Better Late Than Never: Pitt #1

Pitt #1
“Fight & Flight!”
Pencils & Inks: Dale Keown
Writer: Brian Holton
Letterer: Chance Wolf
Colorist: Joe Chiodo
Editor: Sasha Lemelin
Color Separator: Olyoptics
Published by: Image
Cover Date: January 1993

An Image Comics scholar I am not, but over the years I've snagged a number of their first issues from the era when I probably should have been checking them out, but couldn't tear myself away from Marvel. It's probably pretty evident I still can't, but the availability of cheap back issues and online and physical media from libraries does allow me to expand my horizons, albeit a few decades late.

I didn't have a particular road map for which issues to read and write about when, but when Jesse Starcher and Chris Armstrong invited me to discuss the first issue of “Pitt” on an episode of the Unspoken Issues podcast, I figured I would kill two birds with one stone and make a post of it as well.

As with a lot of Image characters, I was aware of Pitt without knowing many details. Prior to this, I believe the only issue I'd read with him was a Maxx story where they were inexplicably shrunken. I remember reading somewhere that Maxx writer/artist/creator Sam Kieth did this because he'd wanted to draw a tiny Hulk story, and that always struck me as a perfectly cromulent reason to make a comic book story. Sometimes these things don't need to be overthought.

I always kind of thought of Pitt as Grunge Hulk. He kind of looked like the gray Hulk penned by Peter David and drawn by Todd McFarlane when I first started collecting, minus a nose but with sharper teeth and a ponytail. And he hung around with a kid named Timmy, whom I can only hope at some point he rescued from a well.

We meet Pitt in his first issue as he's walking naked down the middle of a street in New York being attacked by members of the Detroit chapter* of a motorcycle gang known as the Vipers. At first they seem to be a run-of-the-mill gang of criminal bikers, but one of them strikes the massive long-haired figure with a morningstar, which makes me wonder if they are more sinister than I gave them credit for or if this guy perhaps also participates in Renaissance fairs when he's not on drunken biker field trips.

He's probably going to miss the next few outings for whatever groups he's a member of after Pitt understandably reacts violently to their attack. Instead of getting the message and taking off, these guys continue to attack, one of them even pulling out a shotgun.

Clearly these fellas are predisposed to violence, and at least some of them have been drinking, but their dialogue also makes clear that they know super-powered beings exist in the world and they presume he's one of them. So I'm not sure why they think conventional weapons are going to turn the tide.

Pitt jumps at them, opening his maw of razor sharp teeth. His roar is gradually replaced by a scream from Timmy, who witnessed the whole scene in a dream he's pretty sure wasn't a dream. He's comforted by his grandfather, and we learn the boy's parents are dead. I thought at first they might have just been killed in an incident on a New York subway an asterisked editor's note** tells us occurred in “Youngblood” #4, which, surprise, I also haven't read. But a check of the Image Fandom wiki says only Timmy and his grandfather were nearly attacked by “a gang of roughs” before Pitt made his first appearance and saved them.

From there we cut to a police precinct where Detective Bobbie Harras – whose name might be an amalgam of Marvel editors Bobbie Chase and Bob Harras? – is introduced to her new partner, Jack Smithers, who seems like exactly the kind of guy you don't want to be partnered with. She's there to investigate the incident Timmy's grandpa referred to. We also learn one of the bikers Pitt fought has died.

Meanwhile, Pitt commandeers some of his sparring partners' clothing, and chains, and debates his actions with an internal voice. From there we get a flashback to some aliens being attacked by beings known as the Creed, one of whom we see in shadows displaying some Pitt-like traits.

Police are investigating the scene of the subway crime. As Harras and Smithers arrive, they find others being attacked by a cyborg and some big, rocky dudes. The Creed, I presume?

This issue is full of great art by Keown and some familiar concepts that feel just off enough to make me want to read more. While I appreciated the reference to the prior story in Youngblood and the work to establish the connectivity of this nascent universe, I could have done with some more specific information about what exactly happened prior to this. But I didn't have trouble following the broader points of the story.

* - That's what the text says.

** - Like this.