by P. Serniuk
Published by the Los Angeles Comic Book Company in 1972.
Available for free on the Internet Archive.
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“To change living things to suit us, that is the most human and humane form of culture!”
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Review by William D. Tucker.
Mutants of the Metropolis is thirtysomething pages of black and white comics that remixes themes and motifs from 1960s Marvel superheroes, giant monster movies, post-apocalypse stories, pervasive Cold War Nuclear Jitters, and a smorgasbord of science fiction paperback sagas into a clever tale of a self-effacing champion battling a power hungry geneticist. It’s more fun than any comic book movie of recent memory. And you can read it on the Internet Archive for free.
In the 1950s, an American soldier is captured by the Communists during the Korean War. The Reds attempt to brainwash him, but his will to resist is so strong that all of his facial features and fingerprints disappear. This unknown soldier’s consciousness burrows away from the torturers down into an impenetrable state of hibernation. The soldier looks deathly pale and featureless-sorta like the Spider-Man villain the Chameleon when he’s between disguises. The soldier seems to have scrubbed his own identity. The Reds are left with nothing to wash.
In frustration-and perhaps because they’re seriously weirded out-the Communists ship the unknown soldier back to America, where the military doctors back home are just as perplexed. The featureless soldier exists in an impossible state of suspended animation in which he is unresponsive to stimuli, does not eat or drink or breathe, and yet seems to be alive. A decision is made to cryogenically freeze the unknown soldier in the hopes that future medical science will be advanced enough to make sense of his seemingly impossible mode of existence.
In the 1990s, a mad geneticist named Jarvis Cooley goes to a cryogenic body bank facility to purchase an unclaimed specimen for use in his monster making projects. The body bank provides Cooley with the first human ever put into deep freeze: a featureless, faceless man dubbed Joe Zero. Cooley uses precision lasers to carve up, rearrange, and remix the DNA strands of various organisms to create an army of bastard monster soldiers at his Bar Sinister Ranch. Cooley cuts off one of Joe Zero’s fingertips for a clone trooper project. The injury reactivates Joe Zero’s consciousness, which now has enhanced aura perceptions of energy patterns that affords the unfrozen soldier from the past a unique view of the world. Joe Zero no longer needs nerves to feel, eyes to see, ears to hear, or a nose to smell.
Joe Zero finds himself a pawn in a war between Cooley and the futuristic city state of Los Angeles. The faceless soldier once resisted Communist brainwashing, and now he must navigate a Capitalist conflict of rogue science, private monster armies, and a city made wealthy by show business and matter manipulation technology. Los Angeles is, indeed, the metropolis of the title. The post-apocalyptic ruins of Disneyland provide a suitable backdrop for Joe Zero’s existential wanderings. A vast bumperlock traffic jam offers Joe Zero a chance to create a “Car Wave” which ends up being a truly sublime visual gag for anyone even slightly familiar with La La Land’s hellish driving conditions. Joe Zero’s aura perceptions combine with his metaphysical detachment from all bogus systems of control-Communism, Capitalism, Nationalism, Consumerism, Egotism-to make him a suitable champion to resist Cooley and his chimerical monster hordes. Joe Zero’s dilemma recalls the identity crisis of 1960s Captain America, a World War II era icon adrift in a strange new reality; the forcibly altered perceptions of Daredevil; as well as the cruelly disembodied swordsman Hyakkimaru’s mystically enhanced senses from Osamu Tezuka’s manga Dororo. Joe Zero only has a single issue to his name but I think he’s a worthy footnote to these more enduring characters at a minimum.
Now, to be clear, Mutants of the Metropolis is a fun, fast-paced science fiction adventure comic book. It wears its political themes and social commentary lightly. My guess is that artist/writer P. Serniuk wanted to do their own version of a highly compressed sci-fi comic with a superhero-ish protagonist very much in the style of Marvel Comics in the 1960s, but do it without the heavy bootheel of the Comics Code Authority bearing down on the final draft. The book was published independently by the long defunct Los Angeles Comic Book Company. The credited author P. Serniuk doesn’t seem to have any other books to their name. I don’t even know if P. Serniuk is a pen name or a real name-I couldn’t tell you for sure if the P stands for Paul or Paula or Pimpernel. Mutants of the Metropolis seems to get categorized as part of “comix,” which is a term that was used in the past to describe comic books that were published outside of corporate distribution channels, and often featured sex, drugs, and countercultural messaging. I don’t personally think “comix” has much use nowadays because, well, everything is corporatized to one degree or another. Reprints of Robert Crumb at his most floridly perverse are handled by major media corporations. The Comics Code Authority is long gone. DC and Marvel instruct their creators directly what is and is not allowed, and, in any case, have the power to intervene as necessary to change content so as to be brand correct at all times if creators do not willingly heel. And, more to the point, if you actually read Mutants of the Metropolis it definitely has a spirit all its own distinct from the fashionable hippie-dippie psychedelic posturing of its time. Nothing about it is trying to be shocking or transgressive, at least not overtly. It’s kinda goofy in how it sutures disparate themes and make believe technologies and visual gags and time frames together to tell the story of a superhero-ish character who prevails by being cosmically detached from desires for money, power, and property-which is its own kind of radicalism, isn’t it?
Joe Zero, without getting into absolute spoilers, prevails because he has let go of all attachments-even spiritual pretensions of salvation or transcendence or Nirvana or what have you-and therefore puts himself beyond bribery, beyond ambition, beyond corruption. Captain America desired a private identity even while holding onto his status as the Greatest Avenger. Daredevil’s radar sense and acrobatic skills allowed him to fight crime as more of a thrillseeker than an idealistic champion of justice. Hyakkimaru slays demons to regain his humanity by getting his stolen body parts back even if it means he incrementally loses his paranormal powers. Joe Zero moves away from his humanity to vanquish the bad guy, becoming a kind of Atom Age Martyr. His final fate may even be a subtle nod to Richard Matheson’s The Incredible Shrinking Man.
I said above that you can read Mutants of the Metropolis for free on the Internet Archive. And, yes, it won’t cost you any money . . . but it will take up some of your time and some of your calories. I think it's a bargain at this price, but that’s something you’ll have to decide for yourself.
