COMICS: Colonia

The only comics I got on Wednesday were Jubilee, which I talked about yesterday; Superman/Batman/Batman/Superman (whoever gets top billing), which wasn't really worth the wait, and which made me wonder if Darkseid had Supergirl stretched on the rack before Superman showed up (or at least just her abdomen); and Y: The Last Man, which ended with a hell of a cliffhanger. Was the ring what was protecting Yorick all this time? (My guess: no. But it's a nifty coincidence.)

And I also got the TPB of Colonia (freshly restocked thanks to Mike). It's a collection of the first five issues of the ongoing series (which is apparently ongoing at a very slow rate, but what are you gonna do?), and it was a bundle of weird, cool, creative fun. I mean, look at the cover:


Yikes! I'm still not sure if that's a single creature with five heads, or a group of creatures with a single mind/animating force/what-have-you, but isn't it excellently creepy as hell?

I knew of creator Jeff Nicholson from his comedy series Father & Son (he also did Ultra Klutz, which I never got into). There's a lot of humor here, but it's primarily an adventure tale, set in an alternate world in which pirates still roam the seas in 1999, America is still the "New World", and it's not even called America -- it's Colonia, named after Cristobal Colon (or Christopher Columbus as most of us know him). Three people from our version of Massachusetts (a boy named Jack and his two uncles) slip-slide into this alternate world, and encounter a mess of pirates, as well as mermaids, headless ghosts, that walking fish thing in human clothes, and a talking duck named Lucy, who lays golden eggs.


The alternate history is intriguing and well thought out, and Jack's handling of this bizarre experience is smart and plausible, while his uncles bluster their way around with comedic results. And that talking duck seems to think there's something special about Jack, that he doesn't even realize himself. There's a load of story ideas here that could take this series in any imaginable direction.

The downside is, Nicholson isn't moving too quickly on this project; since 1999, only 11 issues have come out (the 11th just came out). It doesn't look like there are plans for another collection any time soon, so I think I'll be picking up some back issues next week. Too bad it'll probably be such a long wait till #12.