Agents of Atlas #10

Agents of Atlas #10 (Jeff Parker) took me longer to read than any other comic this month, and I loved it.

We've got goddesses with copyright complaints, an examination of the last 80 years in Killer Robot development, the rights of workers in evil empires, a history of men and dragons as enemies and allies, and a man trying to cope with the fact that the girlfriend he saw just last year (from his out-of-time perspective) has actually had a half-century to get her evil on.

By virtue of its wacky cast, Atlas has never been like any other Marvel book, but these days that uniqueness is extending to format as well. The latest issue is divided into chapters, each new scene arriving with its own title heading. It's also quite dialogue-heavy, with 2-3 times more words per page than your typical comic. Yet not a word goes to waste, as various characters and subplots are developed, laying the groundwork for future storylines even as they advance the current "Terror of the Jade Claw" arc.

It's a little more demanding read than most comics, and maybe that's not to everyone's taste. Word on the street (and by the street I mean the interwebs) is the Agents are swimming in the low-selling/critically-acclaimed end of the Marvel pool these days. Perhaps their upcoming throwdown with the X-Men or their shiny-new-extra-filled-Dark-Reign-tie-in hardcover will help inspire new readers to give Atlas a chance and see the incredible story-value they're getting for their bucks. I dunno.

What I do know is that month by month, Parker is creating a whole new world and fitting it seamlessly into the nooks and crannies of the Marvel we know. I'll gladly devote some extra reading time to these Agents for many, many moons to come.

- JC

Agents of Atlas #1 and #2

The titular Agents of Atlas are without a doubt Marvel's most unique superhero team, consisting of a rejuvenated 1950s FBI Agent, a human gorilla, a robot, an Atlantean, a mythic beauty, and a man raised on Uranus (you don't even have to go there, 'cause writer Jeff Parker is already doing it for you, frequently yet tastefully). They operate out of a secret lair full of warrior scholars, mystics, servants, and a dragon - when they're not zooming around in a bone fide flying saucer. And they all originated in Marvel comics from before there was a Marvel comics, at a time when the company was called Atlas, hence the name.

Or rather, hence half the name, because the "Agents" part is really just as important here. The book intersperses it's modern Marvel Dark Reign tale about the Agents attempting to infiltrate Norman Osborn's H.A.M.M.E.R. with flashbacks to their oddball '50s adventures as a special FBI task force. In doing so, it manages to play with the two greatest FBI storytelling tropes at once. The clean-cut 1950s "G-Men Are Hip, Daddio!" stories both contrast with and sit comfortably beside a modern "Donnie Brasco" style undercover-with-the-mob tale.

The Agents have recently been given control of a former enemy's mysterious Atlas Foundation. The ancient Foundation, part cult and part multinational business conglomerate, traces its lineage back to Genghis Khan and has been dedicated for centuries to world conquest. Now the Agents mean to use its powers for good - convincing their new followers that world peace is a kind of world conquest - but with shady men like Osborn on the rise, they're also finding it useful to keep up the Foundation's image as villains. There are shades of season five of Joss Whedon's Angel, as the characters struggle to turn the resources of corruption to noble purposes.

It's the genius of Parker's set-up that makes it possible for such an unusual and distinctive team of heroes to go undercover, and it's the genius of the Dark Reign scenario that this time, the mob the Agents are trying to infiltrate IS the legitimate government. It's Marvel's most exuberantly retro heroes in a delicious conspiracy tale for our troubled, paranoid age. Or do we just hope we're paranoid?

- JC