The Bulletproof Coffin Vol. 1

We need to talk about something very serious for a moment. I’m sorry it has to be in this forum. I’m sorry because it’s going to hurt your feelings and you are going to associate that with me, and that hurts me, but what I’m doing transcends whatever you and me are.

Comics can be art. They can carry as much symbolism and message as any other finely crafted artifact. Artifacts carry the meanings of entire cultures. They can capture the whole of a civilization in a simple urn or serve as vain, dusty monuments to long dead god-kings. But to the point, SOME OF THE COMICS YOU READ SUCK.

Don’t be angry with me; be angry with your self. Yes, I forgive you. I know how you feel I really do. You get some money, you go to the comic book shop, and the first shiny Ultimate-New-52-Crisis-On-Infinite-Assholes-Point bullshit you see you buy. You like the art and the story is okay, so a month later you buy the next one. That one is okay, so you might as well read the next one too. But that one is just flat. And so is the one after that. Now you’re 4 in to the 5-6-7-12 part series---and don’t forget (your favorite artist) is doing next issue’s crossover variant, OH I CAN’T STOP NOW! You whine like a child for its mother’s breast. This is how you stop the cycle of violence you mommy marvel teat sucking baby: Go and buy the trade paperback of “The Bulletproof Coffin.” Or better yet go onto ebay and find the individual issues. Sell an organ, maybe a handy-J or two, whatever you have to do to acquire this publication. This is all that’s going to save you.

David Hine has been writing comics since the early 80s, lots of comics. Go to his Wikipedia page here, if you don’t believe me. I felt a little bad to have not read more. I read X-Men: the 198, Spiderman Noir, and the X-Men Civil War stuff, but wasn’t really moved. I’m told Strange Embrace is cool but haven’t picked it up. Spiderman Noir is my personal favorite of the three I’ve read, but until BPC I wouldn’t have recognized his name. Michael Coulthard, aka “Shaky Kane,” has also been involved with comics since the early 80s. I’ve never read any 2000AD and the only Judge Dredd I have is a Batman crossover---which is pretty awesome. Simon Bisley did the art and won an Eisner in 1992 for it. He has a Frazetta/Sienkiewicz feel that I dig.

There is a really good interview with Hine & Kane over at The Comics Journal website. It does a good job of covering their pasts, work ethic, and where they see themselves going post BPC. There has been some recent dust up (here) about them cutting up a Fantastic Four #2 in an effort to Billy Burroughs the story. The cut-up technique was cool for Burroughs in 1955, but fuck if I know what The Nova Trilogy is about. You read it, you tell me. Burroughs called it “Mythology for the Space Age” and there is a mirroring in what Jack Kirby does in the early 1970s at DC with The Fourth World. It is an immediate and actively conscious effort to create something NEW; to take ancient concepts driven by primal behaviors seen through a modern psychic-lens of theoretical science and technology. There is also the presence of a spiritual philosophy professing interconnectivity, a macro-web that connects everyone with everything, throughout the whole of time and space, never really ending, never really beginning. Oh. My. God. I just had a thought…what if Jack Kirby illustrated a comic written by William S. Burroughs? How f-ing ultimate would that be!? Alejandro Jodorowsky does the movie adaptation and Brian Wilson does the soundtrack. I am so high right now.

There have been a good number of insightful reviews of BCP. People dissect the shit out’em, and get real Marianas on it. Go google them, I don’t have time to hold your hand. Like the reviews, what makes these books great is the detail. Not just the story and the art but little subtle things, like in issue #3, page 17. The page is printed to make it look like its corner is torn off, revealing page 19 below. You turn to page 18 and its corner is still printed like it’s torn, showing page 16. The main character in panel one of page 19 is holding a comic with the corner torn that looks exactly like the corner of your “torn” comic.

H&K constantly play with pop-culture symbols and icons on multiple levels, breaking the fourth wall with both their main character as he reads their comic, but us as their readers reading-their-comic-about their-main-character's-comic-reading-their-comic. Meaning morphs from one line to the next, through each panel, constantly being reworded and redrawn as something else to touch us deep inside that reptilian part of our brains.

Kane’s colors are synesthetic, how can you not hear The Retro Eye in the panel above fighting the red racist scourge? The missing narrator panel says because they’re fighting on the moon and space is a vacuum, there’re no sound effects, that we have to imagine the ker-pows! This is from issue #3 of their current efforts, "The Bulletproof Coffin, Disinterred.” Yes, those are communist-KKK-assassins, the “Kommunist Kill Kadre.” Do you understand why you have to buy this book now? Do you see why you have to help The Retro Eye and Coffin Fly defeat the Red Menace and his giant robot made from stolen national monuments? Do you see!? DO YOU SEE!?

Saga #1

One of the books I read this week is Saga #1, from Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. This is exactly how a comic book should open up, POW! Life in extremis right in your face as we get a close up of a character giving birth in a garage. The narrator’s words “This is how an idea becomes real” running down the heroine’s profile to her word bubble “Am I shitting? It feels like I’m shitting!” Yes… yes most likely you are shitting, I thought to myself.

Being of the age when friends start feeling that ancestral tugging at their loins to reproduce, and in conjunction with being born and raised in The Woods, I am familiar with the birthing process. I have been informed that it feels like you’re taking a large poo, and that often in the process of pushing, a good sized pile of feces can come out on the table before the baby. Using the Big Poop as a metaphor for idea creation has got to hit home for anyone who has ever tried to be creative, ever. Vaughan and Staples really nail it on the very first page. Vaughan has two ankle biters of his own, so I’m guessing he was present for at least one of those births and he saw the parallels between bringing an idea to the page and a person into the world. Sometimes writing does feel like a big bowel movement, sometimes all that comes out is loose and runny and it stinks, and maybe it burns a bit. Sometimes it’s solid and you think it might tear you up, but when it’s over the sense of relief is overwhelming. We are all born in the midst of blood and shit, and if you’re lucky maybe in the end only one of those things will be present.

The narration isn’t boxed or bubbled, but incorporated into each panel’s art. It runs through and around each panel, interwoven along the dialog of our cover-heroes. It disappears right when it should and when it comes back it is seamless. I don’t think anyone has doubts that Vaughan can write. I was at the Image Expo back in February and in a panel there was a question posed “when did you know you had it, that you were writing well?” (or at something to that effect) and Vaughan said something like around the back half of Y the Last Man-again not a direct quote. His time since then with comics and in the television writer’s room has done nothing but sharpen his skills. He has said the title was chosen on purpose to be grand. Saga is supposed to be a real saga. I am eager to see his world building again.

I know of Fiona Staples through North 40, DV8, and Jonah Hex. She signed my Jonah Hex #66 at the Image Expo. She smiled and was pretty and I thanked her and could think of nothing to say. I’m a loser. She was there with Vaughan promoting Saga. Her lines are beautiful and fluid. Her palette is perfect. The shadowing scales add depth and highlights. Saga is visually exquisite. The Lying Cat is just great.

I got two problems: 1) The friggin gunpowder bag and 2) The Vagina-face guard dog. The Vagina-faced dog almost makes up for the gunpowder, but c’mon! It’s labeled gunpowder. One could argue the dog had a problem with the bag too, and that’s what makes Boba-Solo’s intro so cool. That’s not fair, he is called The Will, and the cat is my giant cat fantasy put on paper. I want to know which one of them (Vaughan or Staples) came up with the idea. Who exactly said to the other hey, I got this idea, this dog looks like a giant bull dog and has a mouth like a vagina.

There is no doubt I’m going to get the next issue or the series, if not for any other reason than the potential for graphic robot sex alone. If what we see is just a taste of gray-skinned ugly bumpin' to come I'm down to party.

Ragemoor #1

When I first saw the cover to Ragemoor #1 I thought to myself “hey man, why is that castle about to eat that guy? Did he say something to the castle? Where did he get that awesome onesie? Hey wait a minute, is that a chick?” so I immediately bought it.

I have seen other works of Richard Corben, being a big fan of space barbarians and BOOBIES. Heavy Metal is epic-dary. How do the friggin fran-sh say avant-avant-guard?

Jim Strnad I only knew of through the Star Wars expanded universe bullshit. I wanted nothing to do with that albatross, f-that. I saw Lucas at the In-and-Out on the way to OAX in 2008. He was with this fine sistah, I mean sistah, I can spell just fine, she was black. Dark chocolate hot as a south Chicago night in August. I recognized her too from some network morning show. So Lucas is in line and this little kid right behind him has a cartoony-Yoda t-shirt on (I hate you anime, and for what you did to my Yoda) and I’m star-struck. This is a perfect moment. I’m all the way across the room and there he is, my Homer (Greek not Groening) with his cowboy boots and pompadour, and that turkey flap neck—and I know it happens with age, but you got all that toy-fucking-money GET IT FIXED George—he’s there with one of his kids, no way I’m going to get this opportunity ever again. He orders, gets his food, walks out looking kind of irritated and in my pipsqueak-greasy-barely-audible voice I say “Thank you, for everything.” And his woman comes right behind him, this glorious teak goddess, and she says “thanks” with a smile and a pointy finger, like “thank you” and tipping her finger at/to me. Her eyes were like onyx. These deep-dark pools of glittering forever, washing over me, through me…for a minute I thought I was over the event horizon and she put some voodoo on me, but I burped and felt better.

So guess what, the castle never eats the guy like on the cover. I read an interview with Corben where he says he never intended the castle to be a real boy but the editors wanted at least one drawing of the stay-puft castle. It did make me read the advert synopsis and that made me buy the book, so call me the sucker. There is some pretty awesome gargoyle-on-man action though. There is also this lighting effect to the illustrations, could be digital or some sort of layering technique, that gives them a depth, and I would say at times too polished of a depth. I like the grain of Corben’s stuff in the past, I like to see the marks of tools on a tangible surface. The illustrations of the castle Ragmoor and its bloody pre-everything ancient origin are amazing. Speaking of sistahs, the lady in the book is red bone thick, man! And again, boobies.

Strnad got into writing television animation after working in underground comics (much with Corben early on) but hasn’t been back to comics for a while. I like the story so far, I like our hero and the butler, but those awesomely-amazing-Corben-birthed-monster-castle-back-story panels were just a big fat info dump I didn’t want. This book is awesome, words and pictures, but I like foreplay. A little lick and nibble, a pinch here or there in some sensitive areas before the skull-face-baboon rape. At least in my mind they raped me. In interviews Strnad has said that Ragmoor was meant to be a one-shot, so I forgive. But I do not forget. He also said Darkhose wanted to make it a four issue series, so why not take a little more time and sherlock that shit out holmes. I know, easy for me to say.

I’m going to get the next one. I’ve seen the preview covers for a couple on the study of comic books intrawebsite, and the whole H-P-Poe-and-Call-of-Cthulhu’s-House-of-boobies thing is cool.