My Name is Holocaust #1-5

Because COVID-19 has caused a major disruption in new comic books, for the next few weeks Scoop will reexamine issues, runs, trades, and titles that are already available. We’ll take a look at perennial classics, current titles we are enjoying, significant runs, and our overall favorite books to suggest some new reading material or inspire fellow comic fans to dust off the old favorites. And if you live near a comic shop that’s still open during this time, we hope our suggestions will prompt you to check out their back issue and collected edition inventory. 

My Name is Holocaust #1-5
DC Comics/Milestone; $2.50 each

Leonard Smalls, better known as Holocaust, was a small-time gangbanger from the city of Dakota before the “Big Bang,” the event in which a chemical nerve agent used by the authorities killed most of the participants but left the survivors with dazzling and diverse powers.

The illegitimate child of Dakota’s mayor, at a young age Smalls killed his father and fell easily into a life of crime. Then, along with members of virtually all of the city’s gangs, Smalls was one of those gathered on Paris Island when the police utilized the less-than-safe gas. All around, bodies fell, but he did not. Instead he grew to several times his normal size. He subsequently began to develop powers based on pyrokinesis.

An outcast and a rogue element in Dakota, Holocaust went his own way. Always a bad-ass and frequently self-destructive, he was never a mustache-twirling villain but rather a harsh force of nature. Created by writer-editor Dwayne McDuffie, writer Ivan Velez, Jr., and artist Denys Cowan, Holocaust made his first appearance in Blood Syndicate #1. He initially joined the group, but he was kicked off the team after he challenged Tech-9 for its leadership.

For the bulk of Blood Syndicate’s run, Holocaust was a recurring character, bouncing between being simply an antagonist and a seriously deadly villain. He also appeared in Static #4 and in the pages of Icon in addition to the My Name is Holocaust miniseries.

The miniseries, written by Velez, penciled by Tommy Lee Edwards, inked by Steve Mitchell, and colored by Noelle Giddings, is the first truly deep dive on the character and it works. It’s 1995, so this isn’t the refined Tommy Lee Edwards whose work we know and love, but there’s a crackle of energy and dynamism that pulls the reader through. The chief beneficiary of this is writer Velez, who gets to start (and complete) a series without the rotating artists he was faced with on the first four issues of Blood Syndicate (which in hindsight must have contributed to me not liking that series when it was originally released).

Here Velez and company deliver a tight, complex tale with tons of secretive moves, double crosses, action, and suspense. The stylized art is a great platform for Giddings’ colors – always a highlight of the Milestone books – and all these years later the miniseries still makes an intriguing read.

–J.C. Vaughn