Nexus: As It Happened, Vol. 01

Nexus: As It Happened, Vol. 01 by Mike Baron
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

When the dreams of mass murderers become too much for him, Horatio Hellpop becomes Nexus and executes them!

On the heels of reading Nexus Newspaper Strips Volume 1: The Coming of Gourmando, I decided to backtrack back to the beginning. This collects the first two miniseries, Nexus 1-3 and Nexus Volume 2 1-4 from the long defunct Capital Comics with Mike Baron and Steve Rude on creative duty.

This material from 1981-1983. Apparently Steve Rude was born almost fully formed, like a baby giraffe, because his art was already stellar in his earliest work. By the time the third issue rolled around, he was already in top form. There's not a hell of a lot of difference in art quality from these earliest issues to Rude's latest output. The man was a minimalist master almost from day one.

I'm gushing over Steve Rude but Mike Baron knew what the hell he was doing at this stage of the game too. Ghosts of the cold war and the threat of a communist takeover are in the book's DNA early on but Baron wrote some great comics here, from the origin and conception of Nexus to Nexus' battles with his enemies.

Nexus isn't vanilla super hero fare, which is probably why I didn't read it as it was coming out.
There's some wild stuff here, like heads in jars powering spacecraft, for instance. The setting feels fully formed at the outset. I have to think Baron and Rude were spitballing this for a long time before pen was put to paper.

Lastly, I'll mention the presentation. This is a slightly undersized book and is entirely in black and white to make it affordable. Rude's art pops in black and white. If I had to bitch about one thing, it would be that Nexus volume two appears to be black and white scans of color art rather than being sourced from the original black and white inked art. Still, it's a minor gripe because this was a sweet deal at $9.95.

Nexus: As It Happened is a piece of spectacular work that holds up well forty years later. 4.5 out of 5 stars.

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