by Robert Greenberger

Resurrection Man

One of the DC’s New 52’s revived characters owes his origins, believe it or not, to the Great Lakes Avengers. In the mid-1990s the writing duo of Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning were wrapping up their run on Force Works, a spinoff of the just-canceled West Coast Avengers. At the time, they were mulling over story ideas and Lanning was musing that the GLA member Mr. Immortal had the ability to die and come back, which they found boring. Lanning scribbled a note to himself that it would be cool if each time the hero returned, he possessed a different power.

Well, no idea ever goes unused and in time, the pair was writing for DC Comics and they took that notion and spun it into a brand new character, the Resurrection Man. The protagonist, Mitch Shelley, was well-received by DC’s triumvirate of Group Editors and was given his own series, pairing the writers with artist Jackson Guice. While popular with some fans, it did not sell well enough to last beyond 28 issues, although the character appeared elsewhere until his final death, in the DC One Million event, at the hands of that other immortal, Vandal Savage.

The series was one of the first solo projects from Eddie Berganza, who has now risen to the role of DCU Executive Editor, and reunites with the writers on the new book. Abnett told Comic Book Resources, “One of the things Eddie always said at the time is that he felt that Resurrection Man was, as it were, ahead of its time. It was a comic that got a lot of good critical review but was never a huge hit back then, and he always felt it was because it was a post-human character operating in ways different than were common at the time. So maybe this is a more appropriate way of doing it because he’s not a conventional, as you put it, tights-wearing, spandex superhero. People are slightly more used to that now. In fact, it’s a matter of an audience sort of catching up with the idea of having a superhero in that way and allowing us to re-present the character and try to find fun, new things to do with him.”

Lanning added, “I think in that initial incarnation we were really going out of our way to write the comic as if it were a TV series. I think the comic buying public is now so used to great runs of TV series, boxed sets of great sci-fi, crime, and adventure TV stuff, that there’s a different sensibility out there about the acceptance of that style of storytelling. It was something we were definitely trying at the time. For the most part, like I said, it was very successful critically but I don’t think it caught across the mainstream because at that time it was the height of the iron-jawed heroes with cybernetic arms standing with their legs five miles apart in comics!”

Of course, you can’t keep a good hero dead, and he’s back, with Abnett and Lanning once more guiding Shelley’s exploits. To support the new edition, DC is releasing Resurrection Man Volume One, collecting the first 14 issues in a nice, thick book. Within those pages, you will meet attorney Shelley (yes, his surname is a nod towards Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley) who was subjected to having microscopic tektites injected into his bloodstream, by a mysterious organization called The Lab, making him seemingly immortal. Each time Shelley is killed, the tektites recreate the body, adapting it to combat the previous cause of death. For example, if he was killed in a nuclear blast, minutes later he would be revived with the ability to become a living shadow.

Shelley was at first rendered an amnesiac but over the course of the first year; he regained his lost memories and put together the shattered elements of his life in Viceroy, South Carolina (the home of Soder Cola). As he answered the questions about his life, new problems arrived in the curvaceous form of the Body Doubles. These gorgeous assassins, Bonny Hoffman and Carmen Leno, were sent by The Lab to get Shelley back under their control. (And in time, they became popular enough to guest star everywhere and get their own miniseries). Before long, it became clear that Shelley was actually always an immortal but The Lab altered his physiology, granting him super-abilities. And with super-powers come super-pals so in time Shelley encountered Phantom Stranger, who thought him an ally, and the Forgotten Heroes who mistakenly believed he was their friend the Immortal Man back from his death during the first Crisis. He also fought more familiar threats such as the android Amazo.

Abnett & Lanning were constantly surprising the readers with the various twists and revelations so the book was never less than entertaining to read. They were well matched with Guice, who used a variety of art approaches, including washes, to give the covers and interiors a look that set the title apart from the Image-inspired art of the era. Filling in for Guice were Tom Grindberg, an Adams clone, Joe Phillips, and Mike McKone.

Purchase

Resurrection Man Vol. 1 SC

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