TERMINAL CITY 631
from the 1984 group is former fi re eater and current arsonist Torch Johnson who,
like Orez in the earlier series, works for underworld interests. Concerns over urban
redevelopment motivate most of the actors in Aerial Graffi ti, a wry contemporary com-
ment on the state of urban cores in the mid-1990s when these stories were published.
Despite all plotlines seeming to converge at the Transatlantic race from Paris to Ter-
minal City featuring a magnetic train, a Zeppelin, and an experimental gravity-defying
airship, the race itself is not part of this series. In an epilogue, Quinn promises that the
race is “another story,” one that remains untold since the second Terminal City story was
the last to be published at this writing.
Th e two Terminal City stories read as much like one continuous serial as two
separate stories. Motter’s narration in both incorporates archival newsreel footage and
contemporary television reports to develop characters’ backgrounds and introduce
plot elements, and alternating issues feature voice-overs from two characters: Cosmo
Quinn from his memoir, “On the Wall,” and mystery woman Monique Rome, the
Lady in Red, who fi ghts crime in an unoffi cial capacity and whose voice-over (in the
form of a journal) presents the city as a jungle environment with shifting zones of
safety and danger. Th e architectural designs are as interesting as readers might expect
from a Dean Motter series, and Lark’s crowd scenes are fi lled with visual jokes, like
the recognizable fi gures from science fi ction fi lms in the background of a scene at a
used robot lot.
Instead of the dystopian paranoia that characterizes much of Motter’s other work,
the Terminal City stories feature a low-key nostalgia and some silly humor. Th ere
is something comfortable and quietly impressive about the deco designs of the city,
which shares design elements with Mister X’s Radiant City but which is much less
oppressive. Despite protagonist Quinn’s proclamation that “We were really compet-
ing against the NEW AGE itself. We were fi ghting against our own obsolescence,”
that fi ght is over before the fi rst issue. Over the course of the two series, Quinn will
move past fear and regret over his own past to integrate his past Human Fly experi-
ences into his present, where he still works as a window washer but also has regular
if unspectacular engagements as a daredevil. Meanwhile, the series is populated with
characters whose wacky names refuse attempts at treating them seriously. Th ese
include low-level thug brothers Micasa and Sucasa, Quinn’s ex-girlfriend Charity
Ball and her sisters Faith and Hope, and Mayors Orwell and Huxley. Past Motter
collaborators Ken Steacy and Paul Rivoche have buildings named after them, and
sky-writer Raymond Alexander is clearly an homage to Buck Rogers creator Alex Ray-
mond. Th ere is an element of vaudeville, a dancing-as-fast-as-we-can spirit of joy that
leavens the series.
Lark’s pencils are impressive, especially in the second series, where the colors and
fi ne pencil lines begin to show the polish and snap that characterize his later work in
Gotham Central and Daredevil. Here readers can see the development of his distinctive
down-to-earth style as he captures clearly human poses of characters, like Human Fly
Cosmo Quinn, engaged in almost superhuman behaviors.
