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CBG SATELLITES
The ADD Blog by Alan David Doane
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I guess I'm not much of a pundit. I must confess to not having read any of Warren Ellis' new The Engine yet, aside from a short thread someone sent me a link to. That's nothing against it at all; I'm happy it's here and I plan to dig in soon. I've just plain been busy, working at the day job, working on an essay that I hope will appear in a book in your local bookstore next year, plus ample time set aside for worrying. Actually, that brings me to what I wanted to talk about first, which isn't exactly a review. After reading Gordon McAlpin's wonderful interview with Ivan Brunetti, I got the urge to finally read Schizo. Surprising? I think everyone has more than a few holes in their culture, no matter how much time they spend soaking in it. I had read a bit of Brunetti in anthologies and liked it but didn't see what the fuss was, until I saw the "Diaper Dyke and Captain Boyfuck" animations in the God Hates Cartoons dvd anthology, and that was enough to turn me off for quite some time. I like dark humor, but that was over my limit. Still, I don't slam too many doors shut, so I guess the time was right to get hold of Schizo #1-3 finally and read them. Opening the cover of the first is like opening the door to a blast furnace; you're just assaulted with hatred and self-loathing. For me, it's like walking in the rain and slipping into a lake, but it might be tough for you. Seriously, I don't need to consult the issues right now, because the impressions are still there. It's hard to shake that many images of Brunetti mutilating his penis or someone else. But as harsh as it is, there's real art and craft here. Brunetti is a skilled cartoonist from the start, and uses several different, well-realized styles in the first issue, and his lettering is excellent. The challenge is that in this debut, Brunetti essentially vomits what seems to be his entire misanthropic being-every dirty thought and stifled cruelty and choked indignity and self-destructive impulse-and one wonders what can be left as a follow-up? In one story, he reveals a physical attraction to a platonic female friend-will it be the last straw for his already tenuous marriage? Dan Clowes asks the same thing in one of the reprinted letter excerpts in #2, whether there's anywhere else to go with the nihilism. Other renowned cartoonists write out of appreciation and, one senses, a fear for Brunetti's life and sanity. And Brunetti responds with the second issue, perhaps the most disturbing, depressing comic I've ever read. Brunetti does offer some gags of sorts, extremely bleak parodies of newspaper strips, but the bulk of the issue is devoted to a rant about the pointlessness of life and the cruelty of the world that goes from a wordy comic story to a full-fledged, full-page rant that I must admit I had to bow out of before completion. It's a fearless work, but to me, it fails because it wears the reader out, even bores them. Most artists have one or two points to make in their work, and the art of it is in making these points in different, satisfying ways each time. Brunetti makes his points powerfully, but stays on the stage too long, and crosses a line for me from powerful to pitiful. I wouldn't have advised he change a thing, because maybe it just had to be like this. To get it all out, and then to keep retching and dry-heaving until there's less than nothing left. It's not that the hate and insecurity ever really goes away, it's just that one reaches a point where it has to find a place to live with other feelings and other ways to look around, or else one can't continue. Brunetti, in Schizo #3, makes progress in this way, in what was apparently a terrific struggle to create. His story about his office coworkers is ofttimes no more scathing than, say, Office Space, but there's a subtext at work here for previous readers: we want him to be able to look at life not so differently from us. To get over it, a little bit. To function and coexist with others. His refined art styles are another encouraging sign: a guy going forward, still growing and learning, or what's the point of life? The interview was excellent for many reasons, but one of them was that it seemed to present a renewed Brunetti, someone fresh out of the shower after a long dark night of the soul, poised to perhaps create some of his best work ever. If that happens, wonderful. If it doesn't, and his subsequent work lacks that spark of madness and despair that brings out the voyeur/big brother/therapist in readers, well, at least he's with us, following his antibliss. The Bakers #1 by Kyle Baker is the first of what I hope is a nice, long run of this series of good-hearted family gags. It's not that Baker has gone soft or anything; he's just channeling his different sides into very different projects. Nat Turner is a stunning work; this is a sweet, comfortable one. I might call it Thurberesque, if I had a better grasp of what that meant (I think he liked dogs more than kids, though). Let's just use it for the novelty of it. As in Plastic Man, unfolds his jokes at some length, with just a couple, three panels per page. For many, this would be stretching, and though one can make that argument here, it's ameliorated by the fact that Baker's art is so pleasurable to look at. Kyle Baker. $3.00 Top Ten: The Forty-Niners by Alan Moore and Gene Ha is their swan song for the ABC Universe, I think, aside from an in-the-works LOEG book. It's not the end of stories set in Neopolis with the Top Ten police technically, as others are continuing right now, but as good a job as they might do, it's not the same without Moore. This is a prequel to the Top Ten series, telling the tale of Steve "Jetlad" Traynor, a tough old cop in the series, but just a young man here, though already a celebrated war hero. Calling this The Forty-Niners evokes both the new life many WWII veterans faced in our world, often using their medals and war experience to rise in the world of business, despite lack of experience, and it also evokes the California Gold Rush ('twas a miner, 49er, and his daughter, Clementine), another era of new vistas and opportunities. Neopolis is a new opportunity for many, a stunning "planned community" of sorts, but the community is made up of superpowered or otherwise highly unusual folk. Vampires are cast as a kind of close-knit, misunderstood minority, perhaps a nod by Moore to the immigrant Jews, to this day caricatured by bigots as bloodsuckers. Leni Muller, the Skywitch, is another kind of misunderstood character, the German who hated the Nazis but had little choice but to serve them during the War. It's interesting that Moore chose to refer to a War at all, especially one bearing such strong similarities to our own WWII, aside from the superpowers, and one supposes it's a convenient, but no less effective, way to imbue the work with some of that "Greatest Generation" gravitas. Wulf and the Skysharks, former aerial heroes now looking for some purpose in this city, could have been just an homage to the Blackhawks and other comics flying aces, but as is typical of Moore, he twists the knobs a bit and finds a love interest here for Traynor, and this is really the heart of the book. There's action, and intrigue, and as with the series, scores of amusing visual nods to other comics and literary characters, but ultimately the book is about taking the cue from this city of the special and finding a way to be oneself, and to not be afraid of the repercussions, nor the future. The villain isn't so much evil as he is corrupted by his ego, his monstrous nostalgia for the time when he was the big deal, and the fact that he's small and out of place amid the fantastic citizens of Neopolis drives him 'round the bend. Ha does his best work to date here, and is for the most part able abetted by colorist Art Lyon; however Lyon sometimes goes too far with the watercolor-like effects, leaving the art a bit washed-out and too precious. The cover logos are garish as well, so just open the book quickly and start enjoying. Coloring quibbles aside, it really is one of the best graphic novels of 2005. Wildstorm. $24.99 Something I'll review next week: Four Letter Worlds Favorite new series: Rocketo Recent book I wonder why I bought: Essential Killraven
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