Then there's Paradox.
The most original character concept in the history of absolutely anything ever, screams the cover blurb (or words to that effect). Well... no. He's a shape-shifting spy IN THE FUTURE! is what he is; The Man From UNCLE meets Space: 1999, basically. Oh, dear.
Paradox is really, really not very good. By "very," of course, I mean "at all." I've been loath to say anything bad about writer Bill Mantlo since learning of his health problems (via Tony Isabella's column). Bill suffered terrible brain damage in accident some years back, and, as I understand it, doesn't remember much about his career as a comics writer. I certainly hope he doesn't remember Paradox. Because there is something profoundly icky about this book, and that is its attitude towards sexuality.
See, in a nod to I Spy, the titular superspy Paradox is a celebrity in his "cover identity." In his case, he's a ballet dancer—which, when he's introduced, engenders several snarky comments about his assumed faggotry. Paradox, for his part, flounces about in puffy shirts and velvet chokers, as camp as Christmas, laying giddy smooches on his superior officer: later, though, on an interplanetary flight, he effortlessly woos a stewardess.
It's all meant to be a jolly bit of Bond-style cocksmanship, of course, but it leaves a sour taste. Paradox isn't really gay, of course, or even bi—he sleeps with two women in the story, and for all his fey banter doesn't actually put the moves on a single man. His presumed homosexuality is played like Clark Kent's glasses—as a cover for his true nature as a hard-bitten spy: his enemies (and allies) constantly underestimate the "fairy," of course.
That might've been an interesting conceit. But to present him as really, actually, unambiguously 100% straight is a pure cop-out. Understandable from a marketing standpoint—wouldn't want to alienate our fatbeard audience, not all of whom are entirely comfortable even with the notion of sexuality as an abstract—but leaves a bitter taste, nonetheless.
It's this that makes Paradox a truly terrible book, rather than merely blah: Aside from that, though, it's just boring, from its uninspired genre-mashing premise to the workmanlike dullness of its bog-standard drugs-and-murder plot, salted though it is with gratuitous boobies, unconvincing "futuristic" touches, tired wordplay, and choking slabs of exposition.
Still, that was the Seventies, which are safely behind us. We've learned from our long nightmare, haven't we? Learned and moved on, yes. Such an atrocity could never happen again...
Oh dear.
Doug Moench and Paul Gulacy are, of course, Seventies People (having created the groundbreaking-in-its-time Master of Kung Fu). But it's 2002 now, and it's beyond me why anybody would want to see new Seventies-Style Comics written and drawn by Seventies People—thanks to the anal-retentive habits of fanboys, it's not as if such material is in short supply, and the back-issue market is pretty soft right now. What's going on? Moench and Gulacy, unlike poor Bill Mantlo, haven't got the excuse of brain damage...
Me, I'm waiting for Rupert Everett to bring the gay superspy genre to the prominence it deserves. Bring on PS I Love You, cries I!
