Pop Gun War
Farel Dalrymple
Dark Horse Comics
www.darkhorse.com

This comic features a quirky cast of characters milling around society's lowest rung in a city with magical qualities. The story centers on a young boy who desires a better life, but also wants to enjoy the one he has. The boy doesn't appear to have any authority figures to impose responsibility on him. He does, however, have older friends who check in on him and look out for his interests, even as he becomes embroiled in an extraordinary situation.

The above paragraph could describe Farel Dalrymple's Xeric-Grant recipient Pop Gun War or Sonny Liew's Xeric winner, Malinky Robot: Stinky Fish Blues. The similarities don't end there. Dalrymple and Liew are artistic contemporaries, so the prospect that one could be swiping from the other is terrifying, but not likely. What is more likely is that they share an aesthetic -- an artistic vision based on an idealized view of the child as the innocent, unabashedly flavored by urban fantasy and the bizarre whimsy of Sid and Marty Krofft.

Both books are heavy on the whimsy. Characters' names and patterns of speech evoke ideas of a world floating between grim urban reality and faerie magic. Creatures with charmed qualities exist amidst the decay of the cities. The cities themselves are ghost-town versions of New York in the 80's -- ominous, filthy, but charming metropolises with far fewer people around than their size would seem to warrant.

For artists such as Dalrymple and Liew, this particular brand of reality-based fantasy allows ample opportunity to show off their prodigious drawing skills. It also allows for a very limited narrative scope. The puerility that dominates these types of comics leaves no room for maturity. The story becomes too much about obvious, dime-store morals (a child's hopes and dreams are good; the oppressive workaday world of adults is bad) to ever say anything significant in any complex way. Complexity is left to the art, which is lush and grandiose, but ultimately fulfills no purpose. It serves no greater idea or narrative vision. Instead the narrative exists only to justify the existence of the drawings. The fantastic creatures that populate these stories are visually complex, with detailed histories behind them, but they obey a handful of limiting stereotypes. Just as the story exists to justify the drawings, the characters' present action exists to justify their richly imagined pasts.

To berate an artist for being able to draw beautifully and for having an active imagination would not seem to be a just pursuit. But little is so frustrating as a lopsided piece of comics art. Reading the Greg Budgett and Gary Dumm American Splendor strips, the unnatural art is a barrier between the reader and Harvey Pekar's stories. That barrier frustrates the reader. The shallow stories in Pop Gun War and Malinky Robot create similar barriers between the reader and the beautiful drawings of Dalrymple and Liew. Rather than looking like great craftsmen, the authors appear to have wasted their considerable talents on weak stories.

Get Bent #10 gives a better first impression than most minicomics. Ben T. Steckler packages five short minis together, each with a color cardstock cover, under the collective title, "Can Anybody Find Me Somebody To Love?" borrowed from the Queen song. Each individual mini bears part of the title, so that the first one is titled, "Can," the second one, "Anybody," etc. The package shows an attention to detail without digressing into the sort of overwhelming object fetishization that can be found in packaging of some high-art minicomics, and can often overwhelm the comic within the package. It is intricate without being overly lush.

Living in a consumer culture in which the advertising is often more sophisticated than the product being sold, discerning readers should know that attractive packaging gives little indication as to the quality of the content (the old book-by-its-cover bit). Reading "Can," it looks like Steckler's comics may have a chance at matching his packaging skills. Though the illustration is somewhat crude, concept and execution are sound. The author aims for a particular tone and nails it. As a lonely slob plods through his morning routine, every minute action brings to the character's mind a piece of an advertising jingle or slogan. The character's fixation with television commercials, juxtaposed against his solitary routine, gracefully reveals a lonely existence. The final touch, in which the character arrives at his place of work -- a prison -- is executed with an artful touch. It's the kind of writing that can make up for artwork that lags slightly.

This makes the disappointment of reading the other four books in Get Bent #10 that much greater. The author continues to touch on themes of isolation and despair, but fails to achieve the level of artistry he found in "Can." Each book has its own unique problems. In "Anybody," the principle character is too much of a corn-fed stereotype to be believable. "Somebody" is also hindered by an unbelievable character, but more problematic is the situation that the character is in, which is too confusing. "Find Me" smacks of the sort of self-indulgent, pseudo-autobiographical, under-appreciated cartoonist gush that usually elicits the opposite of the intended reaction in the reader -- instead of sympathizing with the character, one wants to, as Gregory Cwiklik put it in his review of Leela Corman's Subway Series from TCJ #251, "see the characters put into re-education camps or forced to do community service in Somalia or something." "To Love" is just too weird. The author is obviously trying to construct an allegory of some sort, but it gets crushed underneath the weight of its own silliness.

As each successive story falls flat, the observant reader can recognize persistent flaws in Steckler's work. The dependence on internal monologue is ill-advised. Though it highlights the insular and lonely world of the characters, it becomes an obvious device after reading more than two stories that utilize it. The author would have been better off diversifying his storytelling techniques in pursuit of a common narrative effect, thereby making each piece a unique achievement and a component of a greater whole.

Nothing leaves bad drawing quite as vulnerable as bad writing. The strength of tone and structure in "Can" encourages the reader to cut the artist some slack when it comes to his illustration. Once the stories begin to fall apart all bets are off. Steckler's drawing is either rushed or unpracticed. Based on his capable package-design skills, I'm going to guess "rushed." Either way, the drawing is clumsy and lacks polish.

Steckler shows himself to be an artist of some skill, but he either lacks all the tools necessary to create a good comic or the drive to give the projects the necessary attention to detail. If "Find Me" truly is semi-autobiographical, the artist should be advised that his work is not, in fact, under-appreciated. Rather, it does not at this point merit the sort of appreciation that the character in that strip craves.

It says something about Runoff that I was able to read issues #2 through #5 without feeling less informed for not having read #1. The inkling that the first, unread chapter is unimportant is indicative a larger problem in Runoff -- the suspicion that most of the story is fat tissue that could and should be cut away from the body.

Runoff is a sprawling horror epic that borrows heavily from movies and television shows of the same genre, though the concept behind it is fairly sound: People can enter the small town of Range, Washington, but no one can leave. As the town begins to overflow with people, dead bodies start turning up, and supernatural events abound.

Capable comics have been spun from much less, but Tom Manning's work fails because of a lack of urgency. Rather than keeping his foot on the gas of the story, the author appears content to amble casually along, poking his head around, checking in on every character possible along the way.

In issue #2, four dead hunters turn up, along with the body of a half-man, half-animal that the town coroners call "Mr. Teeth." Mr. Teeth is almost certainly linked to murder of the hunters, but is not mentioned again in any meaningful way until the end of issue #4. In the meantime, the author goes off on a tangent, focusing a great deal of attention on a bully character named Mort Carver. The police are convinced that Mort could be behind the murders. Presumably, the author is trying to divert the reader's attention from Mr. Teeth in order to make his return in issue #4 more exciting. Mort, however, is never really a viable candidate -- not with the body of Mr. Teeth sitting cold in the morgue and fresh in the reader's mind.

The failure to create a believable red herring in Mort Carver is disheartening, but not as much as the sillier, seemingly more aimless tangents the author takes in the name of character development. The subplot based on a political struggle between the senile old mayor and the self-absorbed school superintendent is played mostly for laughs. The tone of theses scenes is so vastly different from the rest of the story that they serve as jarring distractions rather than comedic asides. Other subplots involving a family of visitors, the FBI and a local woman and her child move too slowly to hold the reader's attention.

The larger reason that Manning's attempts to develop his characters through various subplots fail is that the characters he involves in those subplots are not the same characters that drive the mystery at the center of the story. That plot is pushed along by a group of police officers and the sheriff from a nearby Native-American reservation. No energy is expended on the personal lives of these characters. Manning divides the duties of narrative between two groups of characters: One group provides the narrative action, while the other, operating separately, provides depth and character development.

Unfortunately, this separation prevents either group from fulfilling its role. Because the characters engaged in solving the mystery lack development, it is difficult to muster concern for them as they continually put their lives in danger. Likewise, the personal lives of the other characters irrelevant to the central storyline naturally seem irrelevant to the reader.

Runoff is not without its charms, however. The quality of Manning's drawing fluctuates throughout, but his characters can be engagingly expressive. He demonstrates a sold feel for layout, toying with page structure while preserving readability. But the most impressive touches are the smallest ones. The author occasionally interrupts the narrative to insert a newspaper-style strip drawn in a style very similar to Berke Breathed. These strips prove to be much better comedic asides than the mayor/superintendent exchanges. Within the narrative, appearances by a smiling, floating, manga-ish box at the murder scenes are by far the story's creepiest moments.

Like Steckler, Manning has skills, but appears to lack focus. Too often he appears so enamored with the world he created that he forgets he is telling a story. At some point, the author will need to make some tough decisions if he wants to tell an effective story.