The single-name thing seems to have leapt from Eurocomics and landed on North American shores – well, we’ve always had it in other fields, like music (Cher! Madonna!), but comics-makers are embracing it as well. I may be concerned that our Strategic Name Reserve is in danger of being depleted – there aren’t that many regular forenames, though if we allow variants and standard nouns, we’re in much better shape – but I am still not, despite all my demands, the High Lord of All English Usage, so all I can do is Canute it up here.
I don’t know what arbitration mechanism is available if there’s, say, a Belgian who goes by “Greg” and a North American who does the same – it seems like the kind of thing that could easily happen – but, again, I have not been granted the awesome power I keep asking for, so I guess it’s not my problem.
In any case, Belgians, the name Greg has officially been claimed (by a guy from Chicago, as I understand it), so you snoozed and I suppose you lost. The name Fake has also been claimed (by a guy from Manzanillo, Mexico), but that’s probably less in-demand. And they have teamed up, like Hawk and Animal of the Legion of Doom, over the past few years to make a comic called Santos Sisters.
The first collection of that comic was published a couple of months ago, under the fairly obvious title
. From online descriptions – not the book itself – I learn that Fake is the writer and Greg is the artist. The book collects the first five issues of the series, plus a few odds and ends, though not the covers of those five issues, which seems like an odd and unusual choice. The back cover also gives, for what might be the first time: their fabulous superhero origin. (They found medallions on the beach that granted them superpowers from a goddess, Madame Sosostris.)
Santos Sisters is basically a mash-up of vaguely ’90s superhero elements – more early-Image than anything else, big bulky guns and all – with Archie-style storytelling, all in a mildly mocking tone that regularly spells things incorrectly in dialogue, I think deliberately. Alana and Ambar are sisters – we can call their last name Santos, but that’s probably not right – who are probably in their early 20s, since they seem to live in an apartment, but they get up to Archie-ish teen hijinks with boyfriends and dates.
Alana is the serious one, Betty-coded, with lighter skin, smaller breasts and the blue outfit. Ambar is the party girl in red, Veronica-coded and always ready for action of whatever type. They fight crime in the Southern California city of Las Brisas, the kind of place that has a vibrant downtown and a beach and is close enough to ski slopes for a day trip – a location designed for comics stories.
Their stories are short, in that Archie style. Sometimes about battling some supervillain threatening Las Brisas, but as often watching “Boozy Bees” on TV, or squabbling about dating two guys at once, or going camping in the mountains, or aiding Don Quixote (?!) who has randomly arrived in town (??!?). The word “random” is appropos much of the time, as are “quirky” and “slightly silly.” Again, it’s all starting from the premise “what if these Archie-style girls were Image-esque superheroines?”
Their powers are not deeply defined: they have costumes, of course, which manifest when they call on the goddess. They’re probably resistant to harm, since that’s pretty standard, and they do seem to glow when in costume. They definitely fly, and manifest big guns (most of the time) or big swords (once in a while, I suppose for a change of pace) with which to battle their enemies. But it’s not like Alana channels the power of ice and Ambar fire, or one of them turns into an armadillo and the other an ocelot, or their necklaces generate pulsing colorful forcefields in the shape of household objects, or anything like that. They just chase bad guys, squabble among themselves, and shoot their guns to mow down the henchmen. (Major villains get fisticuffs, or talked down, or some other less-lethal activity, so they can return in later stories.)
It’s a fun premise, and hasn’t worn out its welcome yet. It probably will, since it’s not a hugely durable or extensible premise, but a hundred and fifty pages doesn’t get us there. Greg draws it all in that Archie look, and is good at both the heavy-lidded women and the dim-bulb men. Fake’s stories are varied and goofy in interesting ways – there are twenty-two different stories here, and none of them are repetitive or rely on the same ideas. Again, I’m sure that will come: the premise isn’t that deep. But I’d expect probably another book this size of similar stories, then maybe one big all-the-villains-team-up epic, before it hits the wall of ennui.
