Fifty years after the debut of Billy Batson, Kevin Green provided a new wrinkle in the Captain Marvel archetype. It’s a gross new wrinkle, but a new wrinkle nonetheless… Your Major Spoilers Retro Review of Prime #1 awaits!
PRIME #1
Writer: Gerard Jones/Len Strazewski
Penciler: Norm Breyfogle
Inker: Norm Breyfogle
Colorist: Paul Mounts
Letterer: Tim Eldred
Editor: Chris Elm
Publisher: Malibu Comics/Ultraverse
Cover Price: $1.95
Current Near-Mint Pricing: $5.00
Release Date: June 10, 1993
Previously in Prime: The debut of Image Comics was framed as allowing creators free reign in comics for the first time in years, but it was focused almost entirely on the superstar artists. What that meant for Image books is in the eye of the beholder, but what it meant for Malibu Comics was something else. The Ultraverse imprint was focused on superstar writers like Mike W. Barr, Steve Gerber, and science fiction writer Larry Niven. The Universe was designed to be tightly interwoven, with continuity between the various titles, building their shared universe in a way that made the sharing work tonally and textually. The Ultraverse’s trio of debut books were Hardcase, about a washed-up superhero/movie star, The Strangers, about a brand-new team of heroes in San Francisco, and the obligatory flying brick in the form of Prime.
The opening scene of the story is recounted by a high school gym teacher, explaining how and why he was targeted and beaten by the newest “Ultra” (the official term for the supers of the Ultraverse, in part due to Marvel and DC Comics co-owning a trademark on the term “superhero” and “super-hero”) in town. It’s an uncomfortable scene, only in part because of the violence of seeing the super-jacked hero brutally beating a normal person, but also in the context of later revelations about this issue’s co-author. Prime’s attempt to right all the wrongs that he can out of the naivete of a teenage boy sends him after his next target, a local crack den.
This strange moment is the first indication that something odd is going on with Prime, but he quickly recovers, as his injuries quickly seal up and he shrugs off a flame-thrower, more bullets, and eventually collapses an entire house around them. This sequence is also reported to unseen figures, leading to the revelation that one of the dealers kept a souvenir of the encounter, a small bit of the strange liquid from Prime’s wounds. It’s a revelation that gets him killed.
The most impressive bit of the comic to me is Norm Breyfogle’s design for Prime himself, seemingly drawing off the ridiculous, impossibly muscular bodies seen in other comics of the era. It’s the kind of design that could have gone very wrong with the wrong artist, but Breyfogle’s Prime is perfectly overdone, and it’s another big hint as to the secret revealed at the end of this issue. Several pages of story are then dedicated to world-building, featuring cameos by Hardcase and Prototype, leading to Prime’s next mission: A humanitarian crisis in Somalia.
It’s a very calculated moment, clearly over-the-top, clearly another adolescent power fantasy presented as an almost-normal comic book sequence, but with just enough hyperbole to make the reader uncomfortable. As the mysterious men in the darkness watch, Prime shrugs off bullets… until he doesn’t anymore. With his “invulnerable” body breaking down, he flies away at top speed, crashing through a window into his room as he turns to liquid goop.
Bursting free from his superhero body, Kevin Green makes his first appearance, vomiting up the green goop and collapsing. That shocking ending makes Prime #1 one of the better (if mostly forgotten) swerves of ’90s comics, right up there with the Thunderbolts taking off their masks and the moment where Ben is revealed as the real Spider-Man, with perfectly crafted Breyfogle art bringing the story to life, earning 4 out of 5 stars overall. Perhaps the biggest irony of this issue is that the digital coloring, state-of-the-art at the time, feels overdone and a little bit garish to my modern sensibilities. I enjoy the lime green color of Prime’s ectoplasm, but the color in this issue feels a lot more like “look at our awesome computer coloring equipment” than it does an extension of the art.
Given that Marvel would eventually acquire Malibu Comics and the Ultraverse mostly to own that selfsame coloring studio, it might be considered dramatic irony. In the years since, Ultraverse revivals at Marvel have continued to fall through, with some reports indicating that Malibu’s generous creator deals are a sticking point for the House of Ideas, which should serve as a reminder to all fans that, love ’em or leave ’em, comics will break your heart.
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PRIME #1
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Writing8
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Art10
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Coloring7
Once upon a time, there was a young nerd from the Midwest, who loved Matter-Eater Lad and the McKenzie Brothers... If pop culture were a maze, Matthew would be the Minotaur at its center. Were it a mall, he'd be the Food Court. Were it a parking lot, he’d be the distant Cart Corral where the weird kids gather to smoke, but that’s not important right now... Matthew enjoys body surfing (so long as the bodies are fresh), writing in the third person, and dark-eyed women. Amongst his weaponry are such diverse elements as: Fear! Surprise! Ruthless efficiency! An almost fanatical devotion to pop culture! And a nice red uniform.