Spin World #3 [1997] (Random Comics Theatre)

Random Comics Theatre

Spin World #3 [1997]

SPIN WORLD was a bit of an oddity from the mid-1990s, a four issue science fiction series drawn by a fairly successful mainstream comics artist, Brent Anderson, probably near the peak of his career with ASTRO CITY coming out at the time, but published in black and white by a small and rather niche publisher, Slave Labor under their Amaze Ink imprint. How this came to be is explained by Anderson in the first issue, where he goes over the 20 year journey this comic took to being published, starting when he did six illustrations for Eric Vinicoff's novella "Spacing Dutchman" in 1976. Short version is that Mike Friedrich asked him to adapt the story to comics for one of the StarReach books, the project passed on to Fantagraphics when StarReach folded as a publisher, but that didn't work out. Later Neal Adams wanted to publish it, with thoughts of selling it in Europe, but that didn't pan out for various reasons. In 1991 DC agreed to not only publish it, but expand it with adaptations of two other related Vinicoff short stories in the same setting, making a three issue fully painted prestige format series. By the time Anderson finished the line art two years later, DC no longer thought the book was viable. So eventually four years later it wound up at Slave Labor, now with greytones instead of fully painted art.

Which is all a shame, because it seems to be pretty much an unknown work now, and it's pretty decent stuff overall. At some point someone should really look at getting a decent edition of it out, ideally replacing the greytones with the full colour it was drawn for, either painted or computer coloured in a painterly style (which wouldn't have been technically viable when this came out). The tones aren't bad in this particular issue, but in some of the other issues they came out a few shades too dark, and obscure the linework, and pure black and white would have been better. It could probably have also used one more pass by an editor at some point.

This issue features the second half of the original "Spacing Dutchman" story that started off the whole thing, an adventure set aboard a space station in the late 21st century which rotates to create gravity, hence the "Spin World" of the title. The first issue had a prequel story, "The Snake & The Staff", set earlier and featuring two characters who have a minor role in "Spacing Dutchman". The final issue adapts "Politics of Plenty", which has the lead of this story in a supporting role and explores the alien technology which is the McGuffin of this story a few years down the line. Neither of those other stories really deal with the space station, which makes it a little odd that it's the title of the whole book.

This story involves a government agent who arrives at the station trailing a mysterious woman, hoping she'll lead him to an old Nazi war criminal who's been cloned countless times since WWII. This gets him involved in the politics of the station, which culminates in an attempted invasion to acquire a piece of alien technology. And a hologram of Sherlock Holmes is somehow involved. Not sure about that last bit. Pretty entertaining stuff, though overall I think the stronger parts of the series are the other two stories added later, which make up #1 and #4. Anderson's artwork is quite good in this, the peak of his earlier style, heavily influenced by Neal Adams, which he had evolved away from a bit by the time of his ASTRO CITY work published alongside this.

Anyway, pretty decent obscure little book, would love to see it done up right someday. Single volume, full colour, maybe with a bit more framing material to integrate the three stories better (I'm not sure if Vinicoff  wrote any more stories in this setting).