A couple of decades back, three men shared one studio.  Walt Simonson, Frank Miller and Howard Chaykin were doing some of the most vital comics work of the eighties, and I’d have loved to have been a fly on the wall as the three creators, equally adept and stylised in their writing as their acclaimed art, produced work that’s still acclaimed as some of the finest the medium has seen.

Simonson is most known for the work he did on Marvel’s Thor, and though he dabbled in creator-owned work with Starslammers, has mostly worked for Marvel and DC ever since.  Frank Miller is, along with Alan Moore, perhaps the medium’s biggest name, his take on Batman a definitive one, and creating work that he owned in the form of Sin City and Ronin.  And then there was Howard Chaykin.  His American Flagg! was perhaps the most inventive title of its time, a science fiction satire comprising equal parts New York Jewish chutzpah and draughtsmanship that owed as much to classic fashion illustrators as the great and good of the comics world.

While Simonson went on to do less interesting, though still distinctive, work in the mainstream, and Miller concentrated on his pulp crime series Sin City, Chaykin headed to television where he was involved with a so-what show called Mutant X.  Until, that is, a few years ago, when he made a low key return to the world of comics.  He’s been associated with a number of projects in the last few years, and I’ve been catching up with some of them.  None of them have the sheer pizzazz that American Flagg! had — its innovations in terms of design and lettering continue to make it one of the most graphically sophisticated comics you’ll ever see, and in a more visually-literate world it would rate as highly as Moore and Gibbons’s canonical Watchmen.  But, for all that, Chaykin’s more recent work still has much to recommend it.

In an industry characterised by the juvenile approach of its creators, never mind of its audience, Howard Chaykin stands out like a Miles Davis CD in a teenager’s heavy metal collection.  The jazz comparison is apt: there’s something achingly cool and sophisticated about Chaykin’s work.  His characters are stylishly dressed — Chaykin has to be the straightest male ever to pay such attention to stocking seams and the way fabric folds — and are indisputably grown-ups, from their pockmarked faces to their worldweary turns of phrase.

It could reasonably be said that Chaykin draws on the same range of characters every project he takes on.  The cynical liberal protagonist who has a way with women.  The women themselves, inevitably attractive in a lived-in way, and sassy with it.  The highly placed bad guy connected to a sinister conspiracy.  It’s not just the people that are interchangeable: where would Chaykin be without a wiseass portrayal of the media, and clever ways to weave it into the story?  And the fascination with design from the forties or before; flying boats and spats?

But, you know, so what?  Every creator has his or her tics and tropes, and Chaykin’s are at least idiosyncratic in an industry mainstream that…well, I was going to say vanilla in the extreme, but you see the problem.  Cheap, artificial vanilla makes a better comparison.  So, where to start with Chaykin, assuming you’ve checked out the wonderful collected edition of American Flagg!?

Mighty Love is worth a look, a romcom of sorts based on the premise that an ideologically opposed couple fall for each other in their superpowered identities.  City of Tomorrow has some interesting ideas, but doesn’t have the space to do them justice, in a tale of a son who comes back to find that his father’s utopia has become a hellhole.  But my favourite has to be his take on an old DC property, Challengers of the Unknown, reinvented as a smart satirical conspiracy thriller.  It’s dense, yes, and at times a touch exposition-heavy, but you can sense Chaykin cutting loose and having a whole bunch of fun as he lets rip.

Currently, Chaykin is working on some properties for Marvel.  His recent Captain America one-shot was a visual treat, and it’s good to see Chaykin on retro turf in a story set in the 50s.  It’s got a Joe McCarthy-alike, a sinister Soviet dame, and much cracking of fists on jaws, and I enjoyed it quite a bit.  It’d be good to see Chaykin at the helm of another creator-owned series, and there are whispers of a sequel to Black Kiss, a noir thriller controversial for its sexual content, amped up even higher than a regular Chaykin comic.

There are various projects that Chaykin has written, too, solo or with David Tischman, but never mind those for now.  Chaykin is at his best when he’s responsible for everything on the page, and even when he’s not at the height of his game his work provides a level of intelligent stimulation that you’ll rarely find elsewhere in a comics shop.