Short Lived Comic Series #19 - Doomsday +1 (Charlton Comics)

The more comics I read published by Charlton Comics back in the '60s and '70s, the more I am truly beginning to appreciate them.  When I saw them on the comic racks or magazine shelves as a kid, I would just pass them over, seeing them as nothing more than "poor man" comics for kids who could not afford "real" comics, like DC Comics or Marvel Comics.  Little did I realize what great material I was overlooking at the time!  Comics like E-Man, Bionic Woman, Vengeance Squad, Haunted Love, just to name a few.  A lot of their really good books did not seem to last very long, despite the great writing and very talented artists.  Such as that little-known artist back in the day by the name of John Byrne...

Now, comic fans of today immediately recognize the name John Byrne.  But back when Doomsday +1 came out from Charlton, Byrne was not the household name that it is today.  And while his art today certain has become more refined, this 12-issue series definitely showcases the talent he was, even back at the start of his career.  Some research online reveals that Byrne had not done a lot of work prior to this Charlton book, but he definitely went on to do some great thing after (including some work on a number of other Charlton books, such as Emergency!, The Flintstones, Space: 1999, Valley of the Dinosaurs, among others).  When I first picked up this series, I did not even know Byrne was the artist of the book - but when I opened to that first page, I could tell right away it was him.  The man definitely has a distinctive style all his own!

Doomsday +1 was co-created by Byrne and writer Joe Gill.  The story is an apocalyptic tale of the planet Earth after the nuclear missiles are launched and devastate the planet with their destructive force and radioactive fallout.  First published in 1975-76 (***more on that later), the story opens on April 7, 1996 (which, coincidentally enough, was my mom's 56th birthday!) as three astronauts prepare to head into space on an important mission:  Captain Boyd Ellis of the U.S. Air Force; NASA scientist and radiation expert Jill Malden (who also happens to be Boyd's fiance!); and Ikei Yasida, a young Japenese scientist.  As the three begin their mission in orbit around the world, they are unaware that a dictator in an underdeveloped country (conveniently not named) has decided that if he cannot be ruler, then no one will be - and he launches two nuclear missiles - one hits Moscow and the other New York City!  Russia and the United States act without thinking, believing the other had initiated the attack, and they retaliate.  Before you know it, Rome ... Paris ... London ... Berlin ... the entire world is gone, destroyed by man's own hand!!  And that's all just within the first six pages!  Can you imagine what the rest of that first issue holds in store for the reader?!

Gill and Byrne slow the story down a bit here, as Boyd, Jill, and Ikei remain in space as long as their rations hold out (the length of time is not stated, only that an indeterminate amount of time had passed), but eventually they have to return to Earth.  They manage to land their spacecraft in Greenland, in the hopes that the radiation levels will have dissipated from that area faster than others. It is there they begin to discover the changes to the world when not only do they find a perfectly preserved wooly mammoth, frozen in the ice glaciers - but they come face to face with a live one!  And that's not all - they also meet a primitive man by the name of Kuno who speaks an ancient Germanic tongue and who quickly becomes a member of the group, bringing the total number of survivors of this nuclear holocaust to four!  After another indeterminate time passes, the four find a ship and set sale for Canada, where they hope to find an airbase and perhaps other survivors.  The first issue ends with their arrival at the Canadian airbase - but only after they are attacked by a fighter plane, whose pilot is a mystery!

The remaining five issues in this series take a more sci-fi turn to them, as the four survivors face down an army of robots led by a man-turned-cyborg, alien being sent to cleanse the Earth, undersea creatures fighting a civil war, a group of military men who threaten the four survivors' existence, and finally, a civilization from an alternate reality who use others as their slaves in their own so-called utopia.  The stories are very fantastic in nature, and being written in the 1970s, it shouldn't be much of a surprise that the creators viewed 1996 as such a "far-flung future."  A seventh issue was actually written and drawn by Byrne, but it was not published in this series (although it did appear later on in a two-part tale in a Charlton fan magazine). That seventh story would have dealt with a time-traveler who came back in time to revisit Earth during this period, and it certainly would have prompted some interesting ideas had the series continued. This sixth and final issue of new stories was published in 1976 - but two years later, the series returned with issue seven, which sported the same cover as issue one, albeit with different coloring.  Inside was a reprint of that first issue from back in 1975!  Issues eight through twelves republished the stories originally printed in issues two through six, some sporting new covers (utilizing scenes of interior art), while others had reprints of the original covers with differently colored art.  I don't really know why they reprinted the series with the continued numbering, but it apparently did not pick up enough interest to continue the series, as it once again ended with that sixth story, issue twelve being the final issue printed.  Research reveals that Tom Sutton did write and draw and 15-page story that was intended to run as issue 13, but since sales dwindled, that issue never saw print.  (NOTE - apparently Fantagraphic Books re-published the six-issue series, along with the seventh story, in a mini-series re-titled The Doomsday Squad, from 1986-87.)

Flash forward 34 years (yes, 34 years!!!!), and John Byrne, one of the original co-creators of the series, decided to take another stab at the concept.  Indy publisher IDW provided him the opportunity, and Doomsday.1 was published with a cover date of May 2013 (which was, literally, 34 years after the cover date of the issue 12 of the original Charlton series, which was May 1979).  This new series was not a continuation or a retelling of Doomsday +1, but rather, a re-imagining of the series.  This time, the survivors are men and women aboard a space station when a giant solar flare hits the Earth, causing planet-wide devastation.  The story is much less science-fiction and instead a much darker reality-based tale of what the world would face after a doomsday event like this.  The storytelling style is also much different - what only took 6 pages in the first issue of the original series to tell takes Byrne the entire first issue to tell (which only strengthens my argument that today's comics are more focused on large panels of art and slower story-telling methods for purposes of stretching out stories over a certain number of issues to fit into a trade paperback for bookstore shelves...).  The remaining three issues of this series (it's only four-issue mini-series, although it ends with an open door for more stories in the future if Byrne ever wanted to re-visit the idea) follow the group of survivors from the space station who come back planet-side and find other people who managed to survivor the solar devastation.  They begin picking up the pieces, much in the vein of Kirkman's The Walking Dead series, they try to rebuild a community and fight off other factions who think they should be in control of this new world order.  Some of the characters die along the way, but honestly, I didn't get the real sense of character development in this series as I did with Boyd, Jill, Ikei, and Kuno in the original series.  I wish Byrne had taken this chance to tell a sequel - either with these four characters years later, or even with the offspring of these characters decades letter in a world still reeling from the nuclear destruction.  But, alas, since it was his creation in the first place, he did what he wanted to with it.

Clearly, Doomsday +1 is a series/title that just doesn't seem to die.  From its original run, to its republished run two years later, to its reprint series in the next decade, to a re-imagining some thirty years later - Byrne clearly has a creation that resonates with readers.  Let's face it - there are tons of apocalyptic comic stories out there, but few are truly as character-driven, yet as fantastic and fun to read as the Charlton series.  This is definitely a title worth picking up if you find it!

RATING:  9 E-Man Lives! Wall Posters out of 10 for showcasing just how talented John Byrne is, from nearly 50 years ago to today!