Magnus Robot Fighter / Nexus

(1993 - two issues, published by Valiant and Dark Horse)

Writer: Mike Baron. Art: Steve Rude. Inks: Gary Martin.

Team ups between two characters who don't normally hang out together -- particularly when the story's a crossoveer between two companies -- can generally be assumed to be an attempt to broaden a character's readership. That is, a Magnus fan buys, and gets turned on to Nexus, or vice versa.

I'd never read a Nexus story before...and after this, I'm not really inclined to bother, particularly as the writer and artist here are the team who created Nexus, and so should be able to do him better than anyone. The only reason I might change my mind is that I'm not sure I'd be inclined to try Magnus based on this sample, either, so I can assume that, overall, this isn't a good intro to either character.

"The Gift Horse", as it's called inside, has a man, Arkon, purporting to be from the far, far future arriving in Magnus' future reality of A.D. 4000. He offers to set up free medical clinics in the ghetto to cure diseases...but, of course, all is not as it seems. Eventually Nexus shows up and helps Magnus trounce Arkon.

The initial concept is sound enough, but it doesn't really go beyond that...an initial concept, with little in the way of story twists or characterization. At two issues and 44 pages it might've made a decent one issue, 22 page story.

Steve Rude does an uncanny job of (intentionally) evoking Magnus creator Russ Manning's art, at least technically. But the spirit of Manning's style isn't as well captured. The whole story is intended, at least in certain aspects, to be a throwback to the original Maguns; the look of the characters (such as Leeja) are from that period, and even the painted covers are meant to hearken back to the Gold Key comics of yesteryear. Likewise I initially wondered if Mike Baron was trying to evoke 1960s Magnus comics with clunky dialogue. Then I decided, no, there's no homage intended -- the bad dialogue is just bad dialogue. Admittedly, the regular Magnus comics I've read from around the time this was published have left me underwhelmed, too, lacking the innocence and grandeur of Russ Manning's 1960s version, or the tight, edgy scripts of the Jim Shooter written period that begat the Valiant version.

I acquired this since, as a mini-series, I figured it would be a nice, self-contained story (since many of the Valiant issues are part of multi-issue plots) -- and it delivers that, and Rude's Russ Manning homage is kind of neat. But this remains definitely an item best picked up in the discount bin (and it was one of those comics originally sold for a slightly inflated price, not because of extra pages, but simply because of cardboard covers!)

I've only read it once so far, so I may be being overly judgemental.

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