Panel Vision - Human Defense Corp

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As I write this it’s Veterans Day, the day the US has set aside to honor the men, women, and non-binary individuals who’ve served in the nation’s armed forces.  It’s also kind of an odd holiday to try and make topical content around when you’re a comic reviewer as a lot of the military-oriented comic book content is from the ‘40s and ‘60s.  Previously I’ve looked at stuff like the incomparable Enemy Ace as well as the DC military heroes who served during World War 2 but this time around I wanted to dig into something a bit more modern.  

As such, I’ll be taking a look at a peculiar oddity offered by that bizarre time in comics that was the early 2000s.  It’s part of the great DC Comics tradition of sporadically reviving their military comics in hopes of recapturing their massive popularity of past decades, each attempt a unique and curiously compelling attempt in its own right and this one is a real doozy: The Human Defense Corps. 

Published as a six-issue mini-series in 2003, Human Defense Corps chronicles the adventures of very soldiers who’ve joined the newest branch of the US military: the Human Defense Corp.  The HDC is a neat little concept, even if it’s ultimately just another one of DC’s failed attempts to create an answer to Marvel’s SHIELD (seriously there’s been this, Project CADMUS, Checkmate, ARGUS, and about a dozen others that never managed to stick.)  The other big reason anyone might know the Human Defense Corp is that they’re one of the handful of answers to the question “What did Lex Luthor actually do while he was President?”

I’m not exactly sure how much Lex’s presidency has been erased from the comic nerd knowledge base or even the collective memory of the outside world but it was a weird time.  A combination of mega-event comics and the change in national mood after 9/11 basically curtailed any plans DC might’ve had for an evil President at the time, which rendered most of Lex’s presidency kind of inert.  He did do a handful of things, most of them tied up in the Our Worlds At War event and the ‘Public Enemies’ storyline that ultimately ended his presidency.  

Outside of those instances, the Human Defense Corp is basically his biggest legacy as a President, mainly because it popped up again in the Superman event New Krypton.  Really, the Lex years served as an excuse for DC to experiment with a lot of these weird military/government ops comics like the 2001 Suicide Squad comic or the 2000 Creature Commandos- incidentally, I’ll probably be getting to both of those down the line. 

The Human Defense Corp is one of those ideas that makes so much sense for a comic book universe you’re surprised it took so long to spring up.  The Human Defense Corp was a new branch of the US military created to fight aliens, though, as this comic establishes, they also fought plenty of non-alien monsters as well.  The only requirement for recruits of the HDC is that they need to be decorated veterans of previous alien campaigns, which I really like as an idea.  It sets up a nice, in-universe reason to load the book up with continuity and references to past events, which is always fun. 

As for the main story, it revolves around the first HDC mission slowly coming back to haunt them as the Corp comes to realize a group of troops it initially thought were dead had actually been kidnapped and taken to hell.  This all culminates in the Human Defense Corp launching a unilateral invasion of Hell and it’s amazing.  

However, that’s just the big boom and bombast final stuff, there are a lot of other enjoyable elements in the first 4 smaller issues.  Issue 1, which details the failed mission, is an interesting look at how petrifying a world of aliens and monsters can be to even battle-tested soldiers.  Issue 2 explores a really interesting idea of this Christian character that thinks aliens count as a loophole in the commandment “thou shall not kill.”   

As that probably suggests it’s a little hard to read how Human Defense Corp actually feels about the military though I think the best way to sum it up is “love the soldiers, hate the machine.”  This is best summed up in issue 3, about a protracted HDC campaign in the UK fighting a previously undiscovered race of mole people.  The issue is peppered with little subversive elements, like how the mole people are labeled “non-human indigenous,” framing the HDC as a decidedly colonialist power. 

The colonialist nature of the HDC is backed up by second act scene of the HDC deciding to bomb a mole man nursery because they weren’t sure if it was a military target or not.  This was all probably inevitable for a comic made in 2003, as the patriotic high from the dawn of the Iraq War was beginning to fade and the military quagmire in the middle east was beginning to take shape but it’s also refreshing that the comic is trying to be more than just our army at war. 

Overall though I don’t think Human Defense Corp is trying to make a firm statement, just be accurate to a sense of reality.  That’s the whole stock and trade of the book, after all, how would a real military behave in a world of alien invasions and centaur attacks.  As such it makes sense the book would have some elements about the bravery of the individual soldiers and nobility of rescuing comrades behind enemy lines but also have an eye towards unconvincing propaganda, obfuscation from those in charge, and the imperialist nature of the US military. 

Aside from the really solid writing, I have to praise the artwork by penciller Clement Sauve Jr. and colorist Moose Baumann.  Sauve is kind of a weird talent in that he favors sort of a rubbery approach to people’s faces but it ends up working pretty well at making them look distinguishable.  Everyone does have a bit of an action figure-y bearing but it fits the tone and style of the book nicely and reminds me of the character modeling in XCOM: Enemy Unknown.  Where Sauve really shines, though, is in imagining the cool, weird, high tech magic stuff that the HDC gets to use. 

There’s a satellite fort in issue 2 with a really cool zero gravity lounge, a special supersonic jet that can maintain Earth orbit directly opposite the sun for prolonged midnight séances, and the invasion of Hell is absolutely great.  Baumann backs up all of this with a great wash of color, making really good use of lighting actually.  A series like this has to contend with a lot of strange light interplay between the artificial LED rounds of the military tech and the creepy glow of supernatural entities and Baumann always wrings the best coloring out of that.  The Séance sequence, in particular, is excellent. 

I’m not sure I’d say Human Defense Corp is a great comic or even necessarily good but it’s certainly unique in a very satisfying way.  It has the vibe of a late ‘90s comic, that era after Marvel’s bankruptcy when DC wasn’t worrying as much about competitive sales and was focusing on filling smaller, weirder niches.  That’s really the best term for it- a niche comic and it’s up to you to put together if it fills your niche.  If you like military thrillers with a genre story bent it’s definitely worth tracking down, especially if you’re a fan of XCOM as I mentioned.  In fact, I dare say that Human Defense Corp would make a pretty great video game for DC, assuming they were more willing to adapt properties that don’t feature Batman. 

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