Some days, I want to read a comic book that makes me consider new ideas, or one that stretches the boundaries of the medium’s possibilities. Other days, I just want to read a comic where a guy punches another guy’s head off, and said displaced cranium is stuck on the first guy’s fist for the duration of the comic. Image’s new one-shot Officer Downe was made for just those kinds of days.
No, Archie. No. Unless the New York Times is really losing it.
Peg is one of those DC characters who lurked in the interstices for years, starring in a half- or one-page gag every couple of issues. She's a typical blonde teen girl who occupies a world in which all of the females under a certain age have either one giant tooth or a portal to a realm of pure radiance situated in the middle of their faces.
This comic is of course completely mystifying to one such as myself who hates and fears the awesome cancer-spewing might of the sun, but I suspect that the saga of a girl who sets out to get a sun burn in time for the big dance and then can't go to the big dance because of her sun burn might have been a head-scretcher in even the most heliophilic of eras.
(This one's from Superboy No. 15)
The first issue of this six-part mini reads like Rebel Without a Cause meets The Road Warrior, as directed by a coked-up Ralph Bakshi and then adapted into an E.C. science fiction comic. In a dystopian drag-racing-obsessed world, a mortally injured gearhead is reborn as The Headlight, an inspiring figure and leader of hot-rodders whose face has been replaced with a helmeted porthole of blazing light. The Headlight and his followers seek to smash the old order and create a new society, enlisting the aid of some technologically tricked-out animals like the “V-Eighp”. Hints of a larger metaphor appear, then are dismissed just as quickly—a guy dressed like a superhero is run down at one point, and The Headlight deals some righteous justice to “the fat cats, those who dined on the muscles of the dreamers”. These blink-and-you’ll-miss-‘em asides linger in your consciousness just enough to give the reader a taste of the artist’s own ideas about this stuff, without hanging around long enough to belabor the point.
And the art! Oh man, this is one crazy-looking, gorgeous book. Morse’s animation background informs every panel of this book, from the rubbery forms of both the gearheads and their hot rods, to the shocking vibrancy of the colour scheme. There’s even a one-page strip by Paul Pope! On both a narrative level and a visual level, Strange Science Fantasy is a comic that you experience more than you read. You can’t really sit and think about the story or the characters, because, well, there sort of aren’t any. It’s more like listening to a really great song with totally bizarre lyrics, that you then listen to a few more times trying to figure out just what the hell the songwriter is trying to say. You just don’t know why, but you just know you like it. Or you don’t, as the case may be. Like I said at the top, it’s not for everybody, but it was kind of just what I needed at just the right time, I guess. Does that make sense?
As with a lot of the unfunny comics of yore, I really enjoy the art on this one, and the first panel in particular is pretty terrific. But it has one fatal flaw...
... it has a punchline so terrible that it exerts physical force, knocking the straight man on his ass. This is almost never a good sign.
Still, I wish that "Drunk Man and Boy Scout" had become one of the classic comedy pairings. I'm sure that it would be a rich source of comedy.
Why Dilton ever turns to Archie for advice is beyond me. Also: women are stupid. And I`ll bet Dilton`s yard sales are awesome.
Seriously, Archie. You are the worst.
Living Between Wednesdays is a place for people who love comic books and superheroes.
