Hip Flask, &c

John let me borrow a shit ton of comics a week or so ago, and most recently I finished the Hip Flask series, including the Elephantmen series, and a few other random issues here and there.

I was originally smitten by the pilot episode, in a pretty oversized binding with some of the most detailed artwork I've ever seen in a comic (by Ladrönn). The story seemed cool too. It was a great sci-fi pulp action concept: here's what the website says:

2162: THEY ARE THE SURVIVORS of genetic engineering experiments
and indoctrination by Doctor Kazushi Nikken and MAPPO,
a sinister organization which sought to create suprahuman
weapons of mass destruction.

FREED AND REHABILITATED by the United Nations Intelligence
Taskforce, the 'Unhumans' now live amongst men.
Legitimized by the 'Elephantmen' act, they are nevertheless denied
the right to bear arms and must survive on their wits alone...

The series is okay. Its biggest problem is that it never seems to get beyond those two paragraphs. Almost every issue re-explains that origin story and shows how short the stick is that the Elephantmen get. The former is just sloppy writing that can be fixed as soon as someone tells Starkings as much. The latter just shows a lack of imagination, which is really unfortunate since both the cyberpunkesque world and the disturbed characters have such potential. X-Men, f'rinstance, is all about people that get the short of the stick, but X-Men isn't always about that. The X-Men do stuff when they're not being shat on.

There's a huge imbalance between the good guys and the bad guys, too. The good guys, including Hip Flask, Ebony, and a handful of humans, are Disney-like until someone messes with them, then they have a flashback, tear stuff up, and return to their former
melancholic but jolly demeanor. Obadiah Horn--the rhino--and his wife, Sahara, show off much greater depth of character, despite the former's apparently transparent goals and the latter's deceptively shallow personality. The problem there is that I end up not caring that much about the good guys and caring a whole lot about the baddies. But I'm not being fair: the so-called bad guys aren't typical antagonists. They're likable, and might end up not being the antagonists after all. Nonetheless, their personalities are tested in much more interesting and much more mature ways than are those of Hip Flask, Ebony, and some of the others.

All said, though, this series has more potential than anything else I've read in a while. The geography, the recent past, and a large part of the politics of Hip Flask's world haven't been touched on yet, and neither have most of the character's personalities, to any great extent. The series doesn't need anything drastic, just a really good writer who can bring a few good storyarcs to really test the characters in new and fresh ways. This sounds like a job for Alan Moore.