normalman: The novel

normalman (Single Issues)

by Jim Valentino

Genres: Comics

360 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Jim Valentino is an American writer, penciler, editor and publisher of comic books. He is a co-founder of Image Comics and served as the company's publisher from 1999-2004. Jim created such diverse series as normalman, A Touch of Silver, Vignettes and ShadowHawk. He also wrote and drew Guardians of the Galaxy for Marvel Comcs.

He currently heads his own imprint at Image called Shadowline which publishes Rat Queens, Faster Than Light, Jimmie Robinson, Ted McKeever and more.

Reviews

[Rich Meyer · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is way too bad that Jim Valentino descended into the quagmire of Image Comics the way he did, because Normalman the Novel stands as a true comic book classic, and a rare parody/satire that fires on all cylinders. To think he went from something as enjoyable to read as this to the dreck of Shadowhawk is a crime against art.

Call it homage, pastiche, parody; no matter what you call it, read it! If you are a comic book fan who lived through the Bronze Age and the opening volleys of the "modern" age of comics, this is a story that you won't want to miss!

[Dominick · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of those books that is perhaps of more historical than aesthetic importance. Valentino was the first cartoonist, as far as I am aware, to attempt an entire series in which each issue (of thirteen) parodies a specific comic series or universe or publisher (EC, Elfquest, Cerebus, The Spirit, Richie Rich, the Asterix series, the Archie universe, American Flagg, to name a few). The book is also overtly meta, as the conceit is that the protagonist, Normalman, ends up on the planet Levram, where everyone is a superhero (Levram: Marvel backwards, so an upside-down, inverted superhero world). There are certainly some clever bits--I was especially fond of the Elfquest parody that also folds in the Smurfs--so we have Smelfs, who are aggressively violent and sexual (not graphically so) because they are sick and tired of being dismissed as cute. The oddest intertext must be William Messner-Loebs's Journey, the issue in which Normalman guest-starred even being included here; even more odd, perhaps, is that Wolverine MacAlastaire continues to appear in the book as a sort of occasional spirit guide to Norm. Valentino has a lot of fun being extremely meta, making fun of comics tropes generally (though mainly superhero ones), and aping--with varied success--the styles of the artists or series he is spoofing. This device is rather inconsistent, as sometimes mid-chapter, Valentino seems to forget who he is trying to channel, but when it works, it can be quite funny. Oddly, Valentino's parody version of American Flagg perhaps better captures at least some aspects of what Chaykin was doing than did any of the post-Chaykin issues of the actual comic. However, Valentino doesn't really have the chops to make this into the tour de force it might have been, and indeed, as the series progresses, Valentino is less successfully humorous. He never drops the parody, and there are still very funny bits (e.g. Captain Everything's increasingly long face when Sophisticated Lady rejects his advances), but he does seem to drift in the direction of seriousness. It is perhaps not surprising that he went on to doing comparatively far more conventional superhero fare for Marvel and especially Image (of which he was, bizarrely, one of the co-founders). This reprint also suffers from being in black and white rather than the original colour, and for not reproducing the 3-D effects of the series finale. I am sure those were cost-based decisions--a black and white collection would have a much lover cover price--but given that the colour and 3-D effects are referenced in the stories, this choice does have aesthetic implications. That said, I don't really miss the 3-D, as I really dislike 3-D comics. Anyway, this is an interesting bit of 1980s comics history, of interest primarily as such, but not uninteresting in its own right and on its own terms.

[John Millard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Being one of only a few comic books that I am even aware of I love this one of course. I have some of the comics (colored whereas those in this book are not) but it was still good to read all of them through in one go.