not exactly subtle, to put it mildly, but it's still funny.

Will it be incomprehensible to anyone other than a hardcore fan?  Well, yes.  But who else is going to be reading the normalman Twentieth Anniversary Special?  Come to think of it, who else is going to be reading anything from Image - or any direct market-oriented publisher? 

After all, that's kind of the point.  Valentino spent years trying to expand Image's range with a load of unusual and experimental titles (ie, anything that doesn't involve superheroes, 1980s toys and/or big tits), and what did it get him?  A declining market share, and the sack.  If ever a man had grounds to vent...

Rating: A-

back | continue