Travis Hedge Coke
Patricia Highsmash
The Judas Coin is a Many-Splendored Thing
by Travis Hedge Coke
“I purely hate to to do this to you… but… you shoulda been a better loser.”
– Bat Lash
Walt Simonson’s beautiful constructed, stylishly orchestrated 2012 comic, The Judas Coin, began as a forty-eight page issue of Solo. A comic which focused on a particular iconic artist each issue, Solo would present a series of short comics stories by that artist, assisted by writers, inkers, colorists, and letterers as necessary. Solicited by editor, Mark Chiarello, whom DC Comics fired last year, after a twenty-six year tenure with the company, Simonson would have been a perfect and deserving fit amongst the pantheon invited.
Simonson missed the chance of the Solo issue, with Solo being canceled, and it seemed the prep plotting he had done would be for nought. No Walt Simonson Bat Lash story? No Walt Simonson Two-Face or Viking Prince? No Walt Simonson Jesus?
The comic that would have been Simonson’s Solo issue was allotted a longer than usual prep period, by new editor, Joey Cavalieri, and a ninety-six-page length. It would be its own standalone prestige comic. What could have been a showcase for some of the breadth and seriousness of Simonson’s abilities as an artist, writer, and fan of comics, became a testament. And, a playground.
The germ of The Judas Coin began in 2004-05. The comic was released in 2012. And, I have spent the intervening eight years talking off and on with Walt Simonson, with an eye to writing about it. Walt and Weezie (Louise Simonson, his wife and hall-of-famer all-star writer and editor) are among the many people in comics who have been patient with me, and giving with their time and anecdotes, but I remained hesitant and afraid.
The Judas Coin is a daring and competent comic, of a level in both respects that is rare, and very rare from a large comics publisher, like DC.
One of the things Simonson said to me, that helped me finally rassle this thing, was, his explanation of the stories we got, why we got them, and that there were no trimmed or cut pieces. “The stories in the book were the stories I planned to run. Didn’t have any also-rans,” but, “I did hunt for a couple for sequencing. I think I may have asked a friend or two for suggestions of possibilities. Probably the Golden Gladiator was like that. Don’t know if I knew him before I did the story. I did go back and read all the original stories about him; there weren’t many. And they varied in time from Cleopatra’s time to well into the Roman Empire as I recall. So I picked a time. My original idea for the book came with the Bat Lash story, conceived out of the blue pretty much as it ran. And I always like Manhunter 2070, so it was fun to conclude the final Showcase story about the character, originally a cliff-hanger. Also always loved the Viking Prince. And I thought I’d better include at least one character that a general audience might have heard of, hence Batman.”
The orderliness and the admission of what was effort, what was effortless, struck me in a profound and reassuring way. It also clarified for me, why Batman is so prominent on the dust jacket, but a very tertiary character in the comic.
John Workman and Lovern Kindzierski came onboard as letterer and colorist, and the fate of one of the coins from Judas’ haul for murdering his friend and savior, Jesus, as the tether for short comics that comprise The Judas Coin and giving it the title. They had time! They had drive! Simonson had a bit of divine inspiration while he was in the shower, which is how we got Judas and Bat Lash among the many genre characters not played with enough in DC Comics.
The coin, dropped by Judas at his suicide, is tracked across seven short tales, including Judas’ own, through to the year 2087. The protagonists are all drawn from earlier DC comics, most famously, Two-Face, the Batman villain in our modern day story, as well as the aforementioned Viking Prince and Golden Gladiator from 1950s issues of The Brave and the Bold. The stories move chronologically, and are the unusual gem of a comic set in a pre-established shared universe, using long-storied characters, that is entirely new-reader friendly and as accessible to an old DC head as to someone who has read no comics set in the DC Universe of Superman and the Joker.
The range of styles and execution exhibited in each story is a delight to behold. The biblical prologue has a chunky sensibility that reminds me of stained glass. The Viking exploration of Ireland, Black Blade, Silver Heart is an outsized world of ships like cities and trees a mile high, and great European/Philippe Druillet-like line work and framing. Mutiny, an Eighteenth Century pirate tale, has lovecraftian overtones without being a lovecraftian story. Manhunter 2070: An Epilog balances stylistic tics from Katsuhiro Otomo and Robert Heinlein in surprisingly refreshing ways. Just as the protagonist of Manhunter is, here, both older and younger than he was in the adventures published in 1970, Simonson’s novel style choices and his intelligent fusion of them leaves The Judas Coin feeling both like an older comic and something that is still a little off into our future.
“Enjoyed drawing in the different styles,” says Simonson, “I looked various comics and newspaper stripes for inspiration and guidance. Hal Foster for the Gladiator, Horak (James Bond newspaper strip) for Batman/TwoFace, a couple of manga comics I like for Manhunter 2070.”
The Judas Coin is far from all technique and no heart. There is a real humanity in the faces and interplay of Blood Peace. A freewheeling horniness and sentimentality in Manhunter tempers what could be callous pleasure-seekers. Workman’s lettering in the pirate chapter, Mutiny, is visceral and loud on the page, while the shifting color work from Kindzierski helps entrench us in entirely different vibes every chapter, and to also set us a definite sense of era in each of those stories.
Says Simonson, “I do work closely with John Workman who letters most of my stuff, but that means mostly giving him his head once I show him where I want the lettering to go. Same with Lovern who colored the book. I may have had a few color notes, but not much. I did suggest the sepia lines for the Bat Lash story because of a Weezie suggestion.”
That sepia sensibility, like many visual techniques deployed, gives the comic a classic feel. Although all made at the same time, even the different short stories/chapters, feel era appropriate and evocative, even when they straddle some widely disparate eras.
“It’s always been an interest of mine and my early days in comics, I spent a lot of time thinking about page layouts, compositions, storytelling, eye direction, and design,” says Simonson. “Now, I just kind of do it by instinct although I did think a lot about each of the different stories in The Judas Coin.”
Each chapter of The Judas Coin turns on a fresh sort a selfishness, love, liberation and betrayal. From Jon, the Viking prince, and the Native American high seas pirate, Captain Fear, to double-obsessed Two-Face in our modern day, our protagonists are betting men.
Two-Face lives by the flip of his coin. Jon, Bat Lash, Captain Fear are all risk-takers.
Marcus, protagonist of our first full story, is a former slave. Captain Fear is a former slave, turned pirate. Ledora and Generate, the antagonists of Manhunter 2070, are pirates and goodtimers. Bat Lash, splitting the difference between Manhunter and the red-haired greenie sisters, is a professional goodtimer and gambler. While Two-Face a professional thief who relies on a gamble of a coin toss to make all of his life decisions.
The stories of The Judas Coin tumble and interlock their meanings, echoing and opening each other up with every reread or reconsideration.
Ultimately, all things, experiential or tangible, are temporary, fleeting, and lost to us, regardless, when we are dead or they are out of hand.
The Judas Coin is not about westward expansion or capitalism, but the gears in the machine and the pressures that turn the gears are westward expansion, that is to say colonialism, and capitalism. The pursuit of subsistence versus the pursuit of gain. The pursuit of gain vs someone else’s pursuit of gain.
In Blood Peace, the coin is payment at the edge of the Roman Empire. “The traitor’s portion.”
In Black Blade, Silver Heart, Prince Jon and his crew are seeking treasure to steal in a foreign land, and send a man off in a funerary rite, holding the coin.
Captain Fear, a thief and pirate, is the victim of colonialism and colonial slavery. The coin is fought over not by him, but by white men, who all end up dead, with a seagull claiming the claiming it.
For Bat Lash, old west gambler and haver of fun, the coin is just like any other coin, only a ticket to other things. But Lash remains a participant in westward colonialism, at this point removed from Roman and now American.
While Batman, in the Two-Face story, crosses class lines as Bruce Wayne, to be friendly to a newsstand clerk, he is a billionaire who nightly goes against the law for personal reasons. Two-Face is a thief and a bad person, but he is also mentally unwell and the actual ownership of the coin he is pursuing is a long chain, as we have seen, of abusive notions, of greed in the guise of monetary selfishness, social and interpersonal betrayal, and even nationalist expansion.
We see, regardless of the politics, nationalism, family, social standing or social agenda of our protagonists, their compatriots, or their enemies, the sway that finance and colonialism have on the world, and eventually off the world, as humanity moves more functionally into outer space.
Or, I do, anyway. Simonson told me he thinks the comic speaks for itself, and I am not going to risk the hubris that wastes time and lives in The Judas Coin, over-worrying the Batman’s presence or the cultural cache in pages of Bat Lash.
“I purely hate to to do this to you… but… you shoulda been a better loser.”
– Bat Lash, maybe recapitulating history