Comic books with a political agenda are not at all scarce.
Almost all of them reek with it, but we don’t notice because the politic in
question is “truth, justice, and the American way.” Superheroes embody this
ethic; ditto Donald Duck. In a free enterprise, capitalistic society, the
consumer is king, and if a publisher wants to sell product, he must, perforce,
appeal to the consumer. The consumer, meanwhile, is a product, too — a product of
his upbringing in the aforementioned capitalistic society; and his upbringing
imbues him with the “values” that will perpetuate the society itself: belief in
“the American way,” free enterprise and the profit motive, certainly, but also
“truth” and “justice” and “individual liberty.” Consumers will buy products
that reflect and promote “the American way,” and so funnybooks inevitably do
just that, whether their casts wear longjohns or the upper half of a sailor
suit. But with Oni’s new 5-issue series,
Tek Jansen, which purports to present
the exploits of the space opera hero whom Stephen
Colbert often invokes so affectionately, I thought we might have something
more overtly political. Since Colbert is so deft at ironic political satire,
wouldn’t a comic book about his hero engage in the same shenanigans? Apparently
not.
Tek Jansen is no more political satire
than the early Mad comic book: genre
is the object of the satire, not political doctrine. Tek Jansen bears a
not-altogether-vague resemblance to Colbert, but that’s where the subtleties of
Colbertian irony ends. In one of the two stories in the first issue, Jansen, in
the grip of his usual wrong-headed stubbornness, decides to disobey his
superior and save Alphalon-7 from the invading hordes of Optiklons, who want to
cure the Alphalons of all physical ills and psychological disorders, converting
their society to a utopian enclave of “love and beauty and perfection.”
Jansen,
gripped, as I say, by his customary contrarian impulse, detects in this plan
something that “stinks” and resolves to interfere with it, which, ultimately,
he does. Awakening suddenly one morning after an all-night romp in the hay with
“a hot Skelatahn babe,” Jansen realizes that he’s “late for interferring,”
adding, in one of the issue’s best pseudo-sf lines, “no time to radioshower,
lasershave or autodress.” So he dashes off to “do good” in what is later, in
the other of the issue’s best lines, described as a “naked act of unprovoked
aggression.” Yes, Jansen is wearing only his birthday suit as he defeats the
Optiklon mission, which, in turn — inevitably — precipitates an intergalactic war.
Tek Jansen,
in other words, is that threadbare comedic device, a fatuous oafish bumbler,
destroyer of worlds, motivated to commit mindless errors by his own exalted
opinion of himself, which proves, time after time, impervious to even the
slightest modification despite the supposed lessons of reality that, time after
time, defeat and deflate Jansen’s arrogant self-esteem. The satiric target is
the heroic space opera hero as a generic type. Tek Jansen is exactly the sort
of comic book hero that the Colbert of “The Colbert Report” would admire
extravagantly; in that sense, then, the comic book is a successful perpetuation
of the tv show’s ambiance. Jansen is Colbert: convinced of his own rightness,
he ignores any contradictory realities. 
But compared to the triumphant subtlety
of the sustained irony of Colbert’s adroit on-the-air political satire, the
comic book — written by John Layman and Tom Peyer and Jim Massey — is tepid tea. All remnant of subtlety is gone. And
nothing much political at all. Mad
shtick throughout. And do we need another Mad?
Illustrated by Scott Chantler and Robbi Rodriguez, the visualization is
wholly adequate; I prefer the somewhat bolder linework and angular style of
Chantler, but neither artist manages a manner than is particularly
distinguished. We’re now up to the third issue of the title, and not much has
changed since the first — except for more emphasis upon Tek’s sexual appetite.
More on this matter at RCHarvey.com, Rants & Raves, Op. 234.
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