Journey: The Adventures of Wolverine MacAlistaire

AUTHOR: Messner-Loebs, William

ARTIST: William Messner-Loebs (illustrator); James Bleeker (letterer); James A. Osten (letterer)

PUBLISHER: IDW Publishing

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 1983-1984, 1985-1986

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 2008 (Volume 1); 2009 (Volume 2)

Publication History

The first fourteen issues of Journey, created by William Messner-Loebs, were published by Aardvark-Vanaheim in 1983, during the rise of independent comics in the direct-sales market. Teaser pages of Journey appeared as a backup feature in issues 48 and 49 of Cerebus (1977-2004) under the title “Unique Stories.” In 1984, a four-page Journey story appeared in AV in 3D, an anthology featuring characters from the Aardvark-Vanaheim line, with 3D rendering provided by Ray Zone.

Fantagraphics Books published issues 15-27 of Journey, as well as several related projects. Two issues of a proposed six-issue miniseries entitled Journey: War Drums came out in 1987. The rest of the series never appeared. An original short story featuring Wolverine MacAlistaire, the protagonist of Journey, appeared in issue 5 of the anthology series Anything Goes! (1986-1987). That same year, a magazine-size trade-paperback reprinting of the first three issues of Journey appeared under the title Journey: Tall Tales. A second volume, Journey: Bad Weather, was published in 1990.

IDW Publishing released the entire original series in two trade-paperback volumes in 2008 and 2009. Volume 1 contains issues 1-16, and Volume 2 completes the set with issues 17-27.

Plot

Journey is the story of frontiersman Joshua “Wolverine” MacAlistaire. Set in the early nineteenth century in what was then the far western frontier of Michigan, Journey is a combination of historical fiction and American tall tale. Journey was originally designed as an ongoing series; thus, the stories in the two IDW volumes are episodic. Many small stories take place within the context of MacAlistaire’s journey across Michigan to deliver a mysterious package. Early in the series MacAlistaire meets a group of Mennonites who are traveling to Canada. He directs them instead to the nearer Fort Miami. At this point, the plot diverges to follow two separate story lines.

The first story line involves MacAlistaire and his tale of survival in the wilderness. In these vignettes, his role as a larger-than-life American mythological character in the tradition of Paul Bunyan is made clear. He meets Jemmy Acorn, an obvious parody of Johnny Appleseed. He lives briefly with a woman who believes he is her dead husband. He spends part of the winter with old friends Crawfish Martin and his Indian wife, Sparrowdark. He is chased by a bear, negotiates a treaty between Native Americans and a tribe of Sasquatch, and hears a story told by a dead man’s skull. He survives an earthquake, lives through a blizzard in a handmade ice cave, and is flung miles through the air by a tornado.

The secondary story begins slowly, but it gradually takes over the main narrative of the book, almost to the exclusion of MacAlistaire, who plays no part in this tale at all. Elmer Craft and the Mennonite Ilse Keiffer arrive at Fort Miami where a large cast of characters is introduced.

The main plot of this story arc involves the relationship between the inhabitants of the fort and the Native Americans. While no actual historical figures appear, this plotline is set against the backdrop of the Shawnee Indian Tecumseh’s and his brother the Prophet’s doomed attempt to unite the tribes against European American expansion into their territory.

Mary, the fort’s American Indian cook (considered a “tame Indian” by its inhabitants), is actually Wolf Marie, a supporter of Tecumseh’s cause. She plots with the tribes to destroy Fort Miami. The tensions and politics of this situation, tied to the basic need for survival on the frontier, form the core story of this section of Journey.

Three specific historical events are woven into the tale. The first, an eclipse of the sun predicted by the Prophet, signals the beginning of actual conflict between the settlers and the American Indians. The second, a series of severe earthquakes that shook Michigan and Ohio in 1811, destroy Fort Miami and mark the end of the first volume.

Volume 2 begins with the chapter appropriately titled “Diaspora.” The characters at Fort Miami disperse after the earthquake, most of them disappearing from the series. One group heads for Prophetstown on the banks of the Tippecanoe River to join Tecumseh, only to discover that the settlement has been wiped out by American forces led by future president William Henry Harrison.

Elmer Craft, lost in the woods after the earthquake, meets MacAlistaire once again. The two travel together to the small town of New Hope. Most of the remaining story is a convoluted murder mystery set in that town. The content of MacAlistaire’s package is finally revealed to be a Bible containing clues to the identity of the killer. The series ends on an inconclusive note, indicating that there were many more MacAlistaire stories to be told.

Volumes

•Journey: The Adventures of Wolverine Mac-Alistaire, Volume 1 (2008). Collects Journey issues 1-16. Follows MacAlistaire on his adventures and introduces readers to the group of Mennonites that cohabit with the American Indians of the area.

•Journey: The Adventures of Wolverine Mac-Alistaire, Volume 2 (2009). Collects Journey issues 17-27. Characters flee Fort Miami after a devastating earthquake, and Craft and Mac-Alistaire journey together.

Characters

•Joshua MacAlistaire, a.k.a Wolverine, the protagonist, is a tall, rugged frontiersman with shaggy braided hair and an enormous handlebar mustache. He hates civilization, preferring the wilderness. He is educated and well-read and has a dry wit and laconic manner. He typically finds himself involved in other people’s plots, much to his displeasure. Only by agreeing to deliver a mysterious package does he further the plot.

•Jemmy Acorn, a wandering madman, wears rags and a tin pot for a hat. He speaks in anachronisms and serves primarily as comic relief.

•Elmer Craft, an educated Boston poet, is a foil for MacAlistaire. Initially a parody of H. P. Lovecraft, his unrealistic and romantic notions about the frontier clash with the reality of his experience.

•Hans Keiffer, a Mennonite, is a weak, ineffectual man. He spends months lost in the woods, surviving with the help of Fitzhugh, a cannibalistic wild man. The experience changes him for the better.

•Ilse Keiffer takes shelter at Fort Miami. The reality of survival there compromises her rigid beliefs, allowing her to live more fully in the world. Believing her husband Hans to be dead, she begins an affair with Henri Lenoir, commandant of the fort.

•Crawfish Martin, a friend of MacAlistaire, wants to leave the wilderness and open a store. MacAlistaire spends the winter in his home.

•Sparrowdark, Martin’s Algonquin wife, represents the conflict between ideas of civilization and savagery, Europeans and American Indians, and individualism and social and familial responsibility.

•Wolf Marie, a.k.a. Mary, is a Shawnee Indian who serves as cook at Fort Miami. Considered harmless, she is actually a follower of Tecumseh and wants nothing more than the death of all white people. Her machinations lead to much of the unrest and violence that plagues the fort.

•B. K., a young soldier at Fort Miami, is drawn in a simplified, iconic style to convey his wide-eyed innocence. He maintains an inner dialogue, telling the story of his great wilderness adventure. He is a counterpoint to Craft in maintaining a romantic delusion of frontier life. Unlike Craft’s story, which is a contemptuous chronicle of what he witnesses, B. K.’s story is an effort to protect himself from the deprivations, violence, and horror he experiences.

•Ellinore Trent was once a Boston socialite. The recipient of Craft’s affection, he keeps Ellinore on a pedestal as his muse and romantic ideal. Her frontier experiences and the murder of her husband have made her cold, heartless, and bent on revenge.

Artistic Style

The entire Journey saga was drawn by series creator Messner-Loebs and published as a black-and-white comic. His sense of design and storytelling owes much to The Spirit (1940-1952) creator Will Eisner. Like Eisner’s work, there is a lithe dynamism to his characters, suggesting motion that leads the eye across the page. Beyond the surface similarities, however, Messner-Loebs has made the style his own.

The character designs, while cartoony, run the gamut from detailed features to the grotesquely exaggerated to the simplified, almost to the point of iconic abstraction. His portrayal of people on the frontier is not idealized. The look of his characters can be off-putting; they are ugly and utterly human. No matter how far Messner-Loebs strays from the realistic, however, the characters stay consistent and express a wide array of emotions.

The primary appeal of Messner-Loebs’s art is his masterful use of the brush for inking. His lines are loose and expressionistic, with few hard edges. Though his figures are caricature, he spares no detail in their rendering. Through a variety of brush techniques, such as feathering, cross-hatching, and dry-brush, Messner-Loebs delineates a complete world. The textures of tree bark, animal fur, and leather clothing, as well as the elements of rain, snow, and fog are differentiated under his skillful hand. There are times when the black bleeds across the page, creating a sense of claustrophobia and foreboding. His use of white space is carefully calculated and is used to accentuate the mood. The extreme contrast conveys the themes of inner darkness and outer conflict that run throughout the story.

As the series progressed, the art became much looser and less detailed. Whether this was a conscious choice or came about because of the pressures of producing on a monthly deadline is unclear. Artist Don Simpson lent an inking assist on a single issue. His lines, while expressive, are more controlled than Messner-Loebs’s.

Themes

Journey is the story of the frontier. The exploration of the actual, historical frontier of early nineteenth- century America is the most obvious example of this. However, the idea of the frontier as the place where old ideas clash with new, as the meeting place of conflicting ideologies and worldviews, plays out in ways both overt and subtle throughout the series.

MacAlistaire, and many other characters, have gone into the wilderness to escape encroaching civilization. Nonetheless, wherever humanity goes, it brings civilization with it, which leads to the question of what is actually “civilized” needing to be addressed. The physical needs of survival in the natural world play against the purely man-made political and social intrigues that plague both Fort Miami and the village of New Hope.

The contrast between nature and civilization is also seen in the cultural clash between the white frontier people and the American Indians. The settlers see the Indians as uncivilized, either vilifying them as barbarians or idealizing them as “noble savages.” However, the narrative makes clear that neither is true. The Indians are portrayed, like the white settlers, as fully human, replete the political and social issues that are the hallmarks of civilization.

Early in the story, MacAlistaire says “the only darkness in the wilderness is what man brings with him.” In dreams, he is chased by the Dark Man, the only thing MacAlistaire fears. It is revealed that the Dark Man represents his father, an abusive man who once tried to drown MacAlistaire in a barrel of water.

Impact

Journey appeared during the first bloom of independent comics publishing, which was made possible by the birth of the direct market in the early 1980’s. At the time, it was difficult to find a comic book that did not involve a superhero or fantasy-inspired themes. The only real alternative was the teen humor world of Archie Comics.

Freed from the constraints of the Comics Code Authority, independent publishers were able to create a wider variety of content and had greater leeway in the expression of personal vision. Nonetheless, numerous creators had been inspired by the mainstream, and many of the new titles were still variations on the tropes of science fiction, fantasy, and the superhero. Journey was one of the earliest exceptions to this trend.

Messner-Loebs created a world and populated it with characters based on his personal interest in American history and folklore. The elements of the fantastic that do appear are traceable to tall tales and the oral storytelling tradition of exaggeration more than to any comics-inspired clichés. While not singular in its approach—Larry Marder’s Tales of the Beanworld (1985-1993) and Arn Saba’s Neil the Horse (1983-1988) are other examples from this time period of the type of comic that Messner-Loebs was creating—Journey proved that comic books can accommodate any style or vision.

Messner-Loebs, like MacAlistaire, was on the frontier of a new world. Unlike his protagonist however, Messner-Loebs left the unexplored wilds for comparative civilization. While critically acclaimed at the time, Journey never found a wide audience. Messner-Loebs joined the mainstream comics world and became a well-respected writer. In addition to a number of miniseries and titles for various companies, he helmed the 1980’s DC Comics relaunch of The Flash and wrote an influential run of Wonder Woman.

Further Reading

Bertozzi, Nick. Lewis and Clark (2011).

Messner-Loebs, William, and Sam Kieth. Epicurus the Sage (2003).

Truman, Timothy. Wilderness: The True Story of Simon Girty, Renegade (1992).

Bibliography

Messner-Loebs, William. “Bill Messner-Loebs: A Career Retrospective (Part I).” Interview by Darren Schroeder. Comics Bulletin. http://www.comicsbulletin.com/storytelling/95852385995680.htm.

Sanders, Joe Sutliff. “A Western Legend.” Teacher Librarian 37, no. 1 (2009): 29.

Wheeler, Andrew. Review: “Journey, Volume 1 by William Messner-Loebs.” Review of Journey: The Adventures of Wolverine MacAlistaire, Volume 1 by William Messner-Loebs. Comicmix.com, September 22, 2008. http://www.comicmix.com/news/2008/09/22/review-journey-vol-1-by-william-messner-loebs.