Midnighter #1-5

[argurotoxos]

This week's Midnighter post covers the first story arc, "Killing Machine," written by Garth Ennis. The main plot involves a Holocaust survivor kidnapping Midnighter and sending him back in time to assassinate Hitler. I'm pretty neutral about these issues as a whole, but there a few nice moments. As such, despite covering 100+ pages, I'm only posting nine scans. I also won't be doing a page-by-page summary or talking too much about the main plot at all.

The creative team on this arc is Garth Ennis (writer), Chris Sprouse (pencils), Karl Story (inks), Randy Mayor (colors), Phil Balsman (letters), Kristy Quinn (assistant editor), and Scott Dunbier (editor) with covers by Sprouse and Story. Variant covers were done by Michael Golden (#1), Arthur Adams and WS FX/Randy Mayor (#2), Jason Pearson (#3), and Glenn Fabry (#4). #3 had both Sprouse and Joe Phillips on pencils, Jasen Rodriguez, Scott Williams, and Saleem Crawford on inks alongside Story, colors by Wildstorm FX, and letters by DC. #4 featured Peter Snejbjerg on pencils instead of Sprouse. Finally, Ray Snyder did inks with Story for #5.


Ennis writes Midnighter as a loner, largely disconnected from the rest of the Authority. As Midnighter puts it both the opening and closing narration, "I am not a lover. I am not a father. I am not a friend. I am what I was bred to be. And therein lies the problem." Even his two very brief interactions with Apollo don't have much emotion in them. The entirety of their conversations is:

Midnighter: "What are you doing?"
Apollo: "Painting." (first time)/"Origami. See?" (second time)
Midnighter: *walks away*

(vejiicakes drew a wonderful parody of this.)

I can take a brooding or somewhat detached Midnighter in moderation - it's not like Midnighter's normally Mister Outgoing and Friendly, after all - but Ennis takes it too far for my tastes. And while Apollo painting does make a nice image, it irks me that Apollo's confined to arts and crafts while Midnighter spends the issues inflicting heavy doses of violence. It's not so much Apollo being portrayed as enjoying artistic activities that bothers me, but the nagging notion that this might be how Ennis views Midnighter and Apollo's relationship overall -- Midnighter goes out and bashes the bad guys' heads in while Apollo sits around in his own little world. It doesn't inspire confidence that Ennis has referred to Apollo as a "boring blond twat" in an interview, either. (It's about now that I'm wishing we had gotten that Apollo solo series.)

Onto the recap and scans, from which I am omitting a lot.



Our antagonist, Paulus, introduces himself. I'm undecided how well this dialogue sits with me, but I have an inexplicable fondness for the line, "What is a poor killing machine to do..." Probably due to the way it sounds it my head, drawled in an appropriately villainous exaggerated, mocking tone.

Of course, this wouldn't be a proper recap without giving at least one example of Ennis' tendency of writing homophobic quips for Midnighter's opponents. There are four instances in issue #1, but the one below is the only one that made me chuckle even as I groaned. (It's a little clever? Really, though, Midnighter's reaction was about on par with my own.)



Moving on to issue #2 and some black humour.



Followed a few pages later by this scene, which is actually a flashback:



I like a Midnighter who's genre-savvy.

In any case, Midnighter is about to kill a young (think early-twenties) Hitler when the Time Police show up in a futuristic police ship to prevent him from altering history. #3 is an extended confrontation with the Time Police, culminating in Midnighter's temporary victory.

#4 opens with a rather cute scene between Midnighter and a group of German kids in a devastated Germany right at the end of World War II. I was also struck by a full page depicting Hitler as an exhausted, defeated old man right before committing suicide; for all his infamy and horrendous crimes, he was still only human. In Midnighter's words, "on the one hand it was just this pathetic little man going off to meet his ultimately quite mundane fate." The conversation between Midnighter and the head of the Time Police at the end of this issue was another kind of nice scene, but I ultimately didn't scan any pages from issues 3 or 4 because I didn't care for the art.

Having not killed Hitler, Midnighter rigs up his own plan to defeat Paulus in issue #5 with help from the Time Police.







These pages are definitely the best from Ennis' Midnighter run on the topic of sexuality. (Apparently Wildstorm's and Doctor Who/Torchwood's versions of the future agree in one regard.)

As you might expect, Midnighter's plan succeeds and he dispatches Paulus with a kick to the head.



This is the second page of Midnighter's closing narration, but I really included it because I love seeing Angie, Li Min, Jenny, and Jack hanging out together over dinner. D'aww. I also kind of like the idea of Midnighter randomly picking his next destination by spinning a globe.



The End.

["Door" is the code word used to activate the interdimensional doorways that the Authority uses to travel pretty much everywhere.]

Next week: Two fairly good one-shots in Midnighter #7 and #9 and a few brief words on #10-17 to conclude the Midnighter posts.