Publisher: Drawn and Quarterly (November 9, 2010).
Hardcover, 72 pages
Anyone
who is even remotely interested in independent comics must be, at least
peripherally aware of the Acme Novelty Library. It is the brainchild of Chris
Ware, an artist without parallel. It can honestly be said that no one puts
together comics like he does. The attention to detail and physical construction
of the comic is immaculate. Each panel portrays a depth of feeling and
loneliness. Each is poignant and sublime. Taken together it is an overall work
of human suffering and loss.
Like
all of Ware’s stories, this is not a triumph of the human spirit. It is a story
of the weariness of life, of one man continuing to trundle through the world
despite loss after loss. The protagonist, Jordan (or Jason) Lint is not a
likeable person, in fact he would usually be the heavy, the antagonist, of most
normal stories. He is a bully, a cheat, a white collar criminal, but he is also
human. He has genuine love beyond himself and his story is the struggle in his
soul between good and evil- this is often personified when he calls himself
Jason (evil) or Jordan (good), and when Lint is clad in either blue (good) or
red (red). Unfortunately, evil seems to triumph mostly in Lint’s tale.
Despite
an unpleasant main character, we see his entire life unfold and see the forces
shaping Jordan Lint into the terrible person he was to become. He hate him, we
sympathize with him, we are sorry to see him go. All in it all, it was a life.
No more, no less.
by Brian Barr Publisher: Brian Barr Books (April, 2018) Softcover, 28 pages
“And, just as he planned, he was breaking out of this
facility easy enough. His body was even stronger than when he entered the
asylum, as he spent his waking hours doing nothing but conditioning,
bodybuilding, and sprinting around the yard. It took little time to clear one
hallway, then another stairwell, all while Ichiro’s memory was on point. He
knew the facility in and out, knew where the deactivated cyborg guards would be
sprawled out on the floor since they were stopped in their redundant sounds. All
of the humans were out that night, recovering from a long day while preparing
for tomorrow.”
Once again, Brian Barr has turned out a superb cyberpunk
story in the classic tradition. As I’ve written before, cyberpunk works at its
best when it is asking question about the nature of reality and life. What
makes someone alive. And if something is a copy of a copy of a copy does that
final copy have an identity or life of its own? If you say no, then you must
consider how our own identity is created through the combination of DNA and
learned behavior. Are we not just inconsistent copies of those who came before?
In this story, we have an inmate at a cyber-asylum, a
famous artist. In the asylum a person is placed into a tank and their mind is
whisked to cyberspace to work on their disorders in peace, away from the soul
sucking world and the people in it. The protagonist is in his so long that his
body is on the verge of total decay. He must make a decision then whether to
escape with another inmate and be downloaded into an artificial body or die. As
you might guess, that’s not much a choice. The story in an intriguing sci-fi
tale, and I would recommend to everyone with an interest in the genre. For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.
By Katherine Collins (formerly Arn Saba), Trina Robbins (Introduction)
Publisher: Conundrum Press (Octover 2017)
Softcover 328 pages
I feel like I’ve always known Neil the Horse. I’ve
never read it before, I may have seen a few issues back in comic shops back in
the day, but I’ve literally never read a line. Yet somehow, it is as warm and
familiar as slipping on an old pair of slippers. A feeling of nostalgia
surrounds me on every page, and somehow I get a comforting feeling for things
past, even if all the material is new to me.
This is because the influences that shape Neil the
Horse come from early childhood (from everyone’s childhood at this point). They
are bright spangly cartoons (half in black and white, half in color) that
danced about in the 1930s. The old ones from early Disney or Fleischer studios
, Betty Boop, early Popeye the Sailor, Koko the Clown, all of which often had
music to pad up the experience. These early visions of a cartoon universe gave
birth the Neil the Horse and his companions. The entire book is an ode, a love
letter, to the masters of the past, which obviously infected the author’s
imagination.
While the subject matter and style may not be unique,
it is very different from any comic I’ve seen out there. The author constantly
plays with form and mediums. Sometimes it’s a straight up comic, other times it’s
a prose story with illustrations. Often there are cut out sections for old
fashion dress-up paper dolls, and sheet music for the numerous songs presented
in the stories.
These are static characters placed in different time
periods as is needed by the story. If you’re looking for some world building,
or a mythology this is not the book for you. This doesn’t mean the stories are
bad, on the contrary, but remember this is simply light hearted fare.
Wonderful, whimsical, and silly.
A few of the stories don’t work. Some of the
illustrations lack polish, the framing indicates an amateur on the verge of
becoming a professional. The black and white often hamper the frivolity of the
comic. I don’t often say this, but color would have really helped to sell the
magical nature of the world. There’s something about a rainbow done in
greyscale that is so depressing. And musical numbers do not translate well at
all to a comic medium.
One final note. Neil the Horse is one of the few independents
to jump mediums. In the 90s a series of radio plays was made by the author
using the cast of the comic. Apparently, it had rave reviews. Now they are all
available on Youtube. The first of them is included below.
by Ken Reid (Introduction by Alan Moore) Publisher: Rebellion (November 30, 2017) Hardcover, 122 pages
A
collection of humorous one panel cartoons from the 1970s which appeared in the
kid’s comic magazine Jet (later on known as Jet and Buster), whose protagonist
is the aforementioned Faceache. In the original he goes by a different name,
Ricky Rubberneck, but like many ideas in pilot episodes, it was soon discarded,
and afterwards everyone (even his own father) referred to him as Faceache.
The
main character gained his moniker (I assume it’s not his Christian name) by his
bizarre ability to reshape his face and parts of his skeletal structure to
create different bizarre shapes and slightly change his height. Think of a
bratty Mr. Fantastic and you have a decent idea (Fantastic Four meets The
Infancy Gospel of Thomas). Page after page he gets into ridiculous
situations, mostly moneymaking schemes, that require him to “scrunge” his face
up in a grotesque manner. Most of them come to bad end for our hero and he ends
up shot at, beat up, set on fire, chased by mobs, and so on. Only to start it
all over again next week.
This
is fun book, drawn and inked by a master craftsman. One who knows how to draw
an odd face, and keep the action flowing. Comic drawing and timing has almost
become an extinct talent in the art field. So few of this type are produced
anymore, and those who do it, don’t have the background (yet!) to draw physical
comedy on the level of Ken Reid. Therefore, I’m very glad this volume was put
out. As the target audience at the time was probably around the 13-year-old
mark, I appreciated it on a technical level, rather than the actual content.
Nostalgia would probably help here in appreciation of the material. I could
easily see someone, reliving part of their past gazing at the old cartoons.
Publisher: State University of New York Press; Reprint edition (July 2nd, 2005).
Hardcover, 309 pages
“For many, Lockport clearly
functioned as a symbol of art, a futuristic emblem of the amazing things being
accomplished by human ingenuity. This was clear in the rhetoric surrounding the
canal’s opening celebration, and we have already seen a number of travelers’
accounts that equate Lockport with art. Caroline Gilman wrote that ‘here, the
great Erie Canal has defied nature and used it like a toy.’”
Much was said in the early 19th
century of the little city that became known as Lockport. Once upon a time it
was a bustling city, full of trade and industry. Now it is sinkhole of human
trash and indolence. The once great aspirations and artifacts of their proud
ancestors have been allowed to decay and rot away in a whirlwind of human
waste, alcoholism, and drug abuse. The current population, a direct product of
chemical abuse and inbreeding, are like Lovecraft characters from The Shadow over Innsmouth, barely
recognizable as human and unable to communicate beyond one syllable words. And
I should know, my mother is from there. I have a host of bizarre cousins,
running about with deformities, nibbling like rats on the corner of papers, and
infesting this ghost of greatness.
One of the locks in the city.
The development of the city Lockport
is tied, like all of Western New York, to the construction of the Erie Canal.
In fact, you might say that the entirety of that state, up to the present day
was fundamentally shaped by this monumental construction. Both physically and
ethnically, as many of the laboring races (primarily Irish and Welsh) settled
down in the places created by the canal. The city of Lockport itself was
founded around the creation a double row of locks (one set for raising and the
other for lowering) on the waterway. For those who don’t know, a water lock is
a method of raising and lowering boats between stretches of water of different
levels on the canal. The distinguishing feature of a lock is a fixed chamber in
which the water level can be added to or removed from. This allows a boat to be
moved up and down treacherous drops.
Essentially there isn’t much to this
story. Not much drama, just men planning an audacious project, on which the
city was one stop. The author lets a lot of other people’s work do the heavy
lifting for him, and then stretches out the material as far as he could. The
last fifty pages of text (not the appendixes) could easily be jettisoned. The
reality is that there wasn’t much to talk about. Even the two workers riots
just didn’t have enough documentation to add more beyond the fact that they
occurred.
Opening of the Erie Canal
The author tries to hard to dredge up
some social justice relevancy in his findings. It’s obvious he’s grasping desperately
around looking from some emotional racial foothold on which he can make a grand
statement. But he can’t find it, so he makes a lot of little snide remarks
about the kind acts that other’s performed back during the time of the
construction, implying that they could’ve done more. Overall, it comes across
as a lazy work on a topic of minor interest (even the locals of the city didn’t
care enough to buy the book). For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.
“The sensations Spacix produced were nothing
like Shinobu knew from past drug experiences. Cannabis programs made his inner
motors hum and gave his circuits a “light” feeling, as if her were soaring
above the clouds. Mushroom chips brought funny hallucinations and colors to his
fiberoptic vision. Cocaine replications gave his motherboard an intense sense
of energy, and he could study for hours with it, as well as with the Adderall
programs he tried. Each e-drug gave its own effect, and all of them intrigued
Shinobu, made him want to indulge more.”
The
one thing which has always drawn me to cyberpunk stories is, at its best, the genre
is an examination of what it means to be human, what defines humanity, and what
is the line between sentience and programming. Back in the middle of the
previous century, it was considered necessary for all literature (at least
those which were to be taken seriously) to reflect on what was called “the
human condition”. Then post-modernism came along and erased all that, playing
as they did with all manner of conventions. The idea of “the human condition”
was old hat. Except in the realm of sci-fi.
Author Brian Barr
Which
brings us this story, number 3 in the Nihon
Cyberpunk series, by emerging sci-fi writer Brian Barr. Here we see a the
development of cyborgs as essentially comfort animals for those humans who have
experienced loss, or in the case of our main character, who could not have
children. In our protagonist, the nature of the cyborg’ simulation of actual
human male adolescent characteristics is so accurate that he begins having
teenage angst and experiments with e-drugs- the registered sensations of actual
drug users broken down into code. As the protagonist takes the drug though, we
wonder, is he actually enjoying it or is he simply running through a designated
program of code. From that, we begin to question whether our own actions and
predispositions are much different from this cyborg boy. In the old days, the
Calvinists called this predestination, today we call it programming.
As
is suggested by the tragic ending to this tale, how much of our lives is
controlled by invisible forces beyond our control? How much of our lives can we
really shape? How much are we just deluding ourselves? For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.
When I was younger the bullshit
phrase, “Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” was bandied about by the
insipid film Love Story. I wasn’t
actually born when it came out, but my mother (may her evil soul rot in Hell)
was a romantic drivel junkie, absorbing as much of the garbage as she could,
diving from one Harlequin romance and romantic comedy to the next like a dope
fiend after a fix.
It’s ironic, considering how much a
series of train wrecks all of her personal relations turn out to be. No one was
good enough, no one had achieved enough (even though she was a lowly civil
servant), the “right guy” was just around the corner. “What’s wrong with all
the men?” she’d whine. “They aren’t trying to woo me.” Or the romance began
great, the stars glistened in her eyes, but then it was revealed that her new love was just an ordinary guy, not a goddamn living Ken doll, and
her interest waned. “I’m just not feeling it anymore, you know?” Then she would
lay about, wondering what was wrong with everyone else that she was alone.
Where did this come from? What was
the genesis? The great ten-cent plague. Comic books. Specifically romance comics targeted at girls. Extinct today, this genre of the medium made their debut in
the early 1950s, and were created by the great duo of Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.
The pair who pretty much seemed have created each new trend in the comic
industry beginning with Captain America. Well, after superheroes faded, the
pioneered westerns then came up with romance. And they hit! Romance comics were
a staple for close to twenty years in the industry. But how did the romance
stories play out? Well that brings us to the point of this book.
Granted I may be reading more into
this tome than I should, but it’s difficult not to when you read story after
story of romantic entanglements and love-at-first-sights which inevitably end
in a marriage proposal. “Oh Mike, I will. SIGH.” It is perhaps the genius
behind the editor’s selection of reprints in this book. The stories are simply
offered up without comment. This was how romantic love was presented to teenage
girls back in the day.
What was once considered mushy trash,
can now be studied with ironic detachment. And there is plenty to pick through.
The constant teacher-student romances, the political differences leading to
complications, the stand-outs (done for both sexes) who dress too flashy for a
person to date seriously, and so, so, so many misunderstandings leading to
break-ups and then heartfelt reconciliations. Or you might focus on the
attempts to sway pre-teens with “modern” lingo that is “hip” and “ray” and
“outta sight”.
For me, the book cultivates a naive
look at love, adding to the illusion that the past was a “simpler time”. Most
of the comics are culled from the defunct comics companies Charlton (always the
weak sister in the industry), Avon, and ACG, whose work has fallen into public
domain. Most of their work is looked on as “less than” by old time aficionados
and with good reason, but this book provided me with plenty of laughs and was
ultimately satisfying. For more readings, try books by Rex Hurst.
by Chris Ware
