The Interman - Jeff ParkerI met Jeff Parker at the Stumptown Comics Fest a couple weeks ago, and flipped through his book. It's a spy adventure thriller comic about Van Meach, the result of a Cold War DNA-modification experiment. He's been genetically modified to allow him to adapt physically to just about anything, making him the perfect super-spy: he can breathe underwater, is resistant to poisons, and can withstand extreme temperatures. Basically he's a one-man "Wild Kingdom" show. Except that he was raised pretty much like a normal kid, so he isn't an assassin or a spy, just some guy with crazy powers.
And, of course, there are all sorts of people who want him dead, which kicks him into the world of super-spydom pretty quickly. Sure, it's an outlandish premise, but once you get past that it's a fun book. I wouldn't say (as Mark Schultz does in the intro) that it's a major turning point in adventure fiction; Schultz decries the way bells and whistles have replaced character growth and context in movies, but Interman isn't so ground-breaking itself. But it's a fast-paced adventure akin to "The Bourne Identity" and good enough for what it is.
Fed to jonathan's brain | October 28, 2005
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