Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Playboy interview July 1973

 

If you're a fan of Vonnegut you're going to like this Playboy interview with him from July of 1973.

I scanned the pages and assembled them here.

This way you can enlarge the jpegs.  Once I post a pic here it becomes fixed.

I also scanned some ads I thought were funny and/or interesting.

Some notes I took from the reading:

“Writers are specialized cells in the social organism.  They are evolutionary cells.  Mankind is trying to become something else; it’s experimenting with new ideas all the time.  And writers are a means of introducing new ideas into the society, and also a means of responding symbolically to life…Writers are specialized cells doing whatever we do, and we’re expressions of the entire society---just as the sensory cells on the surface of your body are in the service of your body as a whole.  And when a society is in great danger, we’re likely to sound the alarms. I have the canary-bird-in-the-coal-mine theory of the arts.   The artists certainly did that in the case of Vietnam.  They chirped and keeled over. But it made no difference whatsoever.  Nobody important cared.  But I continue to think that artists—all artists—should be treasured as alarm systems.”

---Religion-atheist, long line.

---What’s wrong with society is the destruction of the community.  People have to move to where the jobs are so they can survive.  They get cut off from the family.  He laments the breakdown of culture as a byproduct of socio-economic politics.  He also believes cultural relativity should be taught in the first grade.

“Everything is a lie, because our brains are two-bit computers, and we can’t get very high grade truths out of them.  But as far as improving the human condition goes, our minds are certainly up to that.  That’s what they were designed to do.”

”The human brain is too high-powered to have many practical uses in this particular universe, in my opinion.”

Wet or dry none of these guys are getting laid.

--Known bouts with depression, which on medication and therapy he’s been able to manage.  Cyclical blow ups.

--what he learned from his parents: “…that organized religion is anti-Christian and that racial prejudices were stupid and cruel.”

--Black humor and gallows humor is what he gravitates toward.

--On his experience in the army “Every officer I knew was a shit.”

--On witnessing an Apollo launch “It’s a tremendous space fuck.”

--Alludes to the “brown note.”

Between the two pages I counted 17 albums I'd be interested in. What an extraordinary deal!

From a shoe fashion review.  The shoes, the pants, hilarious.

If I were a nudist, and comfort was important to me, clogs would not be my first choice of footwear.

Patent-leather-wing-tipped-heels. on HIM.  Is this what going through a MAXIM in 20yrs is gonna be like?

The only thing that could get me in those shoes is six pack of malt liquor.  And yes, I do seek unique, why thanks.

1973 was the first year Things were available on the U.S. market.

That looks like fun.  On they're anywhere from $3-18,000 dollars.

Excavation: The Unearthing

In April of 1925 Lt. Colonel Percival Harrison Fawcett embarked on an expedition into the Amazon jungle to find the Ancient Lost City of Z.  They never came back.  Obsession will do that to you.  It will drive you places you didn't know you could go.  
 

Over this past Fourth of July holiday I had the opportunity to venture into my Uncle Vic’s garage.  I was on a mission.  To peer into the past, to find treasure buried within a labyrinth of old-well-past-their-use utensils, giant, dangerously unstable pyramids made of cardboard boxes, and crude rusty traps composed of ancient appliances.  I suspected significant cultural artifacts from the Golden, Silver, and Bronze age of comic books lay buried in there somewhere and I was determined to find them.  I had no idea what I was getting into.

The complete Watchmen. 

My Uncle Vic is some what…strange, but for the most part he’s alright.  Recently, after many years living in my long time deceased grand parents home, he has moved into a retirement facility.  My brother Tony was tasked with going into the house to move Vic’s things.  No one outside Vic had been in the house in a very long time.  It was not pleasant.

Irony here: It was Uncle Vic who introduced me to comic books when I was maybe 10-11rs old.  It was a Legion-of-Super-Heroes mini-trade paperback reprint of early Silver age stories and a second mini-trade of the then-current incarnation of the team.  I remember reading them and thinking they were interesting, but I had no money and lived in the country, they were cool, I guess.   There weren’t any stores to go buy comics at, and even if I could go into the city 35 minutes away I couldn’t afford it.  I accepted that and didn’t think twice about them.  I was a very practical 11year old.  I remember thinking I read books, not comic books….and those books were a mix of Wells, Bradbury, and C.S. Lewis.  That stuff captured my imagination.  I had to read and reread The Martian Chronicles several times to understand what was going on.  I was not interested in your little picture book.  I was a prick.  My wife just corrected me, I am STILL a prick.

If you’ve never been to northern Wisconsin in July, well….you just haven’t lived.  It’s like being in a sauna, all-the-frickin’-time, it’s hot, mid 80s, and the humidity is through the roof.  You can easily break a sweat sitting still doing nothing.  I would guess it’s akin to being steam-cooked. If you’re lucky enough to have a lake nearby, and because it’s Wisconsin there’s no shortage within a reasonable distance, you might find some respite from the heat.  This being said, I chose to walk in the opposite direction of the lake, and into a hot, musty, dusty, dank, two car garage. 

First comic I see

Rolling up the door I surveyed the landscape. A handful of makeshift rows had been made out of what was worth salvaging from the house.  There were boxes everywhere.  I could see comics peeking through the cracks of more than a few of them.  8 long boxes of comics were stacked in a rack off to the side.  There were 3 more long boxes on the opposite side, plus 3 or 4 more irregular shaped cardboard boxes mixed into the rows.

Green Lantern Green Arrow #85, this is relevant to me because I'm a drug addict.

The smell of mildew was choking.  Mold was visible on things, but not really on the garage itself.   The smell was really coming from the things in the garage, but not the garage.  Tony said the whole house smelled ten times worse.  He had a wear a respirator during the demolition or “he could feel that fuckin’ mold growing in his lungs.”  

 I open up the first box and this is what I see.  Jonah Hex getting married to Mei Ling.  This is Jonah Hex vol. 1 issue #45.  Or what is left of it after years and years of sitting just like you see it here. Jonah decides to marry Mei Ling and give up bounty hunting....for a day. My stomach dropped.  I was pissed.  How could Vic do this!? After going on and on about these books, to treat them like this.  

Yeah, that was the look on my face too when I saw the cover.

It occurred to me this is just a manifestation of Vic's psychosis, he collects but doesn't take care, of really anything.  As I dug through the box it became clear Vic was a western and war comics fan. Old Weird Western Tales, Bat Lash, Rawhide Kid, Sgt. Rock, G.I. Tales, were all mixed together.  I was reminded of my own issues, and my issues of Jonah Hex.  

Jonah Hex vol.1 #1

 This is Jonah Hex vol.1 #1.  Pretty cool.  I wasn't really interested in Jonah Hex until the Palmiotti/Gray incarnation.  I really like their Jonah Hex, it's one of the few comics I have complete runs of.  I remember picking up Azarello's Loveless, The Lone Ranger (Cassaday), and Jonah Hex vol. 3 #1 all around the same time.  I stuck with Loveless just because of Azarello (which is the same reason I'm giving the Watchmen prequels any look-see) but I still don't know what was really go on with the plot, let alone the final few issues.  P&G's Jonah Hex was the exact opposite. Their stories were not complicated but still edgy, they felt purer to the form.  It's exactly what western stories should be, gritty, dirty, and dangerous---with a ton of great artists thrown in to boot.

 

Also in this box were eight very water damaged Charlton Comics titles.  This issue of Ghostly Tales is #124.  The issue of Ghost Manor is #10.  Demons and hippies and witches oh my. 

They were water damaged beyond certainly any monetary value, but it felt like holding a little piece of history.

The Ghostly tales on the right (issue 69) has a story drawn and written by Steve Ditko.  It was a handful of older Charlton comics characters that Alan Moore loosely based the Watchmen on.

Unfortunately, none of these comics served as his inspiration.

 This is G.I. Combat #85 and #90.  These were in plastic. Published in '60 and '61 (respectively).  #87 is an issue of regard because it is the first appearance of "The Haunted Tank."  The Haunted Tank is about the ghost of 19th-century Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart, who is sent by the spirit of Alexander the great to act as a guardian over his two namesakes, Lieutenant Jeb Stuart and the Light Tank M3 Stuart that Jeb commands.

 This is about when I started feeling like maybe I could find some really cool stuff buried in the garbage.  On the  bottom right Batman #181 June 1966, first appearance of Poison Ivy.  The issue to the left of it, #183 is where Batman decides he'd rather stay home and watch "himself" Adam West on television, rather than go out and fight crime.  The self referential is funny, a little reality bending.  Above it, issue #186 features the Joker with a "new hilarious henchmen," a little person clown named "Gaggy."  Here Gaggy is simultaneously blinding and choking Batman while the Joker punches him.   Sounds hot but isn't.  Issue #205 (top right) I thought was great just for the cover art.  Seeing the dynamic duo in the blind guy's glasses is just great.

As the afternoon turned to evening I knew it was going to take me longer than I expected to go through all the boxes.  I was excited to find all this great Silver Age stuff, only to be disappointed by the condition they were in.

Issue #58 of The Brave and The Bold, second appearance of Metamorpho.

The Brave and The Bold #15 & #16.  These get around $50 on Ebay (EA) in VF/NM condition.  These are not VF/NM.  These are almost good.

Green Lantern attempts to avoid a "pink heat-seeking missile." Why no, that's not closeted homophobia at all GL.  Your ass looks really good in those tights by the way.

Justice League America #28, Don't try that shit in Wisconsin fuckers, unions are for commies and Kenyans! We don't like them here, at lest now...for the moment.

Justice League America #18, Don't worry Aquaman,  the Atom will notice when Flash runs into his nuts.

All the Silver Age Justice League issues he has are in plastic bags, most are in pretty good shape.  I'm using "clear and free" dryer sheets in between various pages and each issue in an effort to pull out the mildew.

The orignal Dial "H" For Hero was just goofy.  I guess the new one is too, in a way. 

JLA fights the Animals that fought like Men, face off with an angry cosmic dad, and investigate who murdered Santa.

I was really excited about finding these issues by Jack Kirby.  New Gods #1 has lost all its gloss, but to me it's like she was printed yesterday...

Shazam #1 and Legion of Super-Heroes #1. 

I've always had this thing for the Superman/Flash races as a mythic standard. Like the Trials of Hercules.

I spent all five days I was in Wisconsin on vacation in that garage.  The first days were the longest.  I swore I wouldn't go back in there on my last day.  And I did.  That's when I found all the Mad Magazines.

I left a lot there, tried to repack it the best way I could, move what I felt was really important or valuable to the dry, dark basement of my parent's old house.  

I have only begin to sift through the data.  There is every issue of Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing to read.   I am spending considerable time now reading and scanning many of the old issues of Playboy magazine that I uncovered.  I am sorry for the long delay in this post, I have been preoccupied.

I leave you with this:

Playboy September 1982

Ragemoor Revisited

Recently I picked up Ragemoor #2 from Jan Strnad and Richard Corben, published by Dark Horse.  It was the same week of the Alameda Antique Fair where I picked up three issues of Heavy Metal, including the first American issue from April 1977, purely by accident. Take a moment to note Corben was 37 years old in '77, he's 71yrs old now.  HE'S 71 AND STILL MAKING COMICS. He's a machine.  Jack f-ing Lalane of illustrators!  HOLLA BACK WHEN YO'40 YEARS IN!

Richard Corben's "Den"

It’s far from in perfect condition, but within it is a well-known comic by Richard Corben from 1973 called "Den."  The colors are in vivid neon, the story is bizarre, and it’s amazing.  I guess I had heard about Heavy Metal, my perception was that it was not my taste, but when I held one and started gently flipping through it…it was something else.  This was an aspect of comics I hadn’t really seen for myself before (internet not included).  Instead of looking into the past, I felt like I was looking into the future.  These were art comics; I hesitate to say it because I fear I’ll kill it.  I’m certain modern indie comics have been influenced by them; of course I realize I’m the one late to the party.  I know I’m the ignorant one here for sure.  I now have three issue of Heavy Metal, and I’m hooked.  Digital won’t do.  I just looked on ebay…somebody wants $160 for a Near Mint #1 of the American issue.   I found the other two being offered for around $10 apiece.  I got them for $3 each.  I should have bought fucking more.  Yep, now I have one regret in life.  I was doing pretty good up to now, or at least so I felt, then this…I curse ye god, fuck you Zeus, fuck you right in the eye.

Corben & Strnad's "Sinbad in the Land of the Jinn"

Let me put it right on the record here and now and say it’s not the boobies that make Heavy Metal so great. Seriously, although compared to some stuff by the Big 2 I really don’t know what’s more sexually objectifying.  There’s a sense of feminine sexuality and sensuality in these handful of 35 year old comics that I’ve never felt reading anything the Big 2 has put out, ever.  I do prefer adult themes.  Reading HM made me realize something else: my own modern sense of comics is so commercially pasteurized that something like this completely captivates me.  

Although I never read them as a child (I was 3-4yrs old at the time) there is feeling of stepping back in time when reading these “adult illustrated fantasy magazines.”  There a physical sensation in holding a book, holding an old book, realizing it has a place in History, a fixed place in Time far removed from the Now.   It’s impossible not to feel awe.  This is at the heart of my motivation in buying every comic, and incidentally, is what a digital copy can never replace.  I have felt it holding books of literature from the mid and late 19^th century to comics published in the early 1980s.   There are books I wish I could afford.  Nothing will replace holding a book in your hand. As long as books exist and people keep physically handling them, more people will realize there is no substitute, and books will continue to be published. 

McKie's "So Beautiful and So Dangerous"

With both issues of Ragemoor I initially sat down to write about a story and art that didn’t really strike me all that much, but there felt like there was more there.  The longer I sat and thought about it, I realized I couldn’t put my finger on anything specifically that I didn’t like, but started seeing details I really liked.  But I LOVE the personal discovery it has led me to, namely Heavy Metal.  It possesses an energy I don’t feel from most mainstream comics, so many artists being so amazing and so weird.  I feel enriched, a little enlightened.  Is this what reading Juxtapoz is supposed to feel like?

It was looking into Corben and Strnad’s past stuff that started the ball rolling.  Looking at Ragemoor without knowing who Richard Corben is, while living under my comfy little rock, would not have drawn me to look for more of his stuff.  I am blown away by what he has produced.  Corben is the alt.comic reader’s Stan Lee.  I have seen the future, and it’s filled with giant robots, strange alien civilizations, space warriors riding pterodactyls, soul eating angels and demons from other dimensions, and lots and lots of boobies---in all their super-vivid-hyper-Technicolor splendor.  And this future happened 35 years ago…da-daa-DUMMM!

Bulletproof Coffin: Disinterred #4: Reassembled

The latest issue of “The Bulletproof Coffin: Disinterred” (#4 of 6) is an open experiment in Dadaism.  They’ve invited the reader to cut it up and make their own story.  So I did.  Here it is.  It's roughly 19 megs of .pdf surrealism. Enjoy.

http://www.mediafire.com/?1x7i37w7ta5njx5

I read this issue-as-published once all the way through and it made completely no sense.  I knew it wasn’t suppose to, I’m familiar with cut-ups from reading Burroughs in high school/college.  I didn’t really understand it then, I still don’t completely understand it now.  I do better with poetry.  If I can read the abstract image that the poem is purposefully or accidentally trying to invoke in a very pure thought and/or emotion, I follow the narrative (however loosely) a bit better.  This is my attempt at imposing order on chaos.  I tried really hard to look for narrative and visual transitions between panels that threaded a path, while still being textually self-aware of the Dada aspect of the whole thing…which if the ultimate goal is for art to inspire art, then it worked.  I made a new story. 

It was a lot of staring at the panels.  I made black and white copies of all the pages, cut them up with a mat board and an exacto-blade then laid them all out on our dining room table.  I think the panels being b&w might have had a less than exciting influence on me, Kane’s art is eye-mind melting and to take away the color is to take away the true impact of the images.

And that’s when my lovely and talented wife stepped in, I could scan the book and rearrange those panels in any order you like in photoshop, to which I replied “Fuck Yeah!” It took her sometime and I thank her profusely for it, she is amazing and I am incredibly lucky to be with her.

I looked for groupings of panels that made sense together first, like the “Hairy man,” and JFK getting shot up by the MIBs.  The meteor shower being prevalent in so many  helped, the George Adamski panels too.  Steve Newman’s dreamscape is really the only setting.  If you accept that (“the willing suspension of disbelief”---coincidently(?) the same message Adamski gives the Pope from the Space Brethren—at least in my version) forgives the non-sequitor panel transitions a little.  It lends itself well to Steve’s alien abduction scenario around page 13. 

Past that it gets increasingly self referential to older characters: the Twins, Red Wraith, Aunt Sharon.  I use the eyeball in the box as a transition for the narrator’s observation “no man is born bad, the seed of evil grows in tainted soil.  Some day the taunts and the jeering of his class mates will yield a bitter fruit.”  Followed by a historical retrospective of evil and conspiracy.  There’s a panel I use in the JFK sequence that’s really Magritte’s painting Time Transfixed but with UFOs coming out of the fireplace instead of a train.  Magritte’s surrealism is right at home here in H&K’s non-linear narrative panels experiment.  It gets a bit dicy-ier from there on out.  I don’t know if there’s really any cohesive narrative thread there after page 14-15.  I tried for about a week (after rereading bits and pieces every day for about 2 weeks) with the loose panels.  The more I look at it the more I feel like I can randomly shuffle pages toward the end and still change it for the better. 

One thing I did notice, on the second to the last page of the issue, in the “Destroyovski” column, was a photo of all 84 loose panels but without any narrative or dialog balloons.  What’s that all about?  Did Hine write the dialog after H&K invited their mates to a friendly pub shuffle?  I’d like to know.  So I posted this question in the comments section of his blog on a posting about BPC:D#4:

“Hey Mr. Hine, did you write the dialog for Bulletproof Coffin: Disinterred #4 before or after you and your coconspirators arranged the present published layout?  I noticed in Destroyovski’s editorial section the panels in the photos are absent of word boxes/balloons.  How Dada did you get?”

A couple days later I got this response from Mr. Hine on his website: " Some of the dialogue and captions I wrote in advance along with the panel descriptions I sent to Shaky. Most were written after the art came in. Those panels in the photo don't have any lettering because they are print-outs of the pre-publication art. Lettering is only added after the pages are sent to Richard Starkings' Comicraft for design and lettering. All lettering and captions were written before the final order of publication. I didn't want to be influenced by the juxtaposition of images. Those four full-page splashes were re-written to show how the juxtaposition of certain images can suggest new associations."

Thank you sir!

Overall I’m satisfied with the result.  Maybe there will be a new appreciation for the Dada with me, maybe I’ll see the surreal a little better.  I do like this issue now more, now that I’ve gone through the process of making it my own.  In order for the panels to make sense to me as a linear story I had to accept a certain amount of absurdity into the narrative sequence.  Accepting the absurdity was crucial, just-like-real-F’ing-life.  It made me really look at each panel and try and imagine the who, what, why, and how it fit in with the rest.  Every panel then became the potential for a new story thread.  It didn’t seem like a lot at first, then after a few days I realized I had to give much thought to each one.  I was intrigued.  I felt like I was on the verge of discovering some ancient secret formula of narrative images creating the true story, the one the creators intended. 

Thing is, H&K selected 84 random panels.  There never was an intended linear story.  I had attempted to super-impose a sense of order to the panels, a “story” of some sort, but in the end it became an extremely limited amount of control.  No matter how much I tried there was no way they were going to transition as easy as a Big Two superhero muti-title cross over, but with a little effort I was able to come up with a some-what linear story that descends into a character’s unconsciousness, that transitions into an opportunity for H&K (and me) to play with all sorts of levels of their multi-issue narrative.  I hope it make sense to you a little bit.  If they don’t make sense to you, F-you, cut your own up and make a new one then why don’t ya?       

The Secret #1

Jonathan Hickman (Red Mass for Mars, Nightly News, Red Wing, Fantastic Four) and Ryan Bodenheim (Red Mass for Mars, Fear Itself: Fearsome Four) have crafted a comic book with “Secret.”  Nothing is wasted, not pages not panels not gutters, it’s all there for H&B to play with, and they do it really well. 

Look at the pages above.  We see this masked man, brass-knuckled, fist cocked back mid-air, about to punch the living shit out of some guy he’s holding down.  Michael Garland did the coloring for this book and “Red Mass for Mars.”  The red pages above are the published pages, the image where the masked man is in black is from a promo preview page of the issue.  The red duotone is a marked improvement.  It sets the mood for this scary, violent encounter.  The palette changes as the book progresses but the duotone persists in setting tone scene after scene. 

I want to take this chance to mention here, one of the reasons this comic book is really good is because it looks and reads like a comic book, and not a screenplay storyboard.  It does what only a comic book can do (and should do) in that it tweaks our visual filter into a unique but forced perspective.  It is more than a suspension of disbelief that is essential in any fiction, it requires us to participate in a suspension of our default perception and surrender to that of the artist and writer.  Unlike a movie that dictates sight and sound, the comic panel has only the visual impact of its color, shape, and dialog.  It demands just a little more than the typical matinee, it requires our imagination.  We all have an internal voice when we read, and what we see influences how we read.   Can you say “WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE, WE GOT FUN AND GAMES!” without hearing Axl in your mind’s ear?  The panel doesn’t dictate all, it requires us to fulfill the other half of the visual narrative equation with our mind, even if it’s happening on a subconscious level.   And this is why I will always love comics more than movies. 

S says to me, without knowing anything about the comic or its author after I show her the first few pages, he knows how to manipulate type and image to his advantage.  Hickman if I remember correctly came from a world of graphic design, but I’ve been unable to confirm that anywhere.  The 5^th panel at the bottom of the page with the black ski-mask doesn’t hold the same dramatic weight as the same panel with the red ski-mask.  The black is what’s expected, almost safe(?) but the red screams.  The red is there unflinchingly.  The red is a visual representation for the simmering violence until it explodes through the panel.

Do you see how the masked man’s body rises out of the bottom bleed panel on page 1?  His violence overflows the panel, body winding up, the punch frozen in that moment where all his kinetic energy contracts the shoulder and bicep.   It is a visual comment on this character, his violence can not be contained.  It commands our attention as readers drawing us to the action on the page before we even know what’s going on.  We see it again on page 2, panel 2.  Our masked man’s head protrudes into panel 1, his dialog confirming what we’ve already come to suspect, “I am simply a man that cannot be kept out.” 

“Comic panels fracture both time and space, offering a jagged, staccato rhythm of unconnected moments,” according to Scott McCloud in "Understanding Comics," and “closure allows us to connect these moments and mentally construct a continuous, unified reality.” But what does the overflowing panel do to the narrative? What is the effect on closure?  On a subconscious level the reader is introduced to a character without physical constraints.  He goes where, and does what, he pleases.  He exists in a space outside his normal two dimensional physical, and here arguably moral, planes of his reality.  His presence in the panel gutters interferes with our sense of closure, he doesn’t allow us to imagine the transition from panel to panel. HE is the transition.  In our immediate consciousness there is a sense of the overwhelming, much like he has overwhelmed his captive.  The reader is just as bound to, and broken by, the masked man as is his prisoner, who we see again later on page 9 in a panel that’s literally drawn like the corner is broken off and detached.  It’s all just really great.  I love it, I really do.

Page 4 is a full splash page of what looks like solid black panes breaking, exposing a quote credited to an anonymous member of the East German secret police, the Stasi.  “We climb the wall to see the world we rule with secrets, lies, and half-truths.  We climb down to do murder.” Page 5 and 6 continue with a double splash page, “Chapter One: Teeth with Which to Eat,” the cover image doubled along side the text.  The broken glass runs over to page 7 but only covers the top left corner, about 20% of the page leaving the rest white.  It’s the equivalent of a title sequence fade in/out and it sets up the visual “silence” that precedes our home invasion victim’s broken panel beautifully.  How the quote foreshadows the narrative has yet to be seen, but the chapter title is aptly named.

I’m not going to tell you any more of the story.  I think it’s worth your $3.50 to find out on your own.  This book reminds me more of Hickman’s “Nightly News” than say “Transhuman” or any of his Marvel work.  Its design consciousness is both narrative and visual and it excels in both.  At its least maybe it’s a hyper-corporate-government-espionage-extortion-story, but there is more going on here.  It’s just a delight to read and look at it and we shouldn’t take that for granted, go buy it. 

The Secret Service #1

Mark Millar (The Authority, Ultimates, Wanted, Kick-Ass) and Dave Gibbons (best known for Watchmen with Alan Moore) have both done great work in the past.  I think “Wanted” is one of the best stories I’ve ever read.  Gibbons work on the “Martha Washington” series with Frank Miller is pretty cool.  Matthew Vaughn is a great director, I didn’t see X-Men First Class, but “Layer Cake” was awesome.  His work on “Snatch” and “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels” is wonderful.  But even with all that star power the book still comes off flat to me.  “The Secret Service” is not one of the best stories I’ve read, nor is it all that great to look at.  I tried repeatedly to come up with a good Colombian hooker joke, but the material was uninspiring.

It opens on a snow-covered chateau in Switzerland, where some swarthy-neutral gentlemen are holding Mark Hamill hostage.  There is a bit of good banter when one of the armed men asks Hamill “What did you think of the prequels, man? Don’t you think they were kinda pissing on your legacy a little?” But before we can figure out the motive behind the kidnapping---but not before finding out his destination, the Middle East, da-da-da-dummm---he is rescued by a British Secret Service agent, or sort of rescued.  After a short ski and snowmobile escape-chase the agent and Hamill go off a cliff.  The agent has a parachute, and in true Hollywood stuntman style grabs onto Hamill, but it doesn’t open.  He and Hamill die on impact.  It’s supposed to be funny, that I get, but the way the kidnappers talk it seems this was all part of the plan.  They expected them to go off the cliff, but they expected the chute to open.  Their boss, they say, is going to be very pissed about losing Hamill.  It opens up a bunch of plot questions, as it should, but losing Mark Hamill is my first problem with TSS.

I am tired of Star Wars references in scifi-fantasy-pop-alt-culture media.  It’s a cultural touchstone for geeks of the world to unite, one of the biggest if not universal to a generation of nerds.  It is over used, over played, and a cop out.  It’s lazy writing, I’ll make a Star Wars reference, old geeks love Star Wars references.  I don’t want to see another room numbered “1138” or someone telling someone else “these are not the droids you’re looking for.”  I just don’t care.  Show me something new, or at least in a new way.  Find something else, anything, but make it clever. If you can’t entertain me, inform me, if you can’t inform me, insult me, bring the fire, something, anything.  Anything but “it’s a trap!” or “do or do not, there is no try.” Writing a good story is not easy, if it was, everyone would do it.  Good writing is easy to identify, you read it and if it’s any good it invokes emotion.  Sadness, anger, passion, hope, fear, the better it is the harder it grabs you.   I don’t care how you do it just make me care about your story.

Ultimately that’s my problem with “The Secret Service,” I couldn’t find anything to care about, only more that just rubbed me wrong.  After the technical difficulties with the parachute we’re introduced to Gary, broken family, broken life.  Mom dates an abusive jerk who gets Gary’s little brother to roll spliffs for him.  Now let me explain spliffs to the uninformed.  They are a mixture of tobacco and marijuana, very popular in the Europe.  Coloring duties for TSS goes to Angus McKie, who sounds like a good Scotsman and all, but the “spliff” being rolled by Gary’s little brother has no green in it.  Not a speck.  Is it a censorship thing, like “oh we can’t show marijuana” so no green, or did no one see it when they proofed the copy?  The devil is in the details Angus, and the Devil’s Weed is green.

Next up, Gary’s uncle, Jack London, British spy.  He fills in the back story, getting the low down from a government official, that various members of the cast and crew of Star Wars, Doctor Who, Battlestar Galactica, and Star Trek have been mysteriously kidnapped.  London asks if it was members of the original Star Trek or the Abrams’ version, which is perfect opportunity for Millar to inform us of his opinion of the film.  I don’t care what Millar thinks about Star Trek, if he wants to jerk off J.J. Abrams, do it on your own time, don’t make me pay $2.99 for it.  Guess what Mark, everybody loved the reboot.  Oooh I know, young geeks love the new Trek, I’ll make a new Trek reference.  Again, this is a cop out.  Either drive the story forward, increase the scope of the fictional world, or tease me with some cryptic info, but don’t, I REPEAT, DON’T WASTE MY FUCKING TIME.  How about this, how about take this panel to SAY something, something about this world we’re being introduced to, something about the characters that actually effects the story, or at the very least, something funny.  Instead Millar just wants us to know how much he has a hard-on for Karl Urban.        

Jack gets a text from Gary’s mom, Gary’s in trouble, he’s in jail.  He stole a car with some friends of his and crashed it.  They might have got away but a dog crossed their path so Gary had to swerve to avoid hitting it and crashed, see he has heart of gold this one, SEE? 

Uncle Jack shows up at the police station and he and mom get into it a bit.  Mom is pissed because Jack is rich and doesn’t break off a piece for her, and he berates her for being on welfare with a deadbeat for a boyfriend.  This tone continues into the precinct house where Jack sees Gary with a shiny new black eye, compliments of Southwark’s finest.   Where Jack applauds the cops manhandling his nephew a bit in an effort to set him straight, mom screams litigation to high heaven.  This is the one interesting note to the whole issue, Millar’s slightly to the right social discourse on modern England.  At one point mom screams “How am I supposed to control him?!” Jack responds “If you raised him right you wouldn’t need to control him.” Personal responsibility is at the heart of the argument for Millar.  Jack is disgusted by his sister and nephew, they are everything that is wrong with his England.  They do nothing but leech off of him and society, never seeing how their negative actions only lead to negative consequences, or once seeing it, not caring enough to do anything about it, it’s just easier this way.  Jack wants to leave Gary there in jail, but he can’t for the sake of his family.  He bails him out.

Gary goes home to the projects, he joins his friends drinking and smoking in a common area.  His uncle leers menacingly from a walkway above them.  Blue-fucking-tooth in ear he contacts “reception” and requests to be connected to the “Practical Skills Facility in Hereford, that’s right: The spy school.”  The lettering for “spy” really is in bold print too, I’m not making that up.  I wanted to throw the book away right then and there. 

Anger is an emotion I am familiar with, I have read things that make me angry.  Some will make you angry in a way that drives you to engage the text.  Like getting angry at the guys bulling Lennie in “Of Mice and Men.”  Others make you angry not at characters or story, but with the author.  Once the anger is directed at the author you’ve lost your reader.  You’ve taken them out of the story, you’re done, you’ve failed.  That’s why don’t tell me, show me is a cardinal rule of storytelling.  It’s that simple, and that complicated.  Again, if it was easy everyone would do it, but dammit man this one is pretty big, I expect more from the guy who made heroes out of villains.   

I really like Mark Millar.  I thought “Red Son” was a great concept, “Wanted” one of the best flips on the super hero genre in a long time.  I picked up all of Kick-Ass 1&2-saw the movie too, and I enjoyed “Superior,” Leinil Yu’s art is great.  “Nemesis” was highly entertaining.  This book, this book is just crap.  Gibbons art is okay, it wasn’t mind blowing in “Watchmen” either, but it fit the story.  Here it just looks…dated.  I get the feeling more and more Gibbons was the Jim Lee of his time, it’s pretty but I don’t really feel a lot going on there.  It’s too generic comic book cartoony.  I can’t excuse Matthew Vaughan for his involvement with this either, actions have consequences Matt, personal responsibility means taking ownership of your fuckups too.   It feels and looks too Hollywood.  It’s too slick in all the wrong ways.  See right here, right here a good Colombian hooker joke should go right here.  I can’t recommend this book to anyone, maybe a recommendation on what not to do in good comic book, then it would serve pretty good. 

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!?