The Nightmarist
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The latest comic book acquisition by Hollywood is this just-released graphic novel written and drawn by popular artist Duncan Rouleau. Unfortunately, it's pretty easy to see why Hollywood would want to turn this into a movie—it deals heavily with modern B-movie themes and building blocks. From the misunderstanding psychologists and group therapy sessions of mental-health porn (Mad Love, Girl Interrupted, Prozac Nation) to is-it-real-or-is-the-protagonist-nuts plot (Jacob's Ladder, Gothika, Stay, the first Matrix), the bad movie adaptation writes itself.
Rouleau's story of mentally ill artist-turned-child of destiny Beth Sorrenson does have some compelling black and white visuals, including the design that went into the titular character, but the story the art serves has nothing original—and plenty that's depressingly familiar—to say.
Action Philosophers! No. 5: Hate the French!
Evil Twin Comics
Reckless foreign policy, "freedom fries" and Steve Martin's Pink Panther movie—haven't we offended the French enough? I mean, they gave us a whole Statue of Liberty.
Well, writer Fred Van Lente and artist Ryan Dunlavey would seem not to agree, or they wouldn't have entitled the latest issue of their Action Philosophers! series "Hate the French!," and featured a group of rednecks hunting a French bread-hugging frog stereotype on the cover.
The Francophobic title is just a gag, though (or maybe just a marketing ploy to snag red state readers). After all, gags are what this comic book is about. Well, gags and short, 10-page distillations of the lives and thinking of the world's greatest philosophers. Van Lente and Dunlavey have mastered their high-wire walk between serious, highbrow philosophy teaching and lowbrow sight gags and juvenile jokes over the course of the past four issues, and are apparently now dancing on said high wire.
This may be their cleverest issue yet. The French philosophers covered within are Rene Descartes, Jean-Paul Sartre and Jacques Derrida, and their philosophies match up to the medium of comics pretty much perfectly. The book begins with Descartes, or rather a blank panel where Descartes should be. A nervous narrator tries cajoling him into appearing, but, first, Descartes has to reason himself, the world and something for Dunlavey to draw into existence.
In a wonderful narrative loop-de-loop (which is French for, um, loop), the book ends with a piece on Derrida, whom they draw into a Terminator parody they call "The Deconstructonator," in which Derrida in cyborg Schwarzenegger drag bursts through a wall shouting, "I am always already back!" His deconstructionist theory and understanding of literature and duality then reasons the comic book right out of existence, which is exactly where it began.
Pretty heady stuff for something so giggle-inducing. What Van Lente writes of Sarte seems to apply just as easily to himself and/or Dunlavey: They "succeeded in making philosophy intelligible to the regular person." Only their jokes are a little fresher than Sarte's.
Strangetown No. 1
Oni Press
Writer/artist Chynna Clugston made her name with melodramedies that were equal parts Japanese manga and cheesy '80s teen comedies, like Blue Monday and Scooter Girl. In her latest, she takes on a cowriter, Ian Shaughnessy, and a more darkly toned and otherworldly story—for the first eight pages, anyway.
The story opens with a little naked girl on an unidentified coast where we hear what sounds like seal barking and seal clubbing. The little girl is Vanora, and she's placed on a ship with a suitcase containing her "old coat," and she washes up on the coast of what I assume is America.
Now 20, the mysterious Vanora wanders into the city of Strangetown and takes up residence in a house full of wacky characters that evoke the early chapters of Rumiko Takahashi's old Maison Ikkoku series. There the book sheds its fairy-tale feel to become more like your average Clugston work—cool young characters, slapstick and sex jokes and a suggested alt-pop soundtrack to listen to while you read.
The air of mystery and new settings and characters suggests that Clugston is growing as a storyteller, but she's not growing too fast or too radically. Good thing, too, considering she was already a pretty good storyteller to begin with.