Aztek: The Ultimate Man #8

I haven't done one of these in a long while. Issues 6 & 7 were the ones I was really excited about, so I guess the will to finish kind of left once I knocked those out. Frankly, there isn't a whole lot to issues 8-9 that hasn't been covered by other issues.

This issue, and the next, are a bit odd to read now: they seem to be setting up a new status quo for Aztek as well as finally move his story forward a bit, but they must have known the book was getting cancelled at this point. Morrison certainly had plans to move Aztek into his JLA book, as there are several references to this in issues 8 & 9,

This issue opens with, finally, some history on the Q foundation & Aztek. Their legends have it that a vessel of Quetzalcoatl and a vessel of Texcatlipoca, the Shadow God Aztek will one day fight, fought long ago with Tezcatlipoca's vessel dying, vowing to return and bring about the Apocalypse. Queztalcoatl's vessel, feeling corrupted by pleasures of humanity, set himself on fire (now that's how you stage a goddamned demonstration), "vowing to return when needed". The future Q-Foundation saved his helmet, using it as the helmet for the champion, Aztek, over many generations. The current Aztek is actually named Uno, and he is back at the Q mountain to get his injuries of the last several issues treated. They are fairly disgusted by his poor performance thus far, and disturbed by the fact that Aztek knows what happened to his father.

The history of Aztek is very Morrison, as a lot of this old Incan & Mayan god stuff was fairly prominent in his Invisibles right around this time - Lord Fanny's origin story was published not much earlier than this and dealt with a lot of the same themes. We also get to see Aztek's "second" - the person who will take over should he fail - trying out the arnor and using quite a few defensive & offensive abilities we've never seen Aztek make use of. It's interesting that Morrison & Millar choose to underscore Aztek's ineffectiveness this way. But they also show that his number two's methods are much crueler than his - using a passing Eagle (I think a bald eagle, but I'm not sure) as a decoy to attract some heat-seeking missiles. Her methods, and thus the approved methods of the Q foundation, are contrary to Aztek's values - how many scenes have we had in this series of Aztek taking the time out to save an animal?

They hammer home the point that the Q foundation is inherently untrustworthy a bit too well, by revealing them to be in league with Lex Luthor, and Aztek returns home to find that he's been given a new, luxury apartment, by the Q Foundation and a mysterious benefactor (who we know to be Luthor). Aztek, for the first time in this series, gets to prove himself effective in a fight with some very Millar mock-supervillains by the names of Bloodhound, Tattoo, Deathgrip, and Awol. They go by Dial "V" for Villain and have apparently been hired to hold some schoolkids hostage by Lexcorp, to serve as confidence building cannon fodder for Aztek. Their existential malaise regarding their Z-List status is pretty funny, and, like a lot of this comic, very ahead of its time. This entire scene screams Millar to me, and Millar at his best. This is the Millar I like reading - clever, witty, insightful. Aztek makes short work of them - the first time he's allowed to actually be effective in a fight and it's basically a joke.

Next issue: Aztek gets to fight a real supervillain on his own, and then he's cancelled.