American Flagg - The Definitive Collection Volume One!

Sharp! Spicy! Savvy! Those are three words that might well be used to describe Howard Chaykin's 1980's action adventure satire American Flagg. This comic was one of several in the initial push from First Comics, at one time a primary contender for best new comic book company, but which fell on hard times and then faded away. American Flagg though has outlasted the company that first published his adventures. This first of two volumes from Dynamic Forces presents the first six issues of American Flagg. The six issues are really two longer tales which feel more like a movie or small limited series than a comic book, clearly something Chaykin was attempting to achieve. 

The first of the two trilogies is titled "Hard Times" and introduces us to our hero Reuben Flagg, a Jewish man who is something of a burnout media star looking to find some measure of success as a law-enforcement office in the "Plexus Rangers". The America that Flagg finds is a fractured one in the year 2031. It's dominated and controlled by business interests which seem as eager to sell it off as to find some means to govern it effectively. The Plex Mall formerly known as Chicago is our setting as Flagg tries to find a place for himself working for a tough-as-nails boss named Hilton "Hammerhead" Kreiger, the top kick of the Rangers. Flagg must also deal with some lovely dames, one Mandy Krieger - Hammerhead's daughter and a classic whore-with-a-golden-heart Gretchen Holstrum. There's also the openly corrupt Mayor Blitz and his wild daughter Medea Blitz. And I haven't even mentioned Flagg's closest ally, Raul the talking cat or the displaced "King of England" who goes by the simple name "Bill". In the first tale we see the effects of subliminal messaging being used to create havoc and violence in some of the community through the use of a pirate communications network called "Q-USA". Who runs Q-USA and why is a focus of the story and by the end we are well pleased by the answers I think. 

In the second of the two larger stories we find Reuben sent to South America in a yarn called "Southern Comfort". His mission is to oversee a pirate basketball game between the local team the "Headhunters" and the teams to the South. Flagg finds himself up to his neck in high-tech intrigue and adventure as the team heads down to the venues where corrupt Rangers seem to be up to all kinds of somewhat depraved no good. 

Politics and sex dominate these  American Flagg stories, as the creator Howard Chaykin is not skittish about dealing with either. The politics are both old school and new with a Jewish hero confronted with a rebranded Nazi party taking advantage of the chaos to find foothold in the broken country. There are many other factions from drug-fueled biker gangs to sundry groups of political terrorists. Add in the random crime and it's a hectic environment that our hero is called upon to manage. And hero he is, a moral man though not a perfect one by any measure, a man up to the task both interested in helping others, doing his duty and keeping his own skin intact. 

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