92615_RAA_LooseCannon_Text_R1_PROOF

Maybe it's how his by-the-bootstraps, rough-and-tumble youth in Hell's Kitchen in the 1920s was glorified in our family with the gauze-filtered reverence of a Francis Ford Coppola film. Maybe it's how it was impressed upon us that America is the land of freedom, and while his journey was one of hardship, it all fell away when he saw Lady Liberty.

Or maybe it's because I was an impressionable pre-teen when our country was gripped by an orgy of national pride in 1976.

Maybe it's Bill Murray's speech in the third reel of Stripes .

Whatever it is, I've always had a big ol' soft-spot for the unapologetic American patriot. And whether he wants to admit it or not, so does Ande Parks.

You can tell.

Ande, as well as his partners-in-crime, Phil Hester, Gordon Purcell, and Andy Kuhn, all, to a man, embrace unashamedly what is, at first glance, a bit of an old saw in comics: the Great American Hero. In these pages, you'll find the Average Joe sacrificing himself to Do Good for His Country; you'll find a powerful hero bedecked in the ol' red-white-and-blue; you'll find the trusty sidekick, the shadowy government forces, the villains, the gadgets, the wry pop culture references, the subtle winks to the audience... in short, you'll find all the trappings of the standard superhero...

...and Ande and the boys turn it all on its head. Just when you think you know where it's going, the story careens right up to that Big Cliché...

...and makes a deft and skillful ninety degree turn, and we're all off to the races.

It starts in the logo, believe it or not. It says Uncle Sam ostensibly, in the stencilled letters the military uses, but between the S and the A, shoulder ing its way into the type, is what looks to be an afterthought. There it is. An L. Uncle Slam. Before we even pick up the book, the logo puts us on notice that this story, this character, these guys responsible are going to take our expectations and give 'em all a good shake.

Then you open it up, and it's a roller coaster blur of goodness.

The main character: right out of Hollywood casting: chiseled jaw, confident pose. Stars on his barrel chest and a US belt-buckle. But he's blowing bub bles out of that Fred MacMurray pipe, and his eye's been shot out. The dog is the brains of the outfit.

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