David Yurkovich's work is something of a head-scratcher, a type of story that refuses to fit neatly into any category. It is superheroes, full of references to and inspiration drawn from the classic stories of the Silver Age, but it has a quirky quality and human nature center to it that marks it as something belonging more clearly to the slice-of-life/indy category. It's got the weird sense of humor you'd expect in superhero parody like the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League or the esoteric Madman, and yet there's some real darkness and serious consequences to heroism and villainy as well. The storytelling devices that Yurkovich uses are very sophisticated, and yet the actual draftmanship of his artwork is pretty simple, certainly lacking in either the photo-realism of guys like Bryan Hitch or deliberate arty styles like those of Scott Morse, although the work leans more in the latter direction. However, these contradictions, not to mention a clear passion for the genre he chooses to work in and an originality that is hard to find in any medium, make Yurkovich's work fascinating to me.
Less Than Heroes reprints the first four issues of Threshold, Yurkovich's original tales of a group of Philadelphia-based heroes. I'm something of a latecomer to Yurkovich's work, so I'm not sure if these were originally comics or mini-comics, but at any rate, I'm glad to see Top Shelf giving this work a more polished graphic novel treatment. While the story definitely reads as four issues collected, with more story to come implied, rather than as something created as a single graphic novel, Yurkovich has done a terrific job of tying everything together into one big story with chapter breaks rather than just a collection of strange tales of these heroes. The throughline of the book is really about the growth of Threshold from wannabes into legitimate heroes, and that includes a confrontation with the more official and professional team of New York heroes as well as their first really major adversary. There is one dropped plot thread as first chapter has a couple of federal agents visiting Demolition, the villain who first brought Threshold together, but beyond hinting that maybe he has superpowers beyond what the federales know, this subplot doesn't really go anywhere. Still, it seems entirely likely that this will be addressed in future volumes, of which I hope there will be many.
It is almost impossible to fully describe the audience for Less Than Heroes. Those who like the conspiratorial/weird science approach that Warren Ellis took to the genre will no doubt be fascinated by the tale of Lightning Man, a supervillain born out of a military conspiracy in the '60s to send man into deep space. Those who got a kick out of the sitcom-like antics of the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League will certainly enjoy the "just a job" bantering of the New York Superhero Syndicate or the snack-focused crime-fighting techniques of Threshold themselves. And fans of character drama will no doubt enjoy the tragic tale that leads to the Stamp Collector, or indeed the interaction between the various members of Threshold. Yurkovich's heroes and villains are delightfully weird in their powers and personas, but they are also so very real, and their focus on the minutiae of day-to-day life makes them very easy to relate to, superpowers or no.
A lot happens in these four issues, actually. Threshold confronts two major villains, the New York Superhero Syndicate stakes a claim to Philadelphia, revelations are made about some of the team members and, perhaps most notably, many of the major supervillains of New York decide to set up shop in Philadelphia to start a crime wave. It is this last element that is one of the wonderful contradictions in Yurkovich's work, because while he contains enough plot in these issues for about two years worth of this decade's badly-written decompressed comics, he also has the supervillain plot ultimately going nowhere. Deliberately so, as it makes for a terrific punchline to the worrisome subplot of a bunch of villains deciding to pick on an easier target. Yurkovich shows perhaps why the heroes of his world are corporate clock-punchers rather than supervillain head-punchers, because the quality of their opposition generally is as obsessed with trivia as they are. Call it a Seinfeld for the superhero set, in some regards.
To be honest, I think that the biggest weakness of Less Than Heroes for the superhero fan is going to be in Yurkovich's artwork. While his writing sensibilities seem more influenced by Stan Lee than by Los Bros Hernandez, Yurkovich's art puts him smack dab into "indy artist" territory. He's capable of some very impressive moments, such as the charnel house aftermath of the Lightning Man's attack, the creepy imposing figure of the Stamp Collector or the very clever montage of the Threshold chasing across various stamps as they try to sort out the villain's powers, but I suspect that the average superhero fan will largely be wondering where the punching and the splash pages are. I'd honestly love to see Yurkovich pair up his esoteric writing with a more traditional superhero artist, not just for the contrast it would provide, but for the increased sales and profile I think it would earn. Of course, then I'd miss out on Yurkovich's art, which is very distinctive and for anyone with a more wide-ranging comic art palette, quite enjoyable, so I suppose what I'd really like is for him to have the opportunity to do both. At any rate, if you are a superhero fan who has enjoyed works like Top 10, Astro City, Marvels and other deconstructionist material with a love of the genre at its heart, open your mind just a little further to the notion of black and white drawings and unusual anatomy, and the story will reward you for it.
Yurkovich peppers his stories with references to trash pop culture and superhero literature, and that makes for a lot of fun. It also makes for a clear insight into what Less Than Heroes is, which is a very different kind of superhero book, one that is a legitimate attempt to bring something new to the genre without completely up-ending what it's supposed to be all about, the way some of the Ultimate books, Supreme Power, Watchmen, the "Eye of the Storm" line and others have done. Yurkovich's take on the superhero genre doesn't fully agree with mine, and I thought that his essay at the back on superhero aging comes to completely different conclusions than I do when thinking about the same topic, but he's got a love for the genre and a gift for analysis of it that feeds his stories and makes Less Than Heroes absolutely essential reading for anyone with an interest in seeing the superhero genre explored in ways that it just isn't anywhere else.
