Leave It to Chance

AUTHOR: Robinson, James

ARTIST: Paul Smith (illustrator); George Freeman (inker); Jeromy Cox (colorist); Amie Grenier (letterer)

PUBLISHER: Image Comics

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 1996-2002

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1997-2003

Publication History

Inspired by a Nancy Drew pinup drawn by Frank Miller, James Robinson wanted to create a series mainly for girls that would bridge the gap between “kiddie” comics and more adult material. He came up with a character that was a cross between teen detective Nancy Drew and Kolchak the Night Stalker, and he teamed up with artist Paul Smith. The two had previously worked together on The Golden Age (1993-1994), a miniseries published by DC Comics.

Originally published as full-color comic books under Image’s Homage imprint, Leave It to Chance was published sporadically for twelve issues between 1996 and 1999. The twelfth issue of the series was published by DC Comics after the acquisition of Jim Lee’s WildStorm imprint (which included Homage) from Image. During this time the first eight issues of the series were collected in two softcover collections in 1997 and 1998. After the series went on a three-year hiatus, Image published a thirteenth issue. Jim Valentino, Image’s publisher at the time, announced that the entire series would be reprinted as large-format, European-style hardcover graphic novels similar to Asterix (1959-2010) and The Adventures of Tintin (1929-1976). Once all thirteen issues were published in this way, the plan was to continue in this format with new stories on a quarterly schedule. After the publication of three hardcover issues, Leave It to Chance went on an indefinite hiatus. Issues 12 and 13 from the original series were never reprinted, and new material beyond the original comic book series was never published. As of 2011, Leave It to Chance was out of print, and Robinson stated there were no plans to return to the series.

Plot

Devil’s Echo, a city where ghosts and monsters are commonplace, is protected by Lucas Falconer, the latest in a long line of occult investigators who have watched over the city for centuries. Lucas’s daughter, fourteen-year-old Chance, is at the age when preparations usually begin for the next Falconer to take the mantle of Devil’s Echo’s protector, and she is eager to start her training. However, since the death of his wife, Lucas feels that the role is too dangerous and would prefer Chance to live a normal life and allow the mantle be passed to her son. Chance refuses to let her father’s wishes discourage her. After overhearing a conversation between her father and police lieutenant Saunders about a catatonic shaman named John Raven and his missing daughter, she sets off to investigate.

Arriving at the hotel where Raven was staying, Chance discovers a dead body and is cornered by a group of monsters, called troggs, who have captured Raven’s daughter. Chance is saved by a small dragon (whom she later names St. George) that escaped from the Falconer mansion.

At the police station, Chance recounts her evening to Lieutenant Saunders and is put under the protection of Officer Margo Vela, who is interested in what Chance saw. She brings Chance to reporter Will Bendix, and the three compare notes on the case. Remembering that one of the troggs mentioned the name of mayoral candidate Sonny Abbott, Chance sneaks into Abbott’s home and discovers a plot to influence the upcoming election. Abbott has a spy with the current mayor; he has kidnapped John Raven’s daughter, but he still wants Raven himself.

Chance and Margo check up on Raven, but he has been kidnapped by a group of troggs. The police try to question Abbott about his involvement in the mayoral plot, but he denies everything. Following Abbott, Chance finds Duncan Bell, the mayor’s right-hand man, and Abbott discussing plans to use John Raven’s magic to flood the city and tarnish the current mayor’s name. However, Bell’s plans with Abbott are a diversion for his own plans to destroy the city by raising an ancient god in order to exact revenge on Lucas Falconer, the man responsible for killing his brother, Miles Belloc.

With Raven forced to bring rain using his magic, the city begins to flood. Using Raven’s shamanic tokens, Bell raises the Toad God to destroy the city. As the city tries to hold off the Toad God, Chance finds Bell and defeats him, only to discover that Bell’s brother was the one who killed her mother. Chance meets with the police and the reunited Raven family, and Raven performs a ritual to send the Toad God back to the sea. Lucas returns from his travels and is angered when Chance, excited about her new role as adventurer, risks her own life.

Unhappy with Chance’s involvement in the skirmish with the Toad God and a later incident involving a kidnapped monkey and thugs attempting to gain power from a dark dimension, Lucas sends Chance to a private boarding school to prevent her from getting into danger. Feeling like an outsider, Chance manages to befriend a girl named Ruby. That night, Chance awakens to find that all the students and teachers have been drugged except for the assistant headmistress, Miss Longfellow, and the headmaster, Croft.

The next day, Chance tells Ruby and a group of friends about the unconscious students and guesses that their milk was drugged. (Chance refused to drink it because of an allergy.) Ruby recounts an urban legend about a band of pirates that used the caves beneath the school to hoard their treasure and says that the school is haunted by the ghost of the captain, Hitch.

That night, Chance and Ruby, along with other students, descend beneath the school to find Miss Longfellow and headmaster Croft (dressed as the ghostly Captain Hitch) loading treasure onto a boat. The children are all captured. Before Chance can figure out a way to escape, she is chloroformed and wakes up floating in the middle of the ocean, tied to a dead body. She manages to free herself from the ropes but passes out.

She wakes on the beach to find that her pet dragon, St. George, has saved her from drowning. Making her way back to the school, she discovers a drugged headmaster Croft and realizes that Captain Hitch is actually a ghost and not the headmaster in disguise.

A group of thugs ambush Chance, and while she manages to escape at first, she is captured after finding her friends. After Hitch and Longfellow leave with their boat full of pirates’ treasure, the children escape and follow the pirates in a dinghy. Hitch plans to head to Devil’s Echo and confront Lucas Falconer, whose ancestor killed Hitch. Just after Chance and her friends board the ship, the Coast Guard arrives. Realizing that his plans have been foiled, Hitch disappears, leaving Longfellow and the rest of the crew in the hands of the Coast Guard.

Patrons of a newly reopened film theater are shocked when four monsters—the Count, Man Monster, the Pharaoh, and the Howler—emerge from the screen to attack first the audience and then the citizens of Devil’s Echo. Lieutenant Saunders and the police meet up at Lucas’s home to prepare a contingency plan. Chance overhears the conversation and leaves with plans of her own. She finds Margo and another police officer, Roger Howard, at the theater, certain that the theater would be the last place the monsters would be. Suddenly, however, they are attacked by the Pharaoh.

The theater manager, Mr. Granger, is taken away by Man-Monster, and the Howler bites Roger, transforming him into a werewolf. Granger is brought before a man obscured in shadow, who explains his plan to use the monsters to keep the police busy so he can commit crimes. The first crime is the theft of a priceless diamond from the museum in Little Cairo by a young thief named Lightfoot.

Listening in once again, Chance is detected. She manages to escape but almost falls to her death off a building. Lightfoot saves her life, unaware that she is the daughter of Lucas Falconer. Lucas and the police try their best to fight off the monsters, but all traditional methods of destroying them fail.

At the Little Cairo Museum, Chance finds Lightfoot attempting to steal the diamond. She reveals to him that she is a Falconer and decides to let him escape, since he previously saved her life.

After being reminded that the monsters are literally from the movies, Lucas returns to the fight with what looks like a water gun. He threatens to spray the monsters with a film solvent that will disintegrate them but offers them the chance to return to their world. Lucas uses magic to return the monsters to the screen and then attempts to cure Roger of his werewolf form, but he fails.

Believed to be missing during the fight with the monsters, Chance is reunited with her worried father and mentions briefly to him about the shadowed man she spied on.

Volumes

•Leave It to Chance: Shaman’s Rain (1997). Collects issues 1-4. Includes introduction by writer Robinson and afterword by artist Smith. Volume outlines characters and the town and finds Chance preparing to become the next protector of Devil’s Echo.

•Leave It to Chance: Trick or Treat, and Other Stories (1998). Collects issues 5-8. Includes introduction by Smith and character sketchbook as well as the story of the ghost of Captain Hitch, who had hidden treasure under what became Chance’s school.

•Leave It to Chance: Monster Madness, and Other Stories (2003). Collects issues 9-11. Includes introduction by James Robinson. Movie monsters escape from the screen. Lucas threatens to spray them with film solvent but also offers them a chance to return to their world.

Characters

•Chance Falconer is the tomboyish protagonist of the series. She is a fourteen-year-old girl and the daughter of the famous occult investigator Lucas Falconer. She has a thirst for adventure and is curious and resourceful. Against her father’s wishes, she finds herself involved in many mysteries in their city.

•Lucas Falconer is a cross between Dr. Strange and Sherlock Holmes and is the occult investigator of Devil’s Echo. He has long black hair and a serious and sometimes gruff exterior. During a battle with his arch nemesis, Miles Belloc, he had his face disfigured and saw his wife killed. This incident has made him protective of Chance, his only daughter.

•St. George is a small orange dragon that Chance adopts as her pet. After Lucas has difficulty sending him back to his home dimension, Chance accidentally sets the dragon free. He finds Chance and saves her from being killed by troggs with his ability to breathe fire. He is loyal and affectionate with an acute sense of smell.

•Duncan Bell is the main antagonist of the first volume. He is the brother of Miles Belloc, the man responsible for the death of Lucas’s wife. He is secretive and conniving and has knowledge of the mystical arts. His main goal is to take revenge on Falconer for the death of his brother.

•Will Bendix is the star reporter of the Devil’s Echo Oracle, the city’s major newspaper. He is resourceful and provides information and insight to Chance on her adventures. He also has romantic feelings for Officer Margo Vela.

•Margo Vela is an officer on Devil’s Echo’s police force. She has a strong personality and is courageous. Seeing the potential in Chance, Margo acts as a mentor for the young adventurer. She is highly dedicated to her position on the police force.

•Lieutenant Saunders is the head of the Devil’s Echo police force. He has a close relationship with Lucas and works with him to protect the city from supernatural threats. He is African American.

•Hobbs is Lucas’s butler. He wears glasses and has long gray sideburns and often subtly encourages Chance to explore being an adventurer.

•Quince is Lucas’s housekeeper and a mother figure for Chance. She is protective of Chance and disapproves of her adventures in Devil’s Echo.

•Captain Hitch is the main antagonist from Book 2. He is the ghost of a legendary pirate who hid his treasure in a series of caves that years later ended up under a girls’ boarding school. He is certain that an ancestor of Lucas Falconer was the one who defeated him.

•Lightfoot is a young talented thief employed by a mysterious man in shadows in Book 3. He is dashing and has a flirtatious relationship with Chance even after he discovers who her father is.

Artistic Style

Best known for his short run on Marvel’s Uncanny X-Men during the 1980’s, Smith adapted his realistic superhero style for Leave It to Chance. Smith’s clear design features a heavy line weight, and his panel construction is dynamic, with a wide range of close-ups, long shots, and action shots. Enhancing the fun, light tone of the series, Smith’s characters are rendered in bright colors with expressive faces to contrast the detailed backgrounds and heavy use of blacks that create the moody supernatural quality of Devil’s Echo.

After the first few issues, Smith stepped outside his typical style and moved toward more cartoony artwork while maintaining a level of realism. Characters became more caricatured, resembling the odd cast from Hergé’s The Adventures of Tintin (1929-1976) and emphasizing the varied citizens of Devil’s Echo. In particular, the drawing of Chance’s eyes moves from realistic to iconic round dots, similar to the eyes of Little Orphan Annie, nostalgically referencing the comics of the past.

Smith’s page layouts illustrate his strengths in clear storytelling. Large panels make the book extremely readable and add to the series’ fast pace. The addition of inks by George Freeman in Volumes 2 and 3 adds a level of crispness to Smith’s already clear artwork. The specific character design of Chance Falconer references other strong female characters, including detective Nancy Drew and two characters from the X-Men, Kitty Pryde and Jubilee, directly opposing the “cheesecake” drawing of female characters that was popular at the time in superhero comics.

Themes

Like many works aimed at children and young adults, Leave It to Chance has growing up as its main theme. As a protective father, Lucas Falconer refuses to begin training his daughter to become Devil’s Echo’s next occult investigator. Chance’s sense of excitement drives her to rebel against her father’s wishes, and her adventures unfold. Leave It to Chance uses a story structure similar to sitcoms, in which every adventure features Chance using her intelligence and resources to escape dangerous situations only to be lightly scolded by her father when she is found to be safe after all. Lucas attempts to stop his daughter from adventuring by sending her to a boarding school, but Chance encounters danger even there. He comes to realize that he must trust his instincts and allow her to explore her passion as an investigator, even though he worries about her safety.

Leave It to Chance has been hailed by many as a prime example of a feminist text, celebrating strong female characters. Chance is unlike many of the examples of female heroines in circulation at the time. She is strong-willed, courageous, and tomboyish, but not unfeminine. She subverts traditional female roles when rejecting her father’s suggestion that she should get married, lead a normal life, and allow her son to become the city’s next protector. Her decision to become an adventurer may be rebellious, but it is not impulsive. She maintains a level of mature intelligence along with a wide-eyed sense of excitement throughout her adventures. This spirit of feminism is also evident in the character of Officer Margo Vela, who acts as a role model for Chance. As the dominant police officer in the series, she holds her place on the force as a resourceful, highly capable woman in a traditionally male role.

Impact

In the mid- to late 1990’s, when dark and violent story lines involving superheroes and hypersexualized female characters were at the height of popularity, Leave It to Chance was a rare example of a series written specifically for both young readers and girls, whom many audiences did not consider a good audience for comic books. Leave It to Chance blends mystery, adventure, humor, and the supernatural; its fast-paced stories, G-rated violence, and brightly colored artwork have more in common with children’s literature and European comics than North American superhero comics of the 1990’s. In 2003, DC Comics reprinted issue 5, the beginning of the Trick or Treat story line, for Free Comic Book Day, further illustrating the book’s potential in reaching a younger audience.

During the 1990’s, Image Comics was infamous for its line of superhero comics with incredibly stylized artwork and weak stories. When Valentino became head publisher at Image Comics, one of his mandates was to distance the company from the negatively criticized “Image style” and acquire books to create a diverse line of quality authors and titles. Valentino chose to relaunch Leave It to Chance as oversized hardcovers at a low price point to gain attention from the bookstore and library market that were starting to take a serious interest in graphic novels.

Librarians praised Leave It to Chance in reviews and included the series on recommended booklists, making Chance Falconer’s adventures a must-have series for any start-up children’s graphic novel collection. However, Valentino’s plans to continue the book as a series of graphic novels never came to be. Robinson took an extended leave from comics to focus on screenwriting and, after his return, to writing mainstream superhero stories for DC Comics. With the three hardcover volumes out of print, Leave It to Chance has become a distant memory.

Further Reading

Foglio, Kaja, and Phil Foglio. Girl Genius (2002-2010).

Hale, Shannon, and Nathan Hale. Rapunzel’s Revenge (2008).

Naifeh, Ted. Courtney Crumrin (2003-2009).

Torres, J., and J. Bone. Alison Dare (2010).

Bibliography

MacDonald, Heidi. “Image Takes a ‘Chance’.” Publishers Weekly 249, no. 37 (2002): 34.

Robinson, James. Introduction to Leave It to Chance: Monster Madness and Other Stories. Orange, Calif.: Image Comics, 2003.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Introduction to Leave It to Chance: Shaman’s Rain. Orange, Calif.: Image Comics, 2002.

Smith, Paul. Introduction to Leave It to Chance: Trick or Treat and Other Stories. Orange, Calif.: Image Comics, 2002.

Yarbrough, Beau. “San Diego, Day 2: Leave It to Chance Returns in 2002.” Comic Book Resources, July 20, 2001. http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=87