American Century (comics)

Infobox comic book title
title = American Century


imagesize =
caption =
schedule = Monthly
ongoing = Y
Crime = Y
publisher = Vertigo
date = May 2001 - October 2003
issues = 27
main_char_team =
writers = Howard Chaykin
David Tischman
artists =
pencillers = Marc Laming
Luke Ross
Lan Medina
inkers = John Stokes
Digital Chameleon
letterers =
colorists =
editors =
creative_team_month =
creative_team_year =
creators = Howard Chaykin
David Tischman
TPB = Scars & Stripes
ISBN = 1563897911
TPB1 = Hollywood Babylon
ISBN1 = 1563898853
subcat = Vertigo
sort = PAGENAME

American Century was a comic book series published by DC Comics as a part of the Vertigo imprint starting in early 2001. It was co-written by Howard Chaykin and David Tischman.Citation | last = Irvine | first = Alex | author-link = Alexander C. Irvine | contribution = American Century | editor-last = Dougall | editor-first = Alastair | title = The Vertigo Encyclopedia | pages = 20 | publisher = Dorling Kindersley | place = New York | year = 2008 | ISBN = 0-7566-4122-5 | oclc = 213309015]

The story concerned a former American pilot who fakes his death and goes on the run in the 1950s. Chaykin intended it as a "left-wing version of Steve Canyon", ["American Century" #1] and wrote all of the issues. The comic ran for approximately two years.

Plot

Harry Block, a World War II veteran, fakes his own death and makes his way to Central America to create a new identity for himself as Harry Kraft, a hard-drinking smuggler. During a war in Guatemala, a CIA operative blackmails Block into assassinating Rosa de Santiis, a popular leader in opposition to the CIA puppet dictator General Zavala. Afterward, he heads back to the United States, taking a road trip from Hollywood to Chicago to New York, exploring myriad avenues of 1950s American culture.

The comic ends with Block essentially turning into the character he had created for the fictional "Starburst Comics", a vigilante known as "Dr. Dream".

Collected editions

Some of the series has been collected into two trade paperbacks

*"Scars & Stripes" (collects issues #1-4, DC/Vertigo, 2001, ISBN 1563897911)
*"Hollywood Babylon" (collects issues #5-9, DC/Vertigo, 2002, ISBN 1563898853)

Notes

References

*gcdb series|id=10051|title="American Century"
*comicbookdb|type=title|id=3038|title="American Century"
* [http://www.comics-db.com/DC_Comics/A/American_Century/index.html 'American Century"] at the Big Comic Book DataBase

External links

* [http://www.time.com/time/columnist/arnold/article/0,9565,127864,00.html An 'American Century' of Unrepentant Crime] , "Time", May 25, 2001