Traumatic Tales #1

Noah Brown Traumatic Tales #1 (2019)
Well, it's not quite so violent or weird as Energy Realms, and I must admit I already miss Power Squad and Stabber Duck, but Noah Brown's latest offering otherwise delivers. This time the horror is a little more traditional in so much as that fewer special effects will be required when Spielberg gets around to adapting this stuff.

Brown's art continues to fascinate. On a technical level it may be a few life-drawing classes short of a picnic - whatever the hell that means - but makes up for its shortcomings in other ways. I myself spent a decade or so as a vaguely underground cartoonist, and one of the first things I realised - once I noticed that I wasn't actually Leonardo da Vinci - is that consistency compensates for a multitude of sins, working by the logic that if a mistake is repeated often enough, it will eventually seem like you meant it. Knowing what you're doing is at least as important as doing it.

With this in mind, Noah Brown's art is beginning to remind me of that of Charles Burns or Mark Beyer - not really so much the look as the sheer jaw-dropping intensity, like there's voodoo scratched into the page with a flicknife dipped in ink, and even if lines seem to have been drawn in the wrong places, those are the places they're supposed to be because pretty was never an option here. You are expected to shit yourself. That's the effect he seems to be after.

The same applies to the writing, and close inspection reveals that beyond the chaos, the timing is pretty fucking sharp with not an extraneous line of narrative to deaden the pace.

Darius the Decider seems to be the star of this particular show. It's also the longest strip, and hence the one which sustains the gratuitous and absolutely inexfuckingcusable violence the longest, and the opening full page splash panel of the aforementioned Darius contemplating his own giant hand is one of the weirdest things I've looked at this year.

Noah Brown still isn't any closer to taking over the Garfield strip once Jim Davis is gone, but he makes Johnny Ryan look like a Neil Gaiman strip about Shakespeare's most delightfully whimsical creations, and his art will violate you in ways you can't even imagine.

Demand your copy here.

Granite City Blues

Josh Peterson Granite City Blues (2019)
It took me a while to get settled with this one, if settled is really an appropriate term here. Josh Peterson writes the dense autobiographical narrative of an existence which endures despite poverty, degradation, meth, and kiddy fiddlers. It's transgressive literature if anything is transgressive literature, although I doubt Peterson - or indeed anyone with a brain - would be entirely happy with the categorisation. I have the impression that, having set up shop, Amphetamine Sulphate have become subject to all manner of unsolicited submissions from persons actively setting out to write transgressive literature, and I recall Mr. Best himself darkly muttering something about bad copies of Sotos. Anyway, Granite City Blues gets off to what initially seemed a poor start blending Peterson's somewhat forensic analysis with references to or quotations from Whitehouse, Burroughs, Sotos - your basic transgressive box ticking, then a run through of certain books or records - which Simon Morris did to better effect in his books; and it isn't that any of this is without value, or a point, or that snippets of insight don't come as part of the collage, but it feels somehow obvious - at least initially. The references are the sort of thing which, as I say, have worked for Simon Morris, possibly because Morris' narrative voice is a little more conversational with his motives better communicated. Here they are distracting, particularly embedded within such a dense monologue delivered with a cadence approaching that of a medical textbook. I was struggling, and if it's any indication of why, I found a 204 word sentence on page eighty-four.

That said, this opening section yields a fairly satisfying summary of two inspirational authors whom I assume to be respectively Peter Sotos and New Juche - neither directly identified presumably through Peterson wishing to avoid ticking boxes on the transgressive reading list which, if so, suggests that he's at least aware of the pitfalls. I've never read Sotos, so I'm not getting into that fucking argument, but for what it may be worth...

The former exudes a consistent acknowledgement of the pain of a life lived where the latter seemed to have found a natural talent at soothing it. The former has my respect more for being true to who they are (or were), rather than any boastful suppression of instinct; without which we'd lack the society from which these men allegedly transgress.

Anyway, as I say, such instances of anonymity seem to suggest a need to maintain a certain thematic purity, or at least that Peterson wasn't sat in some darkened room with just a candle and a Maurizio Bianchi album, frantically scribbling his descriptions of sexual acts previously seen only in Johnny Ryan comics, occasionally pausing to throw back his head and cackle, 'Just wait until those fools read this!' Indeed, when it comes to self-image, self-mythologisation, or any of that shite, Josh Peterson seems refreshingly lacking in ego.

There are some reading who may still be in possession of some of those trash samizdat that I self-published. I'm inviting you to piss on them. To photograph yourself or your girlfriends or your female friends or really whomever, pissing on them, so that I can clearly see both the person urinating and the target and the stream of urine.

Given this last point, I'm inclined to wonder whether the opening pages might not represent some kind of test, something to separate the wheat from the chaff; although it probably isn't anything quite so deliberate.

People act as if you actually want or choose to be whomever you are, when rather only a very small percentage of us ever accept and decide to enjoy the lack of options.

References to obscure authors, noise gigs and so on, tend to present an impression of an author speaking directly to a limited audience of personal acquaintances, maybe a circle limited to those who liked the last one on Goodreads; which is fine but makes it a frustrating, even pointless read for those of us outside the circle. However, once we're past the references to Whitehouse, the tone seems to shift towards something broader and which communicates one hell of a lot more, even if it isn't necessarily anything we're going to enjoy hearing. The sentences reduce to double figures, and Granite City Blues draws closer to the thing promised by its title as Peterson picks apart his own existence and attempts to make sense of it in moderately less clinical terms than I recall from Missing, or even from the first twenty or thirty pages of this one. He's thus far had an interesting life - in the Japanese sense of interesting - and one I'm fairly happy to read about as having occurred to someone other than me; and, as is probably obvious, adversity is nothing if not educational and so you could probably learn one hell of a lot from this book.

Peterson is almost the New Juche of shitty urban America in terms of understanding his environment and in being equipped to analyse it without arbitrary moralising; and there's even a brittle sort of poetry to his analysis. Regardless of the opening bars, this is a great book, possibly with greater to come, going by his present trajectory.

Four Circles

Meg McCarville Four Circles (2019)
I assume these would be four circles of hell, or thereabouts. This is the first Amphetamine Sulphate title to be issued with the warning that some of the content may upset readers of a nervous disposition. It didn't particularly upset me but then maybe it wouldn't being as I've only ever had consensual sex, and that's a bit of an unfortunately grey area within these pages. I was bothered by something which happened to a cat, not least because this is the third book in a row to go there - excepting the recent Niven and Pournelle yawnfest - but Meg was clearly unhappy about the occurrence, so at least we're on the same team. Otherwise, it's a ninety page dirty bomb of terrible sex, grinding poverty, disease, meth, crack, sweat, and arseholes detonating over and over right into your face like a sort of explosive diarrhoea singularity, and I don't get the impression she made any of it up, because had she done it probably wouldn't have been quite so relentless. Some of it may upset you, or it will hopefully upset you and thus serve as an indication that regardless of whatever else you may have going on, you're approximately sane; but as for trigger warnings, what little I've read of de Sade was worse, and somewhere there will be someone who was once traumatised in such a way that digestive biscuits now send them into a psychological tailspin.

Meg McCarville gets through this nightmare whilst somehow managing to retain a sense of humour and providing the rest of us with one hell of an education. Weirdly, it reminds me of nothing so much as a real life Johnny Ryan cartoon. I'm not sure that's a good thing, but given that she's written it all down, I'm glad that it's been published.

I knew there was a reason why I've never been drawn to crystal meth, and Meg McCarville articulates it quite well.

Energy Realms #1

Noah Brown Energy Realms #1 (2018)
Some will doubtless pick this up and declare it the worst comic they've ever read, but they will be wrong. It may even be the greatest. The cover promises powerful action and that's what happens once you look inside. Raised on 2000AD and pulp, fueled by (I'm guessing here) cane alcohol and firearms, Noah Brown's art falls somewhere between the less-publishable excesses of Johnny Ryan and that kid from school who used to spend the technical drawing lesson giving himself tattoos using a compass and a pot of ink, and mostly the logos of metal bands - but in a good way. It may not be pretty but somehow you just can't fucking keep yourself from looking, and from wanting more. This first issue features three strips of unusual violence - Pat Lord, Whiskey Weasel and Stabber Duck, and, my particular favourite, Power Squad. It's difficult to work out what the point of Power Squad could be, but their purpose is at least clear. They travel the galaxy in search of power - capitalised with numerous exclamation marks - and they obtain power mainly by crushing the weak and defenceless. In this episode they encounter a sort of weird vaginal mountain monster thing, but luckily they have the Shitbox on their side. The Shitbox is a creature which devours powerful things and shits them out as the weak and defenceless, in this case tiny babies. As a rule I dislike the word awesome, but occasionally it's warranted, and Energy Realms is fucking awesome. Buy this magazine and see how long you can keep reading before it sucks your eyes right out of your head.

Buy as many copies as you can reasonably afford here.

Promethea

Alan Moore, J.H. Williams III & Mick Gray etc. Promethea (2005)
There's a book called The Last War in Albion which I vaguely recall having seen pushed as an account of the magical war waged between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison for the soul of England - or something of that general thrust. I haven't bought the book, because I've read a few of the blog posts reproduced therein and have found myself irritated at the presumption of a writer - much younger than myself, fannish, and very obviously American - telling us what it was like growing up in Britishland and getting most of it wrong; nevertheless, although it causes me great pain to admit as much, it does sort of look like there may be something in the idea of Moore and Morrison having spent the last couple of decades taking potshots at each other. There were a couple of points in this one where it occurred to me that Promethea could be Moore's idea of The Unreadables done right, without all the rock star wank and recycled Moorcock; and as Andrew Hickey has pointed out, Morrison's Zatanna was his idea of Promethea done right - or something along those lines. Actually, I've just picked up the collected Multiversity and couldn't help but notice how one chapter - or issue, more accurately - looks a lot like Morrison stood in an upper floor window waving his tool at a passing Alan Moore through the medium of the Charlton comics superheroes which Moore recycled as Watchmen.

Where will it all end?

Did we learn nothing from that thing with 'Pac and Biggie?

On the other hand - momentarily leaving aside that none of it actually matters anyway - some of this may simply be my reading certain things into certain patterns, or things resembling patterns from a certain angle; which neatly and coincidentally brings us to Promethea, because that's mostly what Promethea is about. I never read it at the time so I've been catching up with the collected editions. I read the first two, with volumes three to five still to go, and so I've read the whole lot this time, start to finish, hoping that this concentration of my attention might allow me to make more sense of what is at times a fairly unorthodox narrative in comic book terms; and so as to avoid repeating myself here, churning out another three variations on a review I already wrote back in December.

As someone pointed out to me, Promethea goes on a bit, particularly the visionary journey along the various nodules of the tree of life, an interlude which goes on for something in the region of four million issues. Admittedly each of these issues has a page or two set back in the material world, someone telling a joke or punching a copper or something just to keep us grounded - or possibly interested - but the whole distended guitar solo at the half way point really is a slog, feeling a bit like Alan Moore has you by the shoulders and is shaking you, asking if you get it yet, and for a long, long, long, long time*. It reminded me of the story you always used to find in the Rupert Bear annual where Rupert travels to some improbable realm - fairyland, underground kingdom, floating metal city or whatever - and so we get several pages of the obligatory kindly wizard showing Rupert around, pointing at things and describing what they're for; except here, there's more of a page count and we keep bumping into Aleister bloody Crowley. Qué sorpresa.

Of course, in the context of the entire story, the magical interlude is arguably essential, carrying the main point of the enterprise; and in some respects it's nice how for once we get a version which takes its time to explain in full, and to explain what is meant clearly, at least allowing us to rule out the possibility of it simply being an author picking out which is the coolest t-shirt to be seen in down the sportsfield that evening; and it's a good explanation, well argued and readable with beautiful artwork.

On the other hand, just as I reached my limit for problem children with mutant powers back in about 1993, I'm now rapidly approaching saturation point for:

•  Comic book characters who know they're comic book characters.
• Authors turning up in their own comics.
• Aleister Crowley.
• Coincidences reliant upon numbers.
• How quantum theory is a bit like what a traditional Shaman does.
• Fiction is real.

Seriously, people - I love the Illuminatus! trilogy as much as the next man, providing the next man regards the Illuminatus! trilogy as quite good but a bit long; and I'm very happy for Huitzilopochtli to be real by all terms that make any sense; but a lot of this stuff was yellowing around the edges even by the time Porridge took to ripping it off and claiming it for his own work back in 1982. It's fun and it's diverting and I suppose it's probably of arguably greater moment than Spiderman in yet another sense-shattering punch up with the Juggerynut; but simply pointing out that pomegranates are mentioned in the Book of Kings, and that Pom is Australian slang for an English person, and that Australian aborigines believe in the Dreamtime, and that the Dreamtime is a bit like what Alice experienced in Wonderland, and that Lewis Carroll was a Pom - deep fuckin' breath - doesn't actually mean anything out here in the material realm, regardless of how many kiloblakes of poetry may be generated by the suggestion; and after a while it all starts to remind me of the wisdom of the Sphinx in Mystery Men.

When you doubt your powers, you give power to your doubts...

 

I get how fiction is as much entangled with the cause and effect of our reality as anything, but the relative value of that fiction is a different, possibly subjective matter; and whilst Promethea may blush, shuffle her feet and mumble well, I was just saying, in concession to the subjective nature of her experiences, it feels as though we're being told how it really is. This bothers me, it being the how it really is of a very specific perspective, and probably not one that ever had to hold down a job at fucking Burger King for fifteen long years. Similarly, the post-apocalyptic liberty at which the narrative eventually arrives is a very specific kind of utopia, namely the same old thing in which we all throw off our hang ups and shag the neighbours, and Albert Einstein and Timothy Leary were essentially the same kind of dude, y'know? It's more or less the same place to which all those pre-pubescent Gernsbackian supermen once aspired to lead us, just cooler and better read, with more pairs of those little round Lennon specs, and lesbians who don't get all freaked out and uptight when you ask if it's okay to watch. It all seems very familiar.

Promethea is a decent story, well told and well drawn, and with poetically philosophical truths coming out of its arsehole. I'm just not convinced it's inherently any more profound than the antics of Retarded Hitler in Johnny Ryan's Dry Gulch Follies 2005.

*: I think it may have been Blair Bidmead who made this observation.

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl

Ryan North & Erica Henderson The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl (2015)
I sometimes forget that my comic habit, such as it is, is largely restricted to that which I recall having read as a kid, or which I missed first time around, or which I once had but got rid of during one of my infrequent purges; so in all honesty, my impression of the current state of the art is vague at best, garnered either from news items posted on facebook, or the occasional bewildering stumble around Android's Dungeon in search of something old and familiar. My local comic shop isn't really called Android's Dungeon, but I feel strongly that it should be because it would be preferable to Heroes & Fantasies, which is the actual name.

Modern comics, at least the mainstream stuff, seem to be mostly self-referential superheroes drawn by people who grew up reading either manga or things drawn by Rob Liefeld; and they appear to be aimed squarely at comic book obsessives far more than they were when I was buying the things, back in the old days when everything was better than it is now. I've read a few that were okay, if nothing amazing, and a few that were fucking horrible; and I browsed Before Watchmen in the store and just couldn't see the point at all, but then what do I know?

On the other hand, there's Squirrel Girl, formerly best known as star of all those twenty shit superheroes lists which could once be found simply by randomly lobbing a brick at the internet - you probably know the deal: Arm Fall Off Boy, Matter Eater Lad, all those other guys. As it happens, Squirrel Girl's debut - written and drawn by the talented but undeniably cranky Steve Ditko and handily included in this collection - is indeed a bit on the crap side, truth be told; or if not crap than there's something very difficult to love about it, a faintly unpleasant tone stemming from the ambiguity as to whether we're laughing at or with our patently ludicrous not-quite-a-heroine.

Girls and squirrels - dude, that's so gay etc. etc.

In context, the revived Squirrel Girl feels like both a revelation and a stroke of genius, territory clawed back from the grimacing ninjas with the Japanese swords, throwing stars and the one-liners which actually aren't that funny. It's a reminder that comics can still be for kids, seeing as we've apparently lost sight of that detail. She's still ridiculous of course - with her squirrel powers and a theme song patently nicked from Spiderman; but she's ridiculous by the same terms as the rest of us, because we're all ridiculous to one extent or another and it isn't necessarily a bad thing. Naturally, it's a funny book because it wouldn't work otherwise, but at least it's on our side in a way I'm not convinced that the Ditko version ever really was. The humour will be familiar from all of those Buffy episodes and more or less everything that presently comes out of my thirteen-year old stepson's mouth, but it's warm and well-intentioned; and of course, being Marvel, it's also kind of square - lame observations qualified as humour with a suffix of right, guys? and that sort of thing - but not in a bad way, and not everything has to be Johnny Ryan's Retard Hitler. Personally I take it as a very encouraging sign regarding the collective soul of the human race that a comic such as this can still get published.

Please, Marvel, don't let Grant Morrison anywhere near it.