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For Season Two of the podcast we've taken an in-depth look at the foundation and history of Image Comics. To accompany that we've done a blog series on comics published by Image in their exciting and chaotic formative years - 'Early Image'.
Youngblood Yearbook is, even by Extreme Studio's low standards of the time, a bad comic. Image's take on the traditional 'annual' format, it presents a feature-length self-contained story, and a bunch of pin-ups. To round out the presentation of the comic as something special it features a 4-page fold-out, taking the ubiquitous Image splash page to new lengths (or widths!)
Starring the 'away team' of Youngblood, the US government operated superhero organisation that forms the core of Liefeld's Extreme universe, we march deep into the rich vein of Marvel rip-offs that epitomise early Image. The team travels to Antarctica to investigate the lack of contact from CIA agents stationed at the base there. After being attacked by mysterious assailants, they are drawn to a tunnel and down into 'Arcadia', a world populated by dinosaurs, 'barbarians', a villainous despot called Tyrax, and a rebel leader by the name of Kanan. In case you were left in any doubt that the ideas had been lifted wholesale from Marvel's 'Savage Land' and it's hero, Kazar, the story is helpfully titled 'This Savage Land'. The Youngblood team are captured and subjected to the villain's clunky exposition, before being freed by Kanan. They then fail to pursue the fleeing Tyrax, and have to race through an intergalactic portal before they are trapped in the not-the-Savage Land. Apologies if that last bit is confusing, but no-one noticed on the way in that the miles long tunnel they trudged through was actually an intergalactic portal.
For a story (and a studio) based around violence and conflict, it's oddly light on fight scenes and action. There's a failure to use the 4-page fold-out to any meaningful effect, instead just rendering the team in a bunch of Liefeldesque cliché poses, when a mighty action packed fight scene was just begging to explode across the extra space. Not that there's much going on in the action's absence - we get almost no idea of these characters personalities, their relationships, or even their superpowers. The team leader is Sentinel, who appears in Iron-Man like armour - though it's drawn differently in almost every panel, sometimes it just looks like the traditional spandex of the rest of the team rather than armour - it doesn't display any powers or abilities (other than seemingly imbuing Sentinel with incredibly poor decision-making). Any readers familiar with Photon would know he's an alien, but it's not actually mentioned here, and despite being an extraterrestrial being he utters phrases like 'let's get it to rock and roll!' Riptide is a blatant rip-off of DC's Ice, complete with vague water/ice powers and revealing bodysuit. Cougar is the obligatory Wolverine clone (I really should catalogue all of them one day). Rounding out the team is apparent powerhouse Brahma, though he doesn't actually do any feats of strength here - however he does helpfully mention that they get paid 'big bucks', so we at least understand that they're employees and not your traditional do-gooder power-and-responsibility superheroes.
To be fair to writer Eric Stephenson, he had only written a handful of comics prior to this and was still clearly learning his craft - he has the inexperienced comic book writer trademark of using way too many words that take over every panel and page. Though he's best known for going on to become Image's Publisher in 2008 (a position he still holds), he did develop into a talented writer, particularly with standout series' Nowhere Men and They're Not Like Us.
Like Stephenson, artist Chap Yeap was also incredibly inexperienced. Only 20 years old at the time, Youngblood Yearbook was just his 3rd published comic. Really, much of the criticism of the art here is criticism of Rob Liefeld, as artists at Extreme were employed to crank out comics in his distinctive style. All of Liefeld's tropes are here; characters almost always facing the reader, realistic scene arrangement sacrificed for group posing sessions, wild ruffled hair on every character, a lack of backgrounds, a lack of feet, and the odd round shiny ambiguous technology. Without Liefeld's detailed hatching lines, many of the pages comes across as unfinished layouts casually inked by Norm Rapmund. Yeap would only draw a few more comics - including the ill-fated 'Heroes Reborn' Avengers for Marvel - before leaving the industry to work in TV and games as a storyboarder and character designer.
Youngblood Yearbook feels exactly like what it is: a throwaway story. Neither Kanan, Tyrax, nor the 'Savage Land' of Arcadia were ever revisited - and on the evidence of this comic, that's no bad thing.
Mike
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