Bulletproof Coffin: Disinterred #2 – Review

By: David Hine (story/script), Shaky Kane (story/art), Richard Starkings & Jimmy Betancourt (letters) & J.G. Rochell (design)

The Story: It’s open mic night and people are allowed to get up there and tell their sordid tales of horror.

Review: “Good, but not as electric as the original series because I can’t figure out the story yet.”  That’s how I’d sum up this second story cycle from Bulletproof Coffin.  The first series was such a breath of fresh air in comics: Weird story + pre-comic code flashback stories + great art and design.  In this issue, we still have the art and we still have the flashback stories, but it isn’t clear to me what “the story” is about just yet.  Remember, that issue #1 only showed us an origin for one of the characters.

This issue is again in origin mode as we see a jazz club MC who is opening the mic to allow people to tell their horrible stories.  It later turns out that the MC has a secret identity and is linked to the other Bulletproof Coffin characters, but we only get a few pages of that with the majority of the issue being devoted to the aforementioned “horrible stories”.

Now, those “horrible stories” are pretty magical.  Each seems like the kind of story that could have featured in an old issue of Tales from the Crypt.  The stories have a common theme with each having to do with bizarre surgical procedures performed on a loved one (sometimes with bad results).  Honestly, I wouldn’t mind a bit if Hine and Kane simply made a tongue-in-cheek homage to those old horror comics because I LOVE that part of the issue.  The only part bugging me is that there is a hint of a bigger story, but I don’t understand that story and my frustration causes me to easily lose sight of how much I enjoyed other elements of the comic.

Bulletproof Coffin: Disinterred #1 – Review

By: David Hine (story/writer), Shaky Kane (story/art), Richard Starkings & Jimmy Betancourt (lettering) and JG Roshell (design)

The Story: Not exactly sure, but we get an origin for the Shield of Justice character.

Four Things: 

1. Just glad to have Bulletproof Coffin back! – The first 6-issue run of Bulletproof Coffin that ended in January 2011 was so much fun.  It was such a loving, campy homage to pre-comics code comic books that also layered in an interesting commentary on creator rights.  We readers get lots of great mini-series from Image, but it’s kinda rare to see a second act because the creators often move on to other projects.  For example: We’ll probably never see another issue of Cowboy Ninja Viking.  So, anytime the creators of a beloved creator-owned miniseries come back for an encore, we should cheer because you know they’re not getting rich doing this stuff.

2. Love how the flat colors pop. – I talk a LOT in reviews about wanting more flat, primary colors in comics.  Bulletproof Coffin is a great example of what I’m talking about.  These pages are just alive.  For anyone who doubts me, take a nicely colored Marvel comic (say, Fantastic Four colored by the reliable Paul Mounts) and open it up and do the same thing with Bulletproof Coffin.  Now walk to the other side of the room and see which comic can still catch your eye.  Flat colors just have a power to them that can never be matched by this highlighted crap.

3. Not really sure what it’s about yet. – I really struggled about what to write in “The Story” section up above because it isn’t at all clear what is going on (yet).  We DO get an origin for the Shield of Justice vigilante character that we met in the first miniseries, but how this relates to the opening scene of a naked man tunneling under a graveyard and coming up in the middle of other Bulletproof Coffin characters is beyond me.  Surely there is some meta-commentary going on here; I just don’t recognize it yet.

Elephantmen #33 – Review

By: Richard Starkings (writer) & Shaky Kane (artist)

The Story: Starkings and Kane bring us an Elephantmen-themed take on Pygmalion.

What’s Good: I had totally forgotten that Shaky Kane was providing guest art on this issue.  True, Kane’s guest-art role been teased in the backs of various Image publications for the last couple months, but it didn’t really sink in that it meant THIS issue.

But, as soon as you look at the cover, you say, “Ohhhhh…  Shaky Kane.  I like Shaky Kane.  He was the guy who did such a bang up job on The Bulletproof Coffin miniseries.  This should be an awesome take on the Elephantmen.”  And, he really delivers.  It just goes to show how cool it is to have artists with their own unique artistic style because you won’t find more dissimilar artists than those who have worked on Elephantmen: Moritat, Ladronn, Marian Churchland, Boo Clark, Axel Medellin, Shaky Kane, Chris Bachalo.  I might be leaving one out, but I think that’s all and they’ve all nailed it in their own way.  It also illustrates how painful it can be in Big 2 superhero comics when a new artist comes on and attempts to ape the style of the previous artist.  Kane is in no way trying to emulate Axel Medellin.  We get classic Kane: rumply, slightly cartoony figures, bright and bold flat colors and wonderful storytelling.

Bulletproof Coffin #6 – Review

By: David Hine (story/script), Shaky Kane (story/art), Richard Starkings & Jimmy Betancourt (letters) & JG Roshell (production)

The Story: Bulletproof Coffin comes to an end.  Will Steven find The Creators and save the world?  Or will the sinister G-Men thwart him?

What’s Good: What an awesome comic!  This series started out with an interesting concept: Steve Norman is a Voids Contractor who cleans out the homes of the recently deceased; who’s also a comic collector.  In doing his job one day, he comes across a pile of Golden Nugget comics (that are a clear spoof of the pre-comics code era) and gets sucked into the world of the Golden Nugget comics as the Coffin Fly.  The story’s main thrust was that Steve had to find “The Creators” and get them to write a new ending to the story so that the entire Earth wouldn’t be plunged into a zombie apocalypse.

Hine and Kane really bring this series home in a strong and self-aware way.  That was a huge relief because many interesting creator-owned comics start with a neat concept, but don’t wrap up very well.  That’s not a knock on creator-owned comics, but more the fact that they’re trying to tell a complete story and endings are hard.  Marvel/DC don’t have the same problem because they are not trying to tell the ending to Batman/Captain America.

This ending was just awesome as the weirdness very quickly takes a back seat when Steve finds The Creators .  What is hilarious is that they are the actual creators of this comic book, so we get to see comic book versions of all the folks listed in the credits above.  Hine and Kane turn out to be grizzled old guys who pack heat while they write comics.  Kane spends most of the issue with a cigarettes dangling from his lip while threatening to shoot Steve.  But just as Steve is prevailing on them to save the world, the G-Men show up.  But they actually turn out to be corporate lawyers from Big 2 comics who are there to buy out Hine and Kane so that they can make a movie featuring bastardized versions their characters.

So, what stated as a weird spoof of the pre-comics code era, ends-up being a satire on the topic of creator-owned comics and creators who “sell out”.  I love it.

The Bulletproof Coffin #5 – Review

By: David Hine (story/script), Shaky Kane (story/art) & Richard Starkings (letters)

The Story: The story starts to swirl toward a conclusion as Steve Norman is pursued by the ominous Shadow Men.

What’s Good: The only weak link for The Bulletproof Coffin thus far has been that it was unclear whether there was any sort of real skeleton of a story or whether all this awesome weirdness was just floating in the ether (and could be enjoyed as long as you didn’t really try to put the plot together).  That lack of a “story” is something that will bother some people (i.e., the kind of people who were disappointed by the ending of Lost) whereas other are happy to have the wonderfully done send-up of old timey comics.

Well, we start to get a story here.  It isn’t complete and you still cannot string all the events together, but you can tell it is happening.  And the comic is so fun that you don’t mind the slight gaps.  Whereas reading Morrison’s Batman might make you want to throw the comic at the wall, you don’t mind flipping back a few pages in Bulletproof Coffin to revisit a reveal.  The difference is that this comic is just pure FUN and is not remotely trying to be serious.

All of the old-fashioned art goodness is still here.  Comics like this make you laugh at reviewers who score the “story” and “art” separately.  If you had someone like David Finch or Alex Ross illustrate Bulletproof Coffin, the story would fall flat.  Kane’s visuals really sell the over-the-top campy dialog that Hine has written.  It’s a very good collaboration.

The Bulletproof Coffin #4 – Review

By: David Hine (story/script), Shaky Kane (story/art) & Richard Starkings & Jimmy Betancourt (letters)

The Story: Steve Nayman starts to wonder which reality is “real”: The one where he is the Coffin Fly or the one with his day-to-day existence.

What’s Good: The weirdness continues in this month’s Bulletproof Coffin, but what is nice is that we’re starting to see the overall story develop too.  And, that’s a good thing.  For as much as I love creator-owned comics, many start out really strong with a cool hook or two, but then fail to deliver any meat for the story such that my issue #3 or so it isn’t “novel” anymore and the story isn’t working for you either.  That’s just a lousy feeling.  I’m not going to jump right up and say that Bulletproof Coffin has turned the corner with this issue, but this issue feels like a transition where they are trying to change things up.

And I mean that in a very good way.  We still get the Bulletproof Coffin fun that we’ve gotten used to, namely the fake pre-comics code spoof of a old comic book (which are still just magic to me), but in this issue the flash back to Coffin Fly and Ramona (fighting zombie soldiers) starts to work within the context of the overall story that Hine/Kane are telling.  It is hard to tell exactly what is going on, but we start to see some explanations for some of the other weirdness that has been going on in our protagonist’s life so far.

I love Shaky Kane’s art!  It is just a huge homage to comics of yesteryear.  Honestly, for all some people gush about how advanced comic art was in the 1940’s and how we never see that kind of art anymore, mostly that is a good thing (if I’m being honest) because the vast majority of the art was not good.  What Kane does that is so special is pay tribute to that very flat style of art with all its weird anatomy and non-dynamic characters, but he does it in such a way that it is (a) clear that Kane isn’t a crummy artist who just draws like this all the time and (b) is clearly a homage to those old comics and NOT an attempt to make fun of them.

The Bulletproof Coffin #3 – Review

By: David Hine (story/script), Shaky Kane (story/art) & Richard Starkings (letters)

The Story: Steve Neuman becomes the Coffin Fly and teams up with golden age comic characters.

What’s Good: It is no secret that I LOVED the first two issues of The Bulletproof Coffin.  Seeing this comic fan guy whose job was to clean up the belongings of the dead get sucked into a world where he has some connection to these “Golden Nugget” comic characters was just cool as hell.

What I’ve really loving is that as this 6-issue series moves into its middle issues, the story still has enough weirdness that the novelty isn’t wearing off AND the story itself is become entertaining in its own right.  That is no small feat because we’ve all read series that had a neat hook, but either failed to be wacky enough to maintain the weirdness OR just never had a story to tell (or both).  So far, that is not a problem here.

One thing that I found pretty fun about this issue is the parallel between Steve and his new alter-ego, the Coffin Fly.  Steve’s job consists of cleaning up the belongings of the recently deceased.  Coffin Fly drives around the post-apocalyptic wasteland in this armored vehicle (THE Bulletproof Coffin) dragging all the chains to dredge up knick-knacks (which he collects).  I find this interesting and am sure it’ll have something to do with the story.

But, the real star of this issue was the fake Golden Nugget comic about “Ramona: Queen of the Stone Age”.  These fake reprint Golden Nugget comics are just great.  They are so obviously a loving spoof of pre-comics code comic books and this one follows Sharon Sharone as she is pulled through a time-warp to become Ramona.  In this issue, we follow Ramona “as once again she falls into the clutches of LUST-CRAZED SAVAGES.  What TERRIBLE FATE have these primitive brutes planned for our helpless heroine?”  That is just the kind of stuff that you would never in a million years see in a modern DC/Marvel comic and that is mostly because when comics and movies talked about “savages” they were being incredibly racist towards people of African or Asian descent.  But, here they avoid that problem by having these savages be of unclear race (although they’re white dudes if they’re anything) and having them all wear helmets so they are almost faceless.  I love the nostalgia trip without the racial baggage!

The Bulletproof Coffin #2 – Review

by: David Hine (story/writer), Shaky Kane (story/art), Richard Starkings & Jimmy Betancourt (letters)

The Story: Steve Neuman is a “Voids Contractor”.  He cleans out the houses of the dead when they have no heirs, but he has a sweet deal with his boss allowing him to enter the night before and snatch any especially precious items.  Steve is also a comic geek with a full-on comic geek lair in his attic, so when he finds a stash of old Golden Nugget comics in a house he’s working on, he is like a pig in shit.  Not only that, but he finds what appears to be the costume of the Coffin Fly (one of the Golden Nugget heroes).

What’s Good: I was tremendously disappointed not to be able to review the first issue of this new series at WCBR because my LCS didn’t have it, but I’m going to pour a little love on it here.  Anyone who reads my reviews here knows like I like whack, off-the-wall comics when I step away from Marvel/DC.  But sometimes a comic is just whacky.  I enjoy it, but at the same time I’m glad it is a 4-issue series because I know it’ll get old pretty fast.  Bulletproof Coffin is both whacky and GOOD.  Hine and Kane have enough of that weirdness in here to satisfy people who have already read their Captain America this week, but on top of that they are building a fleshed out world.  That is a very hard thing to do.  Many creator-owned comics try to build a world, but it is usually boring as hell to watch while they do it.  So when you read a review of those comics, you’ll see comments like, “I’m going to stick with this through the first arc because I think I like where they are going with these concepts.”  None of that here: You’ll marvel at the world building AND enjoy every panel of comic goodness in Bulletproof Coffin.

Elephantmen #25 – Review

By: Richard Starkings (writer), art by various

The Story: In a recap of sorts, we follow the inner monologue of one of Hip and Ebony’s fellow agents at the Information Agency, as he reflects on the history of the Elephantmen.

What’s Good: I love Elephantmen, but this is the first really good “jumping on point” issue that has come out since the series started.  It gives a nice recap of the series to date, complete with lots of footnotes to previous issues if you want to know more.  Of course, you’d be better off buying the trades or tracking down the back issues, but if you refuse to do that, this issue will get you pretty well caught up before spending the last 2 pages introducing the ominous new story arc that will carry this series for the near future (which looks like a lot of fun, btw).

The other hook on this anniversary issue is that it is drawn with 25 splash pages, each by a different artist.  In some ways, this issue is a little like having an Elephantmen themed sketch-book.  Not surprisingly, my favorite page was by Ladronn who is probably most responsible for the look of the series.