I was captivated by the first issue of “Charlemagne” and it was definitely an entertaining series from the Defiant comics era.
TITLE: Charlemagne Issue #1
YEAR: March 1994
COMPANY: Defiant Comics
Plot by Jim Shooter, Phillip Nutman, Adam Pollina, Deborah Purcell and D.G. Chichester
Written by D.G. Chichester
Penciled by Adam Pollina
Inked by Mike Witherby
Colorists: Oclair
Lettered by Mindy Eisman
Edited by Deborah Purcell
Editor-in-Chief: Jim Shooter
Created by Jim Shooter, Deborah Purcell and Adamo Pollina.
I absolutely enjoyed Defiant Comics when they were released. It was like getting something from the past, that you enjoyed storywise, but at the same time getting something modern for then-1994.
Reading it again today, comic books have changed so much and the storylines to appeal today’s reader, no doubt has also changed.
“Charlemagne” is a fascinating story about a young kid named Charlie Smith, who misses his older brother Pete.
The whole family has been waiting word if he has been found during the Vietnam War and is considered missing in action.
Government calls, they don’t what happened to him and he’s not one of the prisoners of war, so the case is closed. He’s just a missing man.
This doesn’t go well with the family and for Charlie who has read his letters, he makes the decision to travel to Vietnam on his own, by taking a flight to the Philippines and becoming a stowaway in a fishing vessel to Vietnam.
And while there, despite not knowing the language, he runs into an American journalist and also a Vietnamese doctor.
Both are impressed by young Charlie’s story of how he got to Vietnam to look for his brother and if anything, the doctor keeps an eye on the young man through village sources and eventually sees him a few years later with information on his brother, but also a new name for the young man… Charlemagne.
And as years pass and as Charlie’s determination leads him to where his brother is, as brothers are within a few feet of being reunited, because the Vietnam War is still ongoing, the Smith’s are unaware that American forces are about to destroy the village.
One brother lives, another dies and the doctor tries to do whatever he can to keep one alive. That one is Charlie…
Needless to say, Charlie is kept alive, but somehow he has managed to grow up pretty huge, pretty buff and with amazing strength within less than a year while in coma.
And thus the adventures of Charlemagne begins.
While it may seem like a wild story of an American boy finding a way to get to Vietnam on his own, but if a boy from California who snuck into a Hawaiian Airlines Flight 45 wheel in 2014 and defied the laws of nature and survived his flight 38,000 feet and lack of oxygen to the US, a boy flying to the Philippines and getting lucky to be a stowaway to Vietnam is plausible.
But I was captivated by the first issue of “Charlemagne” and it was definitely an entertaining series from the Defiant comics era.