Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Archie Goodwin, Walt Simonson & Klaus Janson
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1978)
Having been obsessed with science-fiction and flying saucers as a kid, I'd pretty much already decided Close Encounters was the greatest movie of all time before I even bought this adaptation at my local newsagent, let alone seen the thing - partially based on my sincerely held belief that it revealed the truth and was probably made so as to get us all accustomed to the idea of extraterrestrial life, meaning we wouldn't shit ourselves when the big day came - as it definitely would. Unfortunately, as I eventually came to realise, once you subtract this emotional upswell of belief from the equation, Close Encounters barely even counts as a story, the plot being bloke sees flying saucer and believes they are real, which they are. Much as I loved the movie as a kid, probably mostly thanks to Doug Trumbull, by the time Spielberg issued the remix with an extra ten minutes of Richard Dreyfuss crying, even I'd begun to doubt.

So what am I to make of a comic book impersonating something which was never as amazing as I maybe thought it was, and which doesn't even have the advantage of all which Mr. Trumbull wrought with squeezy bottles and bits of Airfix kits, and which I bought entirely because I remember having it as a kid?

Well, a lot of memory sherbert went off, as you might expect, but it's additionally interesting for the reason that I had no idea who Walt Simonson or Klaus Janson were at the age of thirteen; and if they would go on to draw better, even here you can feel the formative greatness emanating from the page. The double page splash of the mothership near the end is not only fucking gorgeous but an entirely acceptable substitute for Doug Trumbull. It helps that Archie Goodwin always knew his way around a typewriter, and was particularly a master at the sort of chatty narrative which Alan Moore had banned because comic book panels which pretend to be a fancy foreign film will always be much cooler, so what story there is to be had, is told well, and - crucially - is told in about thirty minutes as distinct from a patience testing couple of screen hours. It was a decent film for the most part, but a decent film mainly because it distracts you from its own massively sappy message about what happens when you wish upon a star; and somehow I prefer the comic book.

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.