Reviews Elephantmen: Man and Elephantman #1

Elephantmen is one of those comic books I always planned to read. I even went so far as to contact the company behind the comic itself to ask for a press kit (I was promised one twice over the last few years, yet never received either), but I never purchased a copy for one good reason: Elephantmen is known for its complex, tightly-woven story, and I didn't want to be a Johnny-Come-Lately. This is also why I've never seen an entire episode of Sopranos, Oz, and others.

It turns out I was right about this, as I received one of the recent issues in the ongoing Elephantmen series for review, and I could make neither heads nor tails of it! It was a jumping-on point for new readers and while the story was enjoyable and I'm pretty sure I know what was going on, it was obvious that there was a lot to these characters and situations that I was missing - important things that change the meaning of the story and add to its value - and that what I was reading was only a part in a larger work. I read the issue, but what could I say about it?

Elephantmen: Man and Elephantman really is a good jumping-on point for new readers, and it takes a moment, both within the story as well as in the backpages, to give these new readers a little primer on the story, the characters, the world, and what to expect from it. It's nice, but it isn't neat, as we find out later that most of what we just read wasn't exactly the truth. You can go online and read the backstory, as well as the first issue for free, but I don't think that was my problem.

Man and Elephantman does a good job at introducing the characters, defining their relationships to one another, and debriefing us as to the world, situation, and what's come before now, but I don't know that it's enough to make this reader chase the truck every Tuesday night. "The Devil of the Sixth Heaven (Pt. 1)" does a capable job of introducing readers to the comic book, and has a nice wrap-around story that should intrigue, yet I couldn't help but feel... something was missing.

Elephantmen is a brilliant, fertile idea with plenty of ground to cover before scratching the surface, but Starking's pacing is too slow. It's so deliberate that it feels self-important, and everything takes on such seeming weight and import that I zone-out after a few pages and start glossing over everything. He also relies too much on what has come before; if it's important enough that we need to know it, it should be repeated in the story or at least recapped at the front of the book. Starkings keeps reminding us that, despite the fact that this is a futuristic world and many of the lead characters are inhuman, Elephantmen is really a story about people. We get it, but can we have a few more deathrays and flying saucers with our pathos, please?

Elephantmen: Man and Elephantman does a decent job of introducing the characters, and has a nice hook, but I felt alienated from the whole thing - the story, the characters, everything. Starkings takes the premise for granted with the conceit of telling stories "of an all-too human nature" (I don't know where I heard that, but it fits). Despite the fact that Elephantmen is more pulp romance and detective than sci-fi, it's slightly maddening for such a unique premise to proffer little more than anthropomorphic leads.

© C Harris Lynn, 2011