Recent Near-Superhero Awesome

Maybe I'm just still on a "girl-power" kick from last week, but immediately after posting about 15-Love, I remembered another really cool comic that came out in the last decade starring an awesome girl main character. Or maybe it's just The Avengers hoopla and Joss Whedon related saturation from the movie, but this week, we're gonna talk about one of his first works for comic books, 2003's Fray, by Joss Whedon (words) and Karl Moline and Andy Owens (pencils and inks, respectively).

In 2003, the last season of Whedon's flagship Buffy The Vampire Slayer was wrapping up on tv, and he had actually begun work on the series Fray a couple of years before. But his commitments to various television and movie projects meant that there was a very long delay between completion and publication of issues six and seven of the series. Certainly not the longest delay comics have seen because of a writer's scheduling conflicts, but still pretty bad. So what is Fray?

Well, if you know anything about Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the story should be just familiar enough. Whedon wanted familiarity when working in a medium different to his usual ouevre, so stuck with something he wouldn't need a whole bunch of world-building to get across. In every generation there--

No, wait. Let me do this right.

Every generation doesn't just mean currently and historically. It means the future, too. So, approximately two hundred years from now, on the island of Manhattan--now referred to as just "Haddyn"--there's a young woman. One girl in all the world.

That's our main character, Melaka Fray. And in this future, as Whedon himself put it, "the rich get richer, the poor get poorer. And there are flying cars." It's essentially what would happen if he took his "vampire slayer" concept of a chosen girl who gets to kill the monsters from the b-Movies instead of always getting killed by them and transported it into a pseudo-cyberpunk setting. And if that doesn't already sound awesome, keep reading.

Pseudo-cyberpunk because while there's lip-service paid to human enhancement--

--there's not much "cyber" in this cyberpunk setting. Plenty of punk, though:

So that's our main character. Basically, all the attitude from before dialed up to extremes.

But there's a reason the comic is called Fray and not Slayer Of The Future! or something.

Okay, so that's Melaka's sister Erin Fray, a sergeant in the police--or "the laws" as they're called--and their dead brother Harth.

And since Mel's a thief and Erin's a law, and there's the family history and all, things are a bit strained. Well, a lot strained. And we haven't even gotten to the supernatural stuff.

You see, because this is a pseudo-cyberpunk setting, there's also freakish mutants, like Mel's employer/fence Gunther:

Gunther's kind of a fishman.

Mutations like that are a little extreme, but they're also not rare, so when Melaka starts being told about her destiny as "The Slayer" she's pretty skeptical.

"But wait!" Buffy-fans are saying, there's more to the Slayer mythos than just being "chosen." There's superpowers and the Watchers who are supposed to guide her, what about that stuff?

Well, as to superpowers, Melaka's got super strength and resiliency and all that. For instance, remember that first image I showed you, of Mel falling out of a building shooting at her pursuers? Well, after several panels of her falling (and occasionally "cushioning" her fall by crunching very hard against flying cars and protrusions from the buildings, we see her . . . "landing."

Though dazed, she manages to get up and kick the genetically engineered "pump" Don from earlier and shoot the guy with Don who thought they were in a stand-off within a couple of panels. So, yeah. She's got the super-strong part of a Slayer.

As to the Watchers?

Weeeeeeelllllllllllllll . . .

That's the latest Watcher. And the liquid he is standing in and coated with is petrol. And he's about 10 seconds away from lighting himself on fire, ah god!

Yeah, this story is . . . kinda dark.

In the same scene we're . . . briefly . . . introduced to Mel's Watcher, we also meet Loo.

Loo is another mutant, not as distantly humanoid as Gunther, but she's got really big eyes and is missing half of her arm. She hero-worships Melaka, and that's before she becomes the Slayer.

Oh, yes. There's also the vampires.

 Oh, right. Here, they're called Lurks. Why?

Because they lurk.


Oh, also? Demons. In particular, Urkonn.

Uh . . . Urkonn is kind of the bodyguard/mentor sent to Fray by the demons because the Watchers are useless for anything not related to setting themselves on fire. They demons have their own reasons for sending such a tutor, mainly having to do with the Apocalypse.

As in, they want to delay the Apocalypse until they are good and ready for the Apocalypse. A trained Slayer will help to delay it.

Of course, Urkonn's methods of training up Melaka are . . . a little unorthodox:

. . . yeah . . .

We learn a little bit of exposition, that some 200 years or so before the comic began, the last Slayer called performed a magic ritual that banished almost all the demons and most magic from the Earth dimension, and so no Slayer needed to be called until Melaka. Why was Mel called?

Seems the vampires are planning something:

Those are The One Who Will Lead and Icarus. Icarus is important for one reason, and really one reason only. He and Melaka have a history:

A "he killed her brother" kind of history, not a "went to high school together" history. So when he shows up in the present day to confront Mel, it serves a couple purposes. One, we finally learn Mel's motivation for wanting to kill vampires.

Okay, Lurks.

Beyond the "doing the right thing" motivation, I mean. She has a personal score to settle with the Lurks. One killed her brother.

Oh, and scarred her face, but I think the "killed her brother" thing was more important to her. Especially considering something.

They were twins! That, it turns out, is why Melaka only has the super-strength and resiliency and fast-healing Slayer powers, the physical stuff. The Slayer powers were split, and the prophetic visions and sense of Slayer history never reached her.

Ever get the feeling the universe is toying with you?

Anyway, Icarus beats her, but gets tossed into the water at the docks, freeing Mel to fight another day. There's also a subplot about Erin pursuing legal measures against Melaka for her thievering. These converge when the law arrests Mel, but the Lurks attack and free her.

But why would they do that? Why, to take her to their leader, of course! Their leader--

Harth! In retrospect, this makes perfect sense, but it's still presented well enough to be a surprise. So . . . sorry for spoiling that twist, there, people. Don't worry. It's the only surprise I'll spoil.

Harth explains that as he was dying from Icarus' attack, at the last possible second, he bit Icarus and drank some of his blood. It's somewhat inconsistent, but this is how a vampire is made. Sorry. A Lurk is made.

Okay, stop that.

. . .

I feel like I'm losing control of this post.

Ah, anyway, and how did Harth know to bite Icarus and suck his blood? Because he got the Slayer's prophetic visions and knowledge of history that comes with being a Slayer. This is why the Lurks are rising and getting ready for the Apocalypse. Harth's Slayer powers make him the most knowledgeable demon on Earth since the magic ritual a previous Slayer performed two centuries ago. I might have mentioned it? Up there some?

Okay, so with this knowledge, he's going to take control of the Earth dimension, putting it back in the hands of the demons. And that means he's gotta get a handle on Melaka Fray, the new Slayer.

Handle how?

That old villain standard, emotional manipulation.

Ooh, ouch.

But as much as it stings now, it fails to do what it always fails to do: getting the hero to give up. Because Melaka Fray is a hero, and when heroes are pushed, they push back.

Not content with brutalizing her emotionally, he starts beating her up, and picks her up and throws her . . . out of their hideout. Whoops.

Mel makes it back to civilization and ends up in Erin's flat, where she breaks down in tears and sobs into her older sister.

This is meta-awesome, but the art in this mini, though it occasionally has it's problems, is most of the time top notch. And when you can feel the sobs wracking her body, purely through the art, the art is awesome.

So the sisters confab, and Erin learns the fate of her younger brother and a little bit about what her sister's been going through. In a moment of sisterly mercy, she lets Mel go even though she is still wanted for thievery stuff.

Mel makes it back to her place to regroup and discovers Loo's body.

. . . .

Yeah, you thought she couldn't get any lower at this point, huh? You underestimate the Whedon.

But like I said, you push a hero, they push back.

 

Yeah, all this was setup for issue six, aka the Melaka Fray is AWESOME issue.

Of course, things don't start off awesome. First there's the reactions to Loo's death.

And then Mel tries to rally the people of the warren neighborhood.

She settles on just warning them to be ready in case things go down. Which they will. Because . . . Apocalypse. Vampire swarm. End times. All that stuff.

ALL RIGHT THAT'S IT.

Woman, the joke is dead. It's not funny. Any. More.

Quit it.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. So she settles for just warning the neighborhood, but she's still upset they didn't listen to her. Of course, she could have handled things better . . .

So she and Urkonn go off to scout for the Lurks. And Melaka's Slayer sense starts working, and they find some.

She's looking off like that because there are a heck of a lot more Lurks. They travel in packs, you see. But she's got Urkonn. The fight spreads outside, and she and a Lurk get dunked in the river. But Mel's on a role. She's not going to let something like a little drowning stop her.

So. Mel's the Slayer. And she's really starting to believe it, too.

So news of the Slayer's rampage spreads. Not just back to Harth, but to the law.

Where Erin works.

Uh-oh.

Uh-oh.

So they face off, and though I don't want to give away the how Icarus is beaten (I said I wouldn't reveal any more plot twists), it is AWESOME. Erin also shows up and decides the Lurks are too big a threat, and decides she's going to help, and goes off to see what she can do. And Mel finally gets some support from the others in the warrens, though it amounts to not many and not much.

She's still going to fight, though.

That's a cropped double-page image. Not a full two-page spread, but it makes it clear there's dozens of law enforcement officers there to lend a hand.

There's just one problem, as they discover not long after the fighting starts.

Now that's a two-page spread.

But what the heck is that monster?

Oh. Oh . . .

Erin provides a little sisterly aid in the form of a flying motorcycle, but--

Ah.

Welp, game over. The world is doomed. The Apocalypse beast has been summoned, it's womb will give birth to legions of demons in the middle of Haddyn, and the only person who could stop it all, the Slayer herself, just got eated.

Although, she was only eaten in one gulp . . .

You don't suppose . . .

Oh, who am I kidding. Of course she's fine.

But then again, she is in a mouth.

There's no way that's gonna stop her.

Of course, from the outside, everything looks hopeless. It looks like their only hope just got eaten by a giant worm monster freak thing. So there's despair on every face, and Harth drags Erin onto the giant worm monster freak thing's back to gloat.

Until . . .

The giant worm monster freak thing is having a Slayer-induced seizure.

Hey, Melaka Fray. You just slayed an honest-to-goodness dragon! Or dragon analogue, anyway. How cool is that?

Of course, there's more. One last twist of the knife to the gut (it's Joss Whedon, after all), a montage of the aftermath, and a declaration of heroic resolve.

Which is awesome, so I'll show it.

Fray should still be easily available in trade paperback collection. A new printing should even be coming out sometime this year! She also appeared in a short in Tales of the Slayers, as well as a four issue story called "Time of Your Life," in the Buffy comics continuation (aka Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 volume 4 "Time of Your Life") also available in collection (I think this also had a motion comic adaptation that gave Melaka a voice, but I can't find it right now and I didn't look that hard. I prefer the voice in my head--that came out wrong).


As far as I know, there aren't any further planned appearances of the character or her time and setting. Which is a shame, really. Cyberpunk(ish) Slayer? Most cool.


So! Any questions?

OH FOR CRYING OUT LOUD YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME!!!


. . .


Aaron "The Mad Whitaker" Bourque; this was a lot of work, but a lot of fun to put together. And I sincerely hope to see more Melaka Fray one day.