Review: Captain Gravity And The Power Of The Vril

Captain Gravity And The Power Of The Vril!!

Sounds like something out of a 1940’s or 50’s television or radio serial doesn’t it?

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You can almost imagine the guy shouting “Same Vril time! Same Vril Channel!” at the end of every episode.

And you really almost can, until you sit down and read this wonderful mini-series from the ever fertile mind of one of my favourite comic creators of all time - the reclusive Joshua Dysart. Eisner-award nominated writer, NY Times best seller and border-line cult figure to those familiar with his work, Dysart has made a reputation for great stories and ideas often fantastic in their lack of outer complexity, yet containing a darker themed core within. His comics tend to be explorations of the human condition and more often in regard to our violence and fascination with it and with human horror. His works such as Violent Messiahs (which I plan to write about soon, I promise!) are almost seminal works in their own unique ways.

Never over-the-top or disgusting or disturbing, Dysarts work simply leaves you wanting more and yet happy to be finished at the same time. But still able to be read over and over. To me that puts him in a league all his own in terms of being a story-teller.

This particular series however, reads a little bit different from his usual work and is a tad less dark - partly that’s because this series is a beautiful little love-letter to the golden age of comics and characters like The Rocketeer, Buck Rogers, Phantom and even a touch of stuff like Indiana Jones in the way it’s all told. (Woohoo!!) And given that he has worked not just on offbeat stuff like Swamp Thing or on more mainstream superheroes, but his previous experience in pulp icons like Conan and Hellboy show that he is no stranger to the style and sensibility.

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A re-imagining of an existing character that was meant to be a homage to the same pulp-era heroes, Dysart and Bob Almond have really made this series their own. But allow me to give you the run-down on what the story is before we dig deeper into it:

The basic back-story follows our hero, young Joshua Jones, who is a directors assistant in 1930’s Hollywood. While the crew was on a shoot in Chichen Itza (in Me-hico!) for the latest in the film series starring fictional hero Captain Gravity, things go quite seriously awry.

An accidental discovery of a strange metal/element simply explained as “Element 115” (I love and miss the simple stuff like this from the old days!) which the natives worship and turns out later was a gift from higher beings - believed by those aware of its existence to have been aliens who crashed on Earth for a time.

Unfortunately, when the discovery is made, the producer of the movie and a few of his cronies reveal themselves to be Nazi’s (Oh yeah! I said Nazis!) who are working for Hitler in his search for power through things like Element 115. The element itself is capable of giving its bearer the ability to be a master of gravity itself. Well okay, I suppose that was kind of obvious but that’s the point isn’t it?

Anyhow, Jones and a few brave others decide to stop them and Jones himself takes the costume of Captain Gravity and tries to fight the agents of evil (Dammit... I miss the world being more black and white and less shades of grey at times...) and somewhere in the midst of all the chaos, he gains the power bestowed by the element, the power of the Vril - and he truly becomes Captain Gravity.

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Now our main story in this new addition to the franchise follows on after he has been operating under that identity for some time. He is a publicly known hero who fights the good fight and all that and supported in secret by his boss and actress Chase Dubois, the director and lead actress of the Captain Gravity films respectively.

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However what remains true and is an under-current through the story is the fact that though it is not public knowledge, underneath that super-suit he is a black man in late 30’s American, a time and place still home to open prejudice with Europe shaky while Hitlers Nazi party is an ever-present danger that everyone fears.

However things become more problematic when Chase’s new boyfriend, an German-born nobleman/archeologist, decides to head toward northern Africa for a major dig for the root of the symbol that was distorted and despoiled by the fools in the Nazi regime - the Swastika, a symbol that has endured for ages before Hitler and his ilk ever existed and across the length and breadth of the world. When she decides to accompany him, Joshua has discovered in his super-heroing that she is in fact a spy for the American government tasked to find out if her “boyfriend” is in fact being used by the Nazi’s to find an ancient and deadly weapon and power source for the Reich to use against anyone who opposes them.

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Filled with truly beautifully rendered action and adventure, this series (now available primarily as a trade I think) is one of the most wonderful, creative and new, yet powerfully nostalgic that I have read in a long time. Almond really outdid himself on this project and after looking at his detailing, the character rendering, the expressions and the fantastic layout and flow of the story’s progression here I remain utterly amazed that I haven’t seen more of him in the comics I’ve come across or even amongst fans. And in fact the style that he has found for this series so perfectly echoes the feel of those old pulp stories - here told with so much more depth - that you could breeze through the whole saga at one go without even realising how long you’d been sitting there.

Published by the terribly under-rated Penny Farthing Press that is responsible for some excellent titles apart from this such as The Victorian, Zendra and Menagerie, this is possibly the finest of their produced titles in my view.

Did you know they’ve been publishing comics since 1998? Yeah, most folks don’t, so don’t feel bad about that - don’t feel bad, go out and read their comics and you can thank me later.

Till next week folks! 
Cheers!