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CBG SATELLITES
The ADD Blog by Alan David Doane
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Ballast: Book One
By Joe Kelly and
Ilya
The ingredients for a wonderful work of art: first, take thirty-two
grayscale pages of comic book, wrapped up in nice-looking covers with a
good solid spine. Add seventy-seven lines of narration. Top that off with
fifty-two brief lines of dialogue. For good measure, include an in-depth
conversation between artist and writer, throw in some character and
plot-development sketches and ideas, and voila! You've got
Ballast.
I've always had a lot of respect for people who work in clearly defined,
restricted art forms, art forms with self-imposed limitations. Take
haiku, for instance. Within a series of three brief lines, some poets
have the amazing ability to make profound, touching statements about
life, nature, and the world in general. Five syllables, then seven, then
five - anyone who can count and write can pull that off. But it takes a
very special kind of person to really do it well.
Or take blues music. Very simply put, blues is three chords arranged in
a defined 1-IV-V progression in a 12 bar musical setting. Lose any one
of these ingredients, and it becomes a point of contention as to whether
you're still actually playing "the blues." It seems simple enough -
blues is one of the easiest musical forms to learn, and the
proliferation of second-rate blues bands in the world bears that out.
But, like haiku, it's one of the most challenging art forms to truly
master. As one blues guitarist said, "It's not the notes you play
that are important, it's the ones you don't play."
Which brings me to Ballast. In Ballast, writer Joe Kelly
(best known for his mainstream work on X-Men, JLA, and Action Comics)and
artist Ilya have teamed up to create a short, sparse, very compact
graphic novel, and like the perfect blues guitar solo, it's not so much
the notes they play, but the ones they don't that make this little book
as good as it is. The dialogue is cut to a bare minimum, the story moves
at a lightning pace, there's not a wasted panel, nor is there any
padding to speak of; this is a stripped-down, souped-up hot rod of a
book, with no excess weight to slow it down.
Ballast is the story of Mason Krokus and God. Mason Krokus is a
nasty fellow, a fact that this story makes perfectly clear. A killer
since childhood, Mason has lived a brutal and vicious life, and in doing
so his conscience has developed layer upon layer of callouses. He's no
altruistic bounty hunter with a heart of gold; neither is he a Robin
Hood, robbing the rich to feed the poor. He is a self-serving, amoral
bastard, hard as a rock and just as uncaring.
But then God gets a hold of him. How, or why, is not entirely clear at
this point, but what is clear is that Mason is now working for God, and
not exactly of his own free will. God in this case appears in the form
of a wide-eyed, cigar-smoking, cute-as-a-button eight year-old girl, who
interrupts Mason in the midst of a job, while accompanied by her trusty
sidekick, a foul-mouthed platypus who seems to like Mason a lot less
than she does. And God has plans for Mason, a program of action which
includes forcing him to relive the worst moments of his sordid career
and life. And it isn't a pretty sight.
Ed Ilya's artwork, like Kelly's writing, is spare and economical - there
isn't a throwaway line or image to be found. His style varies throughout
the book, from flashback to the present, and he captures each character's
essence, portraying Mason's chiselled-in-stone exterior while still
managing to reveal that the layers are steadily being chipped off. From
his barely noticeable necklace (made of thorns) to his luminous weapons
and the hourglass medallion he wears around his neck, every aspect of
Ilya's depiction of Mason bears meaning and significance. The sketch
pages included in the extra material provide great insight into the
process of the development of the characters, and in all cases you can
tell that Kelly and Ilya made the right decisions.
Ballast is a fine piece of work by two very talented creators who
have, with this book, done a masterful job of showing what can be done
within the limitations of their chosen form of self-expression. My only
complaint? Three follow-up books are planned to continue the story of
Mason Krokus and God over the next three years, so it's going to be
quite a wait between books. But if the sequels live up to the promise of
this introductory volume, we're in for a fascinating ride.
-- Jim Witt
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