JEFF LEMIRE
Jeff Lemire currently writes the acclaimed monthly series Sweet Tooth (DC Comics’ Vertigo), a postapocalyptic adventure about a little boy with antlers who travels across America with a dangerous bounty hunter in search of the secrets of his own origin and of a plague that decimated humanity. In keeping with that theme, here are Lemire’s choices for three of his favorite postapocalyptic comic books.
1 Vic and Blood: A Boy and His Dog, by Harlan Ellison and Richard Corben (1969). The graphic novel Vic and Blood, by sci-fi great Harlan Ellison and Richard Corben, is actually a continuation of Ellison’s 1969 short story “A Boy and His Dog.” The novel follows a boy named Vic and his telepathic dog, Blood, across a devastated American wasteland searching for food. The twist here is that Blood is a leftover from government experimentation in telepathy, animal intelligence, and extrasensory perception, and may in fact be the single most intelligent being left on Earth. Corben’s irradiated vistas are dark and striking, but it’s the unique relationship between Vic and Blood that drives this story and makes it linger.
2 Kamandi, by Jack Kirby (1972). The legend goes that then–DC Comics publisher Carmine Infantino approached Kirby in 1972 and asked him to create a comic similar to the wildly popular film Planet of the Apes. Kirby answered this call with Kamandi, the story of the last human boy on Earth in a postapocalyptic world ruled by highly intelligent animal factions. Talking apes, tigers, rats, and dogs fill Kirby’s dynamic pages. As always, Kirby’s vast imagination took the story well beyond that initial concept and created a fully fleshed-out world. Kamandi’s adventure is truly epic, paced like greased lightning and completely intoxicating.
3 Scout and Scout: War Shaman, by Tim Truman (1985). Timothy Truman was one of the many great talents to emerge from the early days of the Joe Kubert School. While some of his classmates, like Steve Bissette and John Totelben, went on to do great work for the likes of DC Comics in the mid-1980s, Truman mostly seemed to find work with fledgling independent companies like First Comics and Eclipse Comics, where he produced a lot of well-regarded comics like Grimjack and Airboy. But it was his creator-owned series, Scout, which debuted in 1985, that is his masterpiece.
Scout follows an Apache named Emanuel Santana, or Scout, as he sets out to rid the world of “the Four Monsters,” mythic beasts inspired by Native American folklore, who are disguised as corrupt politicians. Scout ran for twenty-four issues, and a year later, Truman launched a follow-up series entitled Scout: War Shaman, which jumped ahead ten years into the future and followed Santana and his two young sons in this chaotic landscape. These later adventures take the book from a fun, well-crafted pulpy adventure comic into truly inspired territory. Truman’s depiction of Santana and his two boys are equally heartwarming and heart wrenching. It’s so real at times I am still brought to tears when rereading it, and the epic conclusion of the fifteen-issue War Shaman series is one of the single greatest and most emotional scenes I have ever encountered in the comics medium. Do yourself a favor and hunt down Scout and Scout: War Shaman.
Canadian cartoonist Jeff Lemire is the creator of the award-winning graphic novel Essex County, published by Top Shelf. He also writes Animal Man and Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E for DC Comics. In 2008, Jeff won the Schuster Award for Best Canadian Cartoonist and the Doug Wright Award for Best Emerging Talent. He also won the American Library Association’s prestigious Alex Award, recognizing books for adults with specific teen appeal. In 2010, Essex County was named one of the five Essential Canadian Novels of the Decade!