When Marvel Comics licensed the real-life stuntman The Human Fly into their universe, they gave him an origin somewhere to the left of Wolverine. Most of his bones shattered in an accident, his entire skeleton was steel reinforced. Electromagnets pulsed beneath his skin. And he was almost the best there was at what he does. For one brief shining moment, The Human Fly was a star.
It’s over 40 years later and the masked stuntman makes his return to comics this week from IPI Comics out of Australia. He has an updated look, and the Marvel origin has (probably) been left behind. It’s a new take that promises intriguing things, including a deeper history than anyone knew. (Which is purely fiction, but it’s fun.)
In The Human Fly #0, you get two stories – a lead feature by Christopher Sequeira and Jan Scherpenhuizen that establishes the stuntman’s place in the present day, and a back-up by Tony Babinski and Peter J. Lawson that broadens the mystery a bit. With both, the door opens for international intrigue because somebody actively conspires against the crimson carnivalist (I’m stretching for Marvel flair).
The quiet moments in the first story find slightly inconsistent layouts, but the action pages are solid and reminiscent of the Marvel run. The better update is in his costume – patterned almost like a fencing uniform, but with stronger mesh and padding. While necessarily flexible, it’s a costume believably built for fighting.
As well as defending legacy, because that’s in here, too. More than one passing character notes that the Human Fly has to be older than he seems to be. So maybe Marvel’s run does still exist, somehow. Either way, we still don’t know who the Human Fly actually is in the book. There could be one, there could be many, and the mystery will unfold.
Sequeira writes the first arc of the ongoing series, followed by Eisner Award-winning writer Jim Krueger and Dana Brawer. There’s a promise of big things planned, and to make a splash in the U.S. market, it’s wise to take a character with some name recognition and just create a good book.
A #0 is meant to give readers a taste, but only a taste. The real meal comes soon. More on that at Comic-Con this month…
