So back in his Image/Extreme days, Rob Liefeld discovered the artist Jeff Matsuda. Matsuda worked on some Youngblood titles and other series before going to work for Marvel on one of the X-Men books (at about the same time Jeph Loeb was working on another of the X books).When Liefeld and Loeb were kicking off Awesome, Matsuda pitched the series for Kaboom about a sixteen year old boy named Geof Sunrise who receives magical gloves that transform him into a superhero. That gift puts him in the crosshairs of a group of demons called the Nine. The gloves also have some connection to Geof's missing mother and older brother.
The story begins on Geof's sixteenth birthday. He's a normal high school kid. He's obsessed with getting his driver's license and getting the hot girl at school to notice him. And like every comic book teenager, he has a friend who obviously likes him whom he just doesn't notice.While at school, he is approached by Zang, a magical Japanese saxophone player, who gives him the gloves. When he puts them on, his hair turns blue and he gets a purple and white suit. Because, you know, it's a comic book.
He's immediately confronted by the big bad villain, Scarlett, and his henchmen, the Nine. Almost as soon as they start battling, Scarlett kills Geof. It'd be a nice twist if, you know, this wasn't a comic. So, of course, he comes back, scares off the villains and goes home to a surprise birthday party. The next day he goes for his driver's test and is confronted by Scarlett again. This time, Scarlett reveals that he's Geof's lost brother Jimmy, and he needs the gloves. Geof says no and runs off. They have a big battle and Geof defeats Scarlett at last and absorbs Scarlett into the Kaboom Cycle, the power the gloves tap into. He goes home and the issue ends with the suggestion that Geof's dad is now Scarlett.
The two Jeffs: Matsuda and Jeph Loeb also had a fun time breaking the fourth wall at the end of each issue, leaving us wondering what was going to happen next.
There were a pair of side stories in a holiday special and a prelude one-shot about a potential apocalyptic future/past from where/when the gloves came from. It's suggested that his mother is alive there/then and Zang was/will be younger. It's weird, but at least it suggested something bigger and interesting that the series was building toward.
So then Awesome went through its first financial strain and Matsuda left. All in all, the story really never felt all that new or different, but Matsuda's art had a life and a velocity that made it fun and interesting. It was so colorful and so off-kilter that, if that's your thing, you could just look at it and appreciate it. It's as if it had been illustrated by Sonic the hedgehog.
Loeb remembered the experience fondly in a later interview:
"We had a blast. It was one of those books that allowed us to just run wild with our imaginations. The Nine in particular were my favorites, not just because they were fun to write, but Jeff's designs were amazing. They literally zoomed across the pages."
Years later, these three issues were packaged up into a trade paperback and hardcover and released by Image. But Awesome wasn't done with Kaboom yet. In 1999, volume two came out with three more issues. This time Liefeld came up with the story, Loeb wrote the script and Keron Grant handled the art. Grant's a mostly good artist and the series had a unique look, but it lacked Matsuda's sense of humor and style. As Matsuda submitted a variant cover for the relaunch, I assume he approved of it.
Anyway, it's now a year later than the last issue. Geof and Zang are now in L.A., though Geof has seemingly aged several years and Zang is younger and white now. Zang has recruited a street girl named Kyra and given her one of the Kaboom gloves. He goes about training her, though Geof has nothing but disdain for her and Zang.Zang tells Kyra that in order to find out more about his brother and father, Geof went into the Kaboom Cycle, but wasn't able to control it, meaning he couldn't help his brother or father. When he came back out, he was older and dispirited and left for L.A. That's why Zang decided to follow him and ultimately recruit Kyra.
Scarlett is back, now working for some big robot thing called the Magistrate. He soon attacks Zang and Kyra tries to fight him off. Meanwhile, Geof tries to fight the Magistrate. Geof manages to make it to Kyra and together they defeat Scarlett.Geof, putting aside his feelings, finds a way to work together with Kyra. They feel the pull of the gloves and soon combine into a Japanese-inspired giant hero, because I guess Mighty Morphing Power Rangers was a big thing in the late '90s, and defeat the Magistrate.
As the heroes celebrate, there is a call from Geof's mother that she needs help inside the Kaboom Cycle. The two heroes jump into the new adventure.
It's not the best story or ending, but unlike most of the other Awesome comics, at least it got a kind of ending. So, good job?
Speaking of good jobs, after all this, Matsuda left comics altogether and started working in animation. He worked on a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle film, but is probably now best known as the lead character designer for the TV series Jackie Chan Adventures and The Batman. So I guess he did alright.
Unlike a lot of the other Awesome series, there's not a lot of crossovers or references to the other Awesome series. The only time they did was in the last Awesome comic to ever come out, Brigade, which I'll talk about more in another post.
There's really not much reason for me to recommend reading Kaboom for the purposes of this blog, but Matsuda's artwork and the fun storyline of the first volume certainly suggested something that had the potential to be great. It also suggested the sort of enjoyable superhero stories that Moore envisioned for Awesome. That's an idea that he would take with him even after Awesome had run its course.
