The Plaid Avenger #1
STORY: John Boyer
WRITERS: John Boyer and Klaus Shmidheiser
ARTIST: Klaus Shmidheiser
COLORS: Klaus Shmidheiser with Richard Miller and Erin Nolan
PLAID ASSISTANT: Katie Pritchard
32pp, Color, $3.50 U.S, $4.50 CAN
The Plaid Avenger is the brainchild of John Boyer, a professor at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va. With the talents of graphic designer Klaus Shmidheiser, Boyer turned The Plaid Avenger into a comic book.
The Plaid Avenger is essentially a spy and superhero that combines the basics of the masked hero, costumed adventurer, and super spy. He is like The Lone Ranger, The Spirit, The Shadow, and James Bond rolled into one, but his uniform is plaid – coats, pants, hats, masks, etc. He even wears plaid briefs. The Plaid Avenger is no fool, though. By day, he is a college professor, but when an international crisis arises, the professor gives way to the Plaid Avenger.
According to an interview he gave to the website, the Comic Book Bin, Boyer wants to use the character to educate Americans about what is going on in the rest of the world. To that end, The Plaid Avenger #1 finds the titular hero failing in the Alaskan Iditarod. He veers of course, but fate brings him to a meeting of four world powers: Canada, Denmark, Norway, and Dick Cheney, gathering in Eskimo country to stake their claims on the Artic.
Global warming has reduced the permanent ice that covers the North Pole, and all that uncovered land and sea means – to these countries at least – access to untapped oil and natural gas resources. When Vladimir Putin arrives at this volatile summit, it’s up to the Plaid Avenger to discover the Russian leader’s motivations before things get hotter.
The purpose of The Plaid Avenger #1 is knowledge, and imparting knowledge is nothing new to the medium of comic books. Comics have been used for educational and informative purpose for both children and adults. Legendary creator Will Eisner (The Spirit) created a studio, American Visuals Corporation, to produce instructional materials for the government and businesses in a comic book-like form.
Boyer and Shmidheiser have combined words (in captions and word balloons) and pictures (graphics and sequential art) to inform their readers about the goings-on in the Arctic, and they are shockingly successful at making this an easy to read comic book about real life, global issues. The effect of global warming on the Arctic’s ecosystem, what that means for people native to and living in the region, and the international claims on the territories mineral resources form one helluva complicated issue. Yet after reading this comic book, I certainly believe that I have a basic understanding, giving me enough information to follow and further study the issue on my own.
The Plaid Avenger embodies the successful educational and informative comic book. Practical and easy to understand, The Plaid Avenger #1 deserves bestseller status.
http://www.plaidavenger.com/
The John Boyer interview: www.comicbookbin.com/bubble139.html
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