THE WRONG EARTH # 1

The Wrong Earth # 1 is the inaugural release from AHOY Comics, a brand-new comic book publisher based in Syracuse, NY (the town so nice they named it). Created by writer Tom Peyer and artist Jamal Igle, The Wrong Earth has already been described by some as a superhero satire. Maybe it is satire, but I think it's something a little nearer and dearer to my heart: it's a love letter to superheroes. As a love letter, it seems sincere in its affection for both the corny four-color escapades of halcyon caped crusaders of my youth and postmodern deconstructions and reconstructions of these heroes as edgy antiheroes. The Wrong Earth has it both ways, and gets away with it.

Tom Peyer knows superheroes. He knows dark 'n' gritty from his tenure as an editor with DC Comics' mature-readers Vertigo imprint, and he knows light 'n' goofy as one of the writers on Batman '66, the latter-day comics set in the campy milieu of the mid '60s Batman TV series. My favorite Peyer work is Hourman, a DC title he created and wrote from 1999 to 2001, one of the very best mainstream comics series of the past few decades (and a book in desperate need of some trade paperback reissue recognition). Based on the first issue of The Wrong Earth, I'd say I'm likely to have a second favorite Tom Peyer comic book series.



It's high-concept: basically, what if Batman '66 and The Dark Knight switched Earths, with the square costumed boy scout that Adam West portrayed on TV winding up in the dystopian cityscape depicted by writer/artist Frank Miller, and vice versa? Yeah, right now, you're smackin' your head, yelling out a Homeric D'oh!, and kicking yourself for not thinking of it first. Figuring that DC Comics might not want to share [The] Batman with AHOY, Peyer and Igle concocted Dragonflyman and Stinger as able and available stand-ins for our beloved Dynamic Duo, with the nogoodnik Number One in place of The Joker as their evil antagonist. That's the scene in Fortune City on Earth-Alpha; in the more dismal and depressing Fortune City in the alternate dimension of Earth-Omega, Dragonflyman is known as Dragonfly, Stinger's been dead for ages honestly, and the struggle between Dragonfly and Number One is considerably more tense and violent than the BASHes and KLONNKs exchanged over on Earth-Alpha. Universes cross. Hijinks ensue. And I'm placing a permanent reserve on each new issue of The Wrong Earth at my local comics shop (Comix Zone in North Syracuse).

The first issue of The Wrong Earth offers some really sharp comics storytelling, the work of a writer and artist who know their craft and have an inherent sense of how to straddle the fine line between pastiche and parody, never quite falling into either. This book sings the swingin' body eclectic. Bonus material includes an ersatz Golden Age tale of stalwart sidekick Stinger, interviews with Jamal Ingle and Stewart Moore (whose Captain Ginger is coming soon from AHOY), a nifty text page from Peyer, a Too Much Coffee Man page by Shannon Wheeler, and the first part of a prose serial by some tyro named Grant Morrison. (NOTE TO FOLKS WHO AREN'T COMICS FANS: that's a joke, I say, that's a joke son; if you're a rock 'n' roll fan, it's kinda like referring to some tyro named Bruce Springsteen. Man, I hate explaining jokes....)

Full disclosure: I do know Tom Peyer slightly; we have several mutual friends, we occasionally play on the same trivia team (on those rare occasions when I show up), and we're both fans of Syracuse's own power pop powerhouse The Flashcubes, but listen, man: he never writes, he never calls. Hell with him. This perceived chumminess makes me aware that Tom has a new comic book out; the sheer quality of the work means I'm gonna buy it, and keep buying it.

Oh, and bonus points for Tom's description of Hart Seely, a Syracuse legend and the publisher of AHOY: "Our publisher, Hart Seely, was for years a reporter at the Syracuse Post Standard. AHOY is not that big an adjustment for him; journalism and comics are more alike than you think. Both reduce the burbling slop of human experience to easily digestible forms. Both use words and images. Both involve working under deadline. But comics have to be accurate."

Yep. Sounds like the right Earth to me.



The Wrong Earth is published by AHOY Comics LLC, 111 Enderberry Circle, Syracuse, NY 13224, http://comicsahoy.com/ Near-future titles from AHOY include High Heaven (by Tom Peyer and Guy Scott), Captain Ginger (by Stewart Moore and June Brigman) and the anthology book Edgar Allan Poe's Snifter Of Terror. That Hart Seely guy knows what he's doing. Contact your local comics shop and collect 'em all. No, screw that: READ 'em all. Reading is better than collecting!



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