User Blog:
The Omni-colour world of Martin Eden

Ten hours of researching Victorian Britain while city suburbs slept. Shortly after dawn, frost crept and a strange swirl of black cloud skies permeated my walk to a Belfast mail depot. Therein, a high-pitched Yule toon threatened those there to pick up their mail. I threatened it with a swirling bash of my brolly. The assortment pack of comics sent to me by Matthew Badham was the perfect gift, as he'd hand-picked some stuff I'm keen to see. The most pulling of these demanding I immediately ravish and write about it: Spandex, by London creator Martin Eden.

Odd, really. When I first read Martin's announcing Spandex, a new comic followed by ambitious 120 page book, I wasn't the least interested. More superheroes, out and proud: a trick done by the Ultimates, the Invincibles, the Adventures and the animated. The idea seemed a bit too Dark Rorscharchmen reaction. There's only so many times you can improve upon the memories of a McDonalds meal. What really got my craw was that Martin had announced 'departure' from the pages of his ongoing superhero book, The O Men. I'd seen the first fifteen issues of this. Comicking practitioners of the independent arts had too and it was an attractive design of a creature. Re-connecting with it, around the thirtieth issue I wanted to track down what I'd missed.
 

The O Men

Eastenders soap opera meets The X-Men is how it was described by a few. Throw in a dash of Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrisson and we're a bit closer. The O Men were a superpowered group who were never really a group. Manipulated through the first dozen issues by Doctor O, characters from various factions, sometimes at odds, were set up to fulfil his agenda. Martin planned the first volume to last around twenty-five issues. He kept his word and never told us the full story issue-by-issue, hiding true motivations of quite a few characters from each other and his readers. In the meantime, Martin threw in smaller four issue story arcs, the first of which was laced with a cover which the next one could stand against tapestry style. Coloured paper supplanted white covers to reflect our experimentation with his sexy little drug. Lines curled and flowed, they took on traditional psi-kinetics and abrupt obnoxious displays of physique before laying out an attractive ball gown and gloves. He has a way of drawing women that's not only too obviously attractive but too happily attractive to view. More white than black on the page, oh, but the blacks were good. The sense that as a reader I was only being fed parts of the puzzle, Martin cheekily piled on, with panel borders regularly lacking all sides. As I was caught between the pages, he would come to change the cover paper back to white and fuck my experience with carefully timed dramatis. In retrospect, the narrative text was comparable with Fox-Whedon's Dollhouse. It contained plenty of opportunities for the writer to stall, to slip in one-off throw-aways, but used these sparingly, and mostly in preference for advance. Perhaps it did take the same route. It wasn't cancelled by idiots, idiots and idiots, and The O Men completed its first volume twenty-five or so issue run with an Eagle award nomination half-way. The second volume began a few years ago, with seven issues published to date.