The Challengers of the Unknown must live!

It’s easier to find a movie, say, or a book, or some music act that most other people seem to be overlooking or undervaluing, than a comic book. I don’t mean a series that doesn’t sell very well, or something from the indies (which by definition is swimming against the current). Most serious comics fans will usually know better than filmgoers seeking out the latest blockbuster or whatever moves them specifically, book buyers seeking out their own familiar commodities, or music lovers grooving on their favorites, just what exactly is available. Sometimes it’s merely a matter of not having enough funds to cover everything that looks interesting in the comics shop, or a lack of general availability, that prevents certain titles from being read. Most comics that sell worse than others usually suffer from a lower profile, or perhaps a lack of a galvanizing creative direction, which again circles back to the fact that there are many comics published on a weekly basis, and very few readers capable of actually buying them all. There are certainly really good books that seem to sell not so much really well for reasons that don’t sound quite that good, but again, that may simply be that they just don’t have the buzz, or that most the buzz is going elsewhere, and whatever remains simply isn’t enough, or that unwarranted bad buzz or an inexplicable lack of buzz swallows perfectly worthy projects whole…

I could probably talk circles around that, so let’s just move on. The point of this introduction is, it can sometimes be a little difficult to understand how a really good comic book can be overlooked, given the kind of community exists around this medium (and inversely, really easy to understand, given the community as we all know it). I mean to talk about Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN book, originally published as a mini-series 1991, and eventually reprinted as CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN MUST DIE!, after the team had become famous for such works as BATMAN: THE LONG HALLOWEEN and SUPERMAN FOR ALL SEASONS. Still, I’d wager that very few people know this story even exists, and it’s a darn shame.

Loeb has in recent years distanced himself from comics work, having achieved a great deal of success with such recent efforts as SUPERMAN/BATMAN and HULK, not to mention to epochal collaboration with Jim Lee on the Batman story arc “Hush,” partly as I would assume to the fact that many fans have found it increasingly difficult that he has any real talent, beyond a massive amount of hype. I find this to be a terrific travesty, because to my mind, Jeph Loeb is easily one of the finest writers of modern comics, capable of finding an inner monologue to any given character, whether iconic or obscure, and maybe it’s just because that’s exactly the kind of skill I admire in a writer, but that’s not by far a bad attribute. Those fans claim he’s horribly formulaic and predictable, that his stories always feel less inspired in their conclusions than in their blockbuster setups. I would perhaps counter-argue that any good story ought to have an ending worth talking about, especially if the rest of the story was as compelling as everyone made it seem, but maybe that’s just me being difficult and contrary again. If it seems too “comic booky,” then maybe it’s the creator’s way of making the reader think about the medium in a more serious way. That’s exactly the kind of ending CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN MUST DIE! concludes with, with a villain that only really appears at the climax of a story that had spent all its time examining the individual members of the Challs, as they’re affectionately known, as they perhaps never have been before.

Along with Loeb, of course, for this story, is his most famous collaborator, artist Tim Sale, whose most recent claim to fame was his work on the TV show HEROES, which turned out in later seasons to be more unfortunate than it first seemed. Sale initially provided the finished paintings of a clairvoyant artist in the early episodes, and it was a clever link for a series that otherwise shunned comic book conventions. Then, of course, Sale’s art reappeared in the second season, well after that original character had been killed off, and like the series as a whole, Sale’s continued participation was viewed in terms of stagnation rather than inspiration (or perhaps, continuity!). Aside from what now appears to be an aborted project (CAPTAIN AMERICA: WHITE) begun a few years back, Sale, too, has all but vanished as a regular comics presence.

It does seem appropriate, that Loeb and Sale might have ended in without much ceremony their comics careers, since their Challengers work was equally overlooked. Readers of this blog might recall that I originally discovered, or at least started reading it, thanks to a series of quarter bin raids that forced me to track down the rest of the story. Appropriately, I found a dirt-cheap used copy of the trade collection. I can honestly say that this earliest Loeb-Sale effort is, in my opinion, their finest. I wish I could then properly explain how it was left to and remained in obscurity, except that really good things usually fail to find a really big audience.

This was Loeb’s first comic, even! I confess to still not have all that much experience with his screen work, from before or after, but the remarkable maturity and complexity on display in …MUST DIE! is enviable by any standard, in any medium, clear in some ways that Loeb was not at the time concerned with conventions. He tackled a team of heroes who for decades were viewed as Fantastic Four knockoffs, even as they remained something of a DC underground favorite, as with many Jack Kirby creations, popping up every now and again, rebooted past the conclusions in MUST DIE! for later appearances, though it’s probably been about a decade or more since the last time. In the first issue of the eight-issue mini-series, Loeb and Sale reduce the team of four plus one (members Prof, Rocky, Ace, and Red, along with assistant June) to three, after blowing up Challenger Mountain and most of Challengerville, not to mention Prof and June. For the remainder of the series, Rocky, Ace, and Red, having disbanded, redefine themselves, growing apart, and assume the civilian lives they left behind when they originally “cheated death” and started “living on borrowed time.” (When you think about it, the Challs would have made a picture-perfect 1980s TV show, and then 2000s summer blockbuster.)

CHALLENGERS OF THE UNKNOWN MUST DIE! deserves to be remembered as a comic book classic, and ought to be part of the perennial reprint parade, prepped for an Absolute edition, and lauded loudly as the first genius pairing of Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, as well as its definitive legacy. What many creators struggle for many years to accomplish with a given franchise they managed in eight issues, and in many ways, it’s almost better that the Challengers belong to obscurity before and after, since there really aren’t any fans to argue with over such a monumental story. If the team must be remembered for something, this more than earns such a distinction. It’s a calling card for potential, proved to be exactly that for Loeb and Sale, for what a comic book could do, and what even C-level characters can accomplish. What more could you ask for?