Review: Twilight by Howard Chaykin and José Luis García-López

Comic trade paperback, n.pag.
Published 2014 (contents: 1990-91)
Acquired and read August 2017

Twilight

Writer: Howard Chaykin

Artist: José Luis García-López
Color Artist: Steve Oliff
Letterer: Ken Bruzenak

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the done thing was to take moribund DC properties and release a miniseries of three double-length issues featuring a darker take on them. Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters, Adam Strange: The Man of Two Worlds, Hawkworld, and Twilight were all instances of this move. But while my first three examples all feel like set-ups for ongoings (even if, such as in the case of Adam Strange, those ongoings didn't always actually happen), Twilight was different: this isn't an engine for an ongoing series, but a complete epic in itself, charting the rise and fall of a number of different DC space characters across a vast temporal and spatial canvas. All those guys who haven't amounted to much since the 1960s (but Keith Giffen also revived for Threshold twenty years later), they're all here: Tommy Tomorrow, the Star Rovers, Manhunter 2070, Star Hawkins and Ilda, even Space Cabbie.

Of course, I don't remember Space Cabbie being quite like this.
from Twilight #3

Howard Chaykin's story, though, is a dark one of manifest destiny in outer space. When Twilight opens, humanity is wrapping up a genocide of sapient animals that it itself is responsible for creating, at the same time it chases down the remnants of an alien race who it also wiped out-- but may hold the secret to eternal life. These characters' heroic personas are all the creation of PR by Homer Glint, one of the Star Rovers, covering up their worst aspects. Soon the last of the Methuseloids are dead, gifting humanity immortality, but of course it's a curse, as humankind is split between warring factions of fascists and religious fanatics. It's a dark story, brutal and full of depravity, but not without humor, mostly in the form of the narration by Glint, and his interactions with his seeing-eye cat. (Raised to sapience, the cat is named F'Tatateeta, in what I assume is a tribute to Cordwainer Smith's naming system for elevated animals, like C'Mell. The "C" in "C'Mell" stands for "cat"; presumably Chaykin's "F" stands for "feline.")

Truth in comics.
from Twilight #2

It's a difficult story to read and to love. José Luis García-López's art is technically accomplished as always. It's interesting to see him draw something like this; I associate him with more straightforward superheroics, I guess because of how good he was at drawing Superman. The beginning, though, is tough going, as Chaykin and García-López dump a huge cast of characters on you without much scaffolding, and it took me most of the first issue to figure out who all the players were and how they related (and, to be honest, there are a couple bits I'm still uncertain about). The story covers a vast canvas, which is a strength and a weakness. We see so many centuries where humanity screws up, clearly playing into a theme for Chaykin, but because of the time skips needed, it seems like these big social movements that dominate the story appear and disappear arbitrarily, sort of undermining that theme. How does Tommy Tomorrow become a worshipped space fascist god? Who knows exactly.

I think the aesthetic of Twilight is a good example of what Darren Franich calls "all-encompassing techno-fascism."
from Twilight #1

The key to the book is to be found in Homer's statement that when he thought it was the end of the story (the collapse of civilization), it was actually the middle. According to Twilight, human history has been and will be a history of atrocity and violence, and not even transcendence will change that.

Too good for her own good.
from Twilight #2

Brenda Tomorrow is pretty great, though. Everything you could want out of a badass space woman. Well, except that her actions doomed the human race, but I guess you can't have everything.