Bricoleurs of Cool
You receive a package in the mail from an old friend. Inside is a comic book, The Bulletproof Coffin. Not
a comic book, a trade paperback, a trade for short, but you only learn that
later. ‘What a stupid name,’ you say out
loud to no one in particular. The image
on the cover is garish: primary colors, few details, thick lines, costumed
heroes. You sift the rest of the mail
and bury the comic (the trade) under the junk mail.
Later that same night, you wake. You can’t sleep. You go to the kitchen for a glass of
water. Drink. You put the glass down on a giant jaundiced eyeball. The
Bulletproof Coffin. You take the
book, leave the water. There’s a weird
introduction about t-shirts and toys, stuff you’ve never heard of or seen and a
forward by someone calling himself Destroyovski. He writes about how this is the last work –
except he calls it a ‘final testament’ – of Shaky Kane and David Hine and some
made-up bullshit (to go along with the made-up bullshit names, you guess) about ‘Big 2 Publishing,’ ‘distribution
rights,’ and ‘obscurity.’ You push
on. It’s getting late.
It appears, for all the affectation, that The Bulletproof Coffin was a six issue
series. The main character, Steve
Newman, is a voids contractor which reminds you of a movie made from a book considered
unfilmable by that director who makes those sexy horror movies. Newman cleans out the houses of people who
have died. There’s a slogan on the side
of Newman’s dump truck: ‘Because you can’t take it with you.’ Newman’s cut a deal with the boss; on the
night before a job, he gets to go prospecting, a self-styled ‘culture vulture.’ If he finds something he wants, it’s his,
otherwise, its landfill. Newman lucks
into a cache of kitsch: toy ray-guns, a co-op TV … and comic books. He hauls the stuff home and you see his
family – rote as rote – shrewish wife, creepy kids – very, creepy kids – and an
ugly-ass pink dog. Newman settles into
his ‘sanctum sanctorum,’ and you nod at the ‘Doctor Strangeness’ of it all. Newman starts to read ‘The Unforgiving Eye’
from the stack of liberated comic books.
On the facing page, you start
reading ‘The Unforgiving Eye.’ A fortune-teller
who wears a giant eyeball on his head, circus freaks, a guy’s spine gets pulled
out, its about what you expected, an entertaining
comic, to say the least. You get the
feeling you’ve been here before, secreted away, reading comic books. It’s late.
The rest of the issue finds Newman messing
with the coin-operated TV he seized. He
sees an old man garroted by a pale fedora-wearing shadowy man. Is it a tape?
Is it live? Who are these guys? He heads back to the house discovers a
costume hidden under the floorboards.
The Coffin Fly. The Coffin
Fly? The story ends with a paranoid
Newman thinking he’s being watched. He’s
right, he is. His creepy kids outfitted
in monster masks have breached the sanctum sanctorum. They put a quarter in the TV and now Newman
is the late show. You keep reading.
Hine
and Kane go hand in leather-studded glove.
Simpatico right down the line.
The story-in-a-story stuff geeks out on its own gimmick, however, it remains
(always) in service to the story. The Bulletproof Coffin is a contact-high, a
flash-back, a phantom itch of what it felt like to read a comic book when the
pages were made from pulp and you would find ghost-like outlines of wood pulp
buried in the gutters. As you page
through you find yourself lingering over ads for ‘U Control Darling Lab
Monkey,’ and ‘The Amazing Hollywood Babe Magnet.’ The ad copy is awash in nostalgia for fruit
pies and footlockers full of drab green armies.
You read every blessed line. There
are pages of faux fan letters (Coffin Mails) and pin-up pages and
do-it-yourself paper dolls and a 3-D Rama.
It’s getting early.
The Bulletproof Coffin turns out to be a
post-apocalyptic assault vehicle complete with spikes and chains and skulls for
hub caps that Newman – now Coffin Fly – accesses from an escape hatch in the
ceiling of his sanctum: a wormhole into a possible future where the ‘hateful
dead’ – zombie Vietnam vets, of course – and goliath dinosaurs roam alongside
Romana, Queen of the Stone Age née Ms. Sharon Sharone, a blond bombshell in
fuzzy britches. Wait, there’s more! The
Red Wraith! Yes. The Shield of Justice! Yes! The inevitable showdown with Hine and
Kane! Yes! Death! Yes! Oh, Yes! Destruction! And the unfortunate demise of
the fastest letterer in the business! It’s early, but it’s not too late. ¶ About
his novel, Ulysses, James Joyce wrote:
“I've
put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for
centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's
immortality.” You realize that Kane and Hine are bricoleurs
and that they’ve indulged their inner Joyce and filled The Bulletproof Coffin with homages
and clues that infest the story without wanking on wistfulness. Hine and Kane have projected a world of their
own making, one that you remember and
cherish – a world where comic books become immortal works of art.
I got to 'live the dream' (sort of) these past two weeks by
guest-hosting on two of my favorite comic book podcasts: The Two Headed Nerd
Comicast and Panel Culture. As much as I would like to host my own podcast or
fill-in on a semi-regular basis … it's a lot of damn work. 
As if podcasting isn't enough of a collaborative act, I also
spent time last week in an attempt to one-up Daniel Elkin and Justin Giampaoli
on an essay about Eel Mansions by
Derek Van Gieson. I've tried to avoid small press publications if only because
I know if I give in I won't be able to stop myself. Small press comics may be
more hit-and-miss, however, when they hit, watch out. At (only) thirty-eight
pages, Eel Mansions is a monster. We
wrote almost five thousand words about this black and white beauty of non sequiturs, in-jokes and out-and-out
weirdness and there is still more we could have talked about. Eel Mansions is a giver and for $7
shipped it's a steal.
