web hosting short URLs photo sharing

What Makes a Truly Awful Comic?

When I resumed the purchasing of comic books after a fourteen year moratorium that ended in 1996, nothing like an intent to resume collection moved me. Simple curiosity lured me toward a stack of multi-unit comics packages at a dollar store in Austin; the contents seemed different in a number of ways from what I had stopped buying back around 1983.

I noticed a few things that made me curious. These comics appeared on real papers, typical more of a glossy magazine like National Geographic rather than the washed-out newsprint pieces from my youth. The inks and colors blared boldly from the pages in a fashion altogether uncharacteristic of a day when comics appeared on cheaper stock. The characters within held no familiar connotations whatsoever, and the style of the art differed greatly from anything familiar.

Curious, then, and bored unto imprudence, I purchased some of these 5-for-two-bucks packages, particularly hoping to get one with a Don Simpson humor magazine in it and willing to risk pocket change for the balance on the authority of Mr. Simpson's reputation.

This material included Image and Valiant titles, overruns that hadn't sold back around 1992. Most of the content failed to impress me, although the quality of the color separations and the density of the inks did alert me that either technology or the industry standard had evolved to a point where the print quality had become important.

My discovery of Bloodstrike #5, however, eclipsed all this print-shop interest in techniques that related to an earlier career I had escaped some years ago. This comic would come to represent, to me, an excellent model for an awful comic book. Let us not say "substandard," or "mediocre" or "indifferently bad;" no, this comic achieved true awfulness.

Guts 'n' Gore

Having read the book a number of times, I have come across perhaps three pages of plot in a story that drags much longer. Two superheroes teleport back from somewhere. One, named Cabbot, sports about 500 pounds of muscles and chest hair. He carries big guns. The other, named Deadlock, wears a Wolverine-style mask and attacks his peers to relieve anxiety. So, therefore, the story begins with guards walking through the superhero citadel, aware that something will happen soon. Then we encounter the brawling superheroes bursting through a wall. Deadlock rips long strips of Cabbot's chest skin into dangling flaps with his fingernails; Cabbot defends himself by punching Deadlock so forcefully in the belly that Deadlock's spine bursts out of his body.

Like the story so far? This only constituted the preliminaries, although this initial rumble did correctly foreshadow the tone of the balance of the story. After Cabbot deals with going to the medic and having someone cart off Deadlock's body to soak in a resurrection bath, some big boss character instructs the team about their next mission. Said mission involves capturing Image's Superman, the character Supreme. Cabbot boasts that Supreme poses no threat, owing to his age (and, most likely, his lack of Big Guns, Big Sideburns, and Big Chromium Prostheses, the things that make superheroes of Cabbot's generation mean something). Cabbot smugly dismisses the difficulty of the mission despite repeated warnings about the dangers Supreme poses.

So, to the end of taking in Supreme, whose current hobby centers on destroying terrorist groups in situ wherever he finds their hideouts, Cabbot and his incoherent band of companions track down the wayward ubermensch. Cabbot's peers include some guy in a big robot, like in a lot of anime comics and movies; some hideously misdesigned female with four arms and a metal plate over her face; and some other female who does not do or say enough in the story to provide enough material for a meaningful description.

Some of us may recall old superhero group stories where the superhero team uses their noggins to contrive a way of bringing down a seemingly invincible opponent. No such forethought entered the scenes that follow. Cabbot demands Supreme surrender; Supreme suggests the dubious superheroes leave for the sake of their hides; and team Bloodstrike attacks. Wits and strategy appear nowhere in this fight, which really involves no more than Supreme walking from victim to victim and pounding their insides out of their bodies. These art samples eloquently tell the whole of the story that follows.

Cabbot refuses to yield, and continues fighting (and talking) after a) Supreme pounds his guts out (literally); b) breaks his jaw open (which should have stopped all the silly damn braggadaccio; after enough taunts and refusals to surrender, Supreme's case seems stronger and stronger); and c) pokes out Cabbot's eyes with his fingers.

Monty Python fans may recall the absurd Black Knight who kept fighting after Arthur cleft all of his limbs from his body. This scene resembled that, stripped of the humor. This whole stomach turning bloodbath traveled from point A to point B with no side trips, no real discussion, no second thoughts about plans.

Having accomplished his day's bloody work, then, Supreme harrumphed and went on his way, indifferent to the buckets of gore he left behind (but somehow managed to keep from spotting his snow-white hair or uniform, which may involve a previously unknown superpower on his part). Then people came with mops and buckets to pick up the pieces of superheroes to throw in the resurrection baths. Did they want to make soup?

Take a moment to look over the images on this page. These samples represent a thorough plot synopsis of the entire story that occupied two-thirds of this book. One may fairly ask to whom such matter appeals. Would students of forensics, eager to view physical trauma to the human form in order to diagnose the cause of damages in a morgue somewhere desire to see this? Or would some greatly deprived medical student, needing to view internal organs that, for whatever reason, appear in no textbook, drawing, diagram, or x-ray, open the pages of this work to attempt to get some idea of what to push aside during an appendectomy? Perhaps both of these theories ignore a more likely reality: A red ink vendor buys the book to allow himself to dwell on his newfound prosperity, achieved by the buckets of cartoon blood spilled in lame stories poorly told.

What Makes an Awful Story

We can define an awful story, such as this one, by the elements it lacks. In a very real sense, this story lacked the following things:

1. Plot. No story passed through these pages beyond Fight One and Fight Two. The only real interaction between characters involved Cabbot realizing that Deadlock would try to kill him for no particular reason and Cabbot telling everyone else to shut up when they spoke to him.
2. Characterization. No character in this book possessed a personality. At most, two characters each demonstrated a single trait; Deadlock demonstrated his maliciousness, and Cabbot displayed his impatience. Such single-trait portrayal does not even provide an entire veneer of personality, let alone depth. At no point could any figure in this story risk the accusation of eliciting sympathy. Supreme might have done the right thing by killing all of them, as little as anyone needed to depict his doing so.
3. Exposition. So little occurs between blood-dripping fight scenes that a first-time reader, such as myself, couldn't even attach names to most of the principals involved. This does nothing to build enduring interest. Also, contrast this approach with the seventies DC standard in Justice League of America: Somewhere material would appear to identify the characters, such as a roster with pictures and names; somewhere discussion or flashbacks would attempt to clarify elements of the ongoing storyline that happened in previous issues.
4. Dialogue. No clever banter pulls the eye away from the tsunamis and volcanoes of blood splashing everywhere. What dialogue appears fails to enlighten, instruct, or entertain. A reader who knew absolutely no English could get precisely the same amount of pleasure from looking at the pictures as someone who bothered to drag through the word balloons.

We can also define the presence of certain traits as defining awfulness. In this case, the entire work relies on sensory overkill as both medium and message. The story shamefully fails to provide anything to relate through this medium. It offers a gory fight, then another gory fight.

The Guilty Parties

After realizing how bad a story I had read, I wondered who I could blame for this abomination. Therefore, I turned through the book to look for credits, which, in this book, appeared on the inside cover rather than on the material itself. Such placement of credits represents an attempt not to compromise the material therein in good stories; in better material, one would observe that the credits appear somewhere they won't waste storytelling space.

In this case, however, I have to suspect that these credits don't appear on the comics pages proper because no one wanted to take credit for it.

I will put my prejudgments aside, however, and list the talent behind this disposable bit of non-substance:

• Keith Giffen, story and layouts.
• Chris Alexander, pencils, additional layouts.
• Eric Stephenson, script.
• Kurt Hathaway, lettering, editor.[Note that the "lettering" credit precedes the "editor" credit, suggesting that Hathaway prided himself more on the former than the latter.]
• R. Matthew Hawking, assistant editor.
• Rob Liefeld, creator of characters therein.

I omitted the names of the inkers and color separation team because their work specifically did not contribute to the awfulness of this book.

I must note with some protest and some amazement the presence of Keith Giffen's name topping this list, however. Giffen has a long resume in comics that includes considerable entertaining material; Giffen can write his way through a book of cigarette papers; Giffen can even produce the occasional interesting concept. Why, then, does his name appear atop a story so utterly devoid of exactly those elements that define a Giffen story? Where does the humor appear? Where does the clever banter take place? Where does anything but gory violence happen? Where, in short, can we find a single trace of Giffen-ness in this?

I would prefer to leave some issues in the hands of people wearing "Nature Can't Be Restocked" t-shirts and Birkenstock sandals, but in this case, I truly feel regret for the tree pulped to produce the paper used to print this rag.