When a project that’s been running for decades needs to be scuttled quickly, cutting corners leads to fascinating discoveries.
What They Say:
Bethany, Nathan, Danny, Jack, and Jasmine suddenly find themselves awake in a world completely foreign to their memories. They remember having strange abilities, but nothing like this! What are they? They’re part of the mystery that Tony Murcheson has been assigned to investigate and uncover: Project Next Men!
The Review:
After reading comics for about thirty years, with some breaks here and there, there are few creators that I find myself really wanting to follow. There are some that I like but few that really get my to look at almost anything they do. John Byrne is one of those few as I grew up reading a lot of his work that defined my views of what I felt were good comics at the time. Uncanny X-Men, Alpha Flight, Superman and Fantastic Four. When Byrne went off and started working on a few independent projects as that realm took off more in the late 80’s and early 90’s, the one that wowed me was Next Men. With that series running for thirty one issues before it ended amid the market collapse of the 90’s, it’s been one of those titles that I wished would come back again some day, like Grendel during its down period and my hope for Whisper to return some day as well.
With IDW Publishing, where Byrne seems to call home these days working on Star Trek properties that I can’t bring myself to buy, he’s finally returning to the Next Men series with new chapters that pick up where he left off. Sadly, IDW Publishing doesn’t yet have the first issue available for a digital edition when I went searching, but I did find that original miniseries on there for a buck an issue. So with some curiosity to see if it’s held up in the intervening years, I decided to dig in and try to re-experience the title again. Especially since I got shafted with the trade editions that came out which turned out to be black and white versions only and not the original color editions.
Next Men #0 isn’t exactly your standard opening issue across its thirty-four pages as it reprints the chapters from the Dark Horse Presents tease chapters that came out prior to the main book. The story ties together well across the chapters as it introduces us to Project Next Men, a secretive government funded operation that started in the 60’s to deal with genetic research and a hidden layer about genetic engineering. The project, which has its roots in a prequel called 2112, is lead by a senator who wanted to create superhumans which has resulted in hundreds of children raised to adulthood over the years that have been terminated before they can become a problem. Unfortunately, the project is being quickly shuttered as an investigation is underway in regards to it so the whole thing is being scuttled quickly before the investigators can get down to the lower levels of it and see what’s really going on.
With everything being in a rush before the investigator, Tony Murchenson, arrives on the scene, certain procedures are overlooked. What we discover is that the people that are being engineered are done so by putting their minds in a virtual world where they all interact together in a village, one that has had hundreds of them disappear over the years simply by winking out. That virtual world introduces us to the seemingly otherwise idyllic life where whatever they need appears before them and the few that are left all have relationships with each other to some extent. There’s only five of them left now with Nathan, Bethany, Jasmine, Jack and Danny. They’re generally normal people, as normal as can be in this environment, but because of the overlooked procedures in the real world, Jack inadvertently causes the container that he’s in to break, allowing him to wake up and step into the real world. And into a real panic as it comes as Murchenson is forcing her way down to the lower levels to discover what’s going on.
Next Men covers a whole lot of ground in these pages. The real world has a lot of exposition tossed in as the Senator and his chief scientist go over some of the past history of the project and the guilt of it all that they really shouldn’t feel anymore. The action side plays well as Murchenson forces her way down further to get to the truth of what’s going on there. The virtual world is well handled as well as it definitely feels like a simple utopia that’s been built for all the subjects of the project. Byrne’s artwork with its mixture of simplicity and detail works very well as the characters have this rough feeling to them and the backgrounds for the utopia are clean and simple, yet what they interact with is richly detailed. There’s so much detail to the settings in the real world that the simple blue backgrounds of the utopia really give it a different feel right from the start. Yet with how much Byrne puts into the other areas of it, it can be deceptive.
Digital Notes:
This digital edition of Next Men from IDW Publishing presents the book as originally seen but without any advertisements. No variant covers were part of this titles original release either.
In Summary:
This period of Byrne’s work is like a lot of others to some extent in just how dense it is. When you really go through it all and look at the amount of dialogue, the number panels per page and how much is contained in them both in exposition and detail of artwork, it can be very striking. The story he wants to tell through these four chapters explores a lot of the basics of the series that’s to come by asking a lot of questions and showing various answers that are just the tip of the iceberg. Some first issues tease you a little bit or focus on throwing you into nothing but an action sequence. Next Men ends up providing a heft info dump with a solid level of action and intrigue to it spread across four chapters that were originally presented separately. Put together, it covers more material than many superhero books do in the first six or twelve issues in a way that feels cohesive and like it actually has a plan. Next Men’s art may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s the good stuff that makes comics very much worth reading.
Grade: B+
