Concrete Vol. 1 Depths by Paul Chadwick

What else have I missed?

Welcome to 1986, and the beginning of a giant shift towards comics as we know them today. Dark Knight Returns appears on the scene and shifts our ideas of what superheroes should be. Not much later, a little comic book called Watchmen comes along and completely changes our expectations for comics in general. The second Love & Rockets collection is printed, marking the true beginning of the strength of this ultra-important indie comic. And the brand new Dark Horse Comics began publishing.

Nowadays Dark Horse is a well-established publisher known for its licensed properties. With Buffy, Star Wars, Conan, Firefly, and Indiana Jones just for starters, they’re an important mainstay in the comic book world. But in 1986, they were the rebellious young upstart, and Concrete was one of the characters that made them work.

Our protagonist, a speechwriter named Ron Lithgow, finds himself trapped within a twelve hundred pound body made of stone. His mind has been switched out by pesky aliens, but this book does not go down any path that this scenario would have inevitably explored in a Marvel or DC book of the time. Rather, the book’s creator Paul Chadwick uses Concrete’s dilemma to explore the human condition, isolation, and a man’s worth in the world.

Though Concrete has superhuman abilities, he does not fight supervillains or aliens, nor does he have it easy. He spends his time crossing the Atlantic Ocean for fun, exploring the depths of the sea and the tops of mountains, and being probed by government scientists desperate to understand what has been done to him. And even when he does attempt to save people, it goes wrong as often as it goes right.

I’m honestly blown away by how good this comic book was. It’s perhaps an accident of when this comic book came out, but people don’t regularly bring up Concrete in discussions of the canonical comic book runs. While I know this comic book was a big deal when it came out, it just doesn’t get the kind of recognition that, frankly, I now think it deserves.

This naturally makes me wonder what other gems were overlooked for one reason or another and that I now have limited exposure to.

This book stands up extremely well, too, a constant concern when reading a book twenty years old in such a young medium. I also understand that Chadwick’s art and writing only got better as the book aged, so I’m very excited to read the other books in the series.

Highly recommended.



My favorite bit:
Concrete at the birthday party, playing with the children. This was a very happy moment and I was glad to see it in the book.