Stephen Colbert’s Tek Jansen No. 1
Oni Press
One of the running jokes on The Colbert Report is that Stephen Colbert—the serious, pompous, Bill O’Reilly-like character, not the real actor playing him—writes terrible science fiction in his spare time, hawking his ridiculously titled Stephen Colbert’s Alpha Squad Seven: Lady Nocturne, a Tek Jansen Adventure to his loyal viewers during asides on his show. Like so many of the show’s jokes, this too is a stab at “Papa Bear” O’Reilly, who hawks his own terrible mystery novel Those Who Trespass to his viewers on The O’Reilly Factor.
Indie comics publisher Oni Press seized on Colbert’s gag (and popularity) to produce a Tek Jansen comic book, and while their impulse to run with it is understandable, they also kind of spoil the joke.
Oni reduces the title to less of a mouthful, while lengthening our exposure to fiction, so that rather than just a snippet of sex-charged purple prose, we get two short comic book stories. While the TV skits are funny because of the straight-faced godawfulness of the Tek Jansen stories, read with deadpan earnestness by Colbert, the Oni creators give us a science-fiction comedy starring Tek, who is basically a muscular space hero with Colbert’s head atop his broad shoulders.
Colbert isn’t personally involved in making the comic, although he informs every page. In addition to artists Scott Chantler and Robbie Rodriguez using his likeness, I couldn’t help but hear his voice when reading the dialogue, some of which alludes to the Colbert-of-The Colbert Report’s diction, and the three writers involved have Tek spouting Colbert-esque faux right-wing philosophy.
Of course, the problem with making Tek Jansen the same as Colbert-the-character, only in space, is that it deflates the original, superior parody.
At the risk of getting too deep into Colbert’s multitiered media satire schtick, the playful revelation of Colbert the Wannabe Sci-Fi Novelist within Colbert the Crusading Pundit reveals the latter to be a facade, a character being played; which we know it is anyway, seeing that Colbert is a comedian and actor playing a pundit playing a role—but by analogy it parodies O’Reilly and his ilk as simply being characters on TV to make money. That is, the real Colbert’s a phony phony, playing a phony to show us how phony the real phonies are.
This comic is very, very different from that. It’s basically Futurama, with Stephen Colbert playing the role of Zap Brannigan. It’s definitely worth a few chuckles, but it’s neither as funny or as cutting as the comedy that inspired it, and thus more than a little disappointing.
Voodoo Child No. 1
Virgin Comics
Of course, celebrity-driven comics can get a lot worse, as the first issue of this new series proves. The cover reads Weston Cage and Nicolas Cage’s Voodoo Child, and “created by” credits go to the Cages (the famous Hollywood actor and comic book fan, and his less famous teenage son). What exactly they did is unclear. Generally “created by” credits go to the writer and artist responsible for the first story a character appears in, but prolific comics writer Mike Carey gets credited for the script, and Dean Ruben Hyrapiet for the art.
The book opens in 1860 New Orleans, where some Klansmen kill off some rich white folks who seem a little too friendly with the negroes (and even seem to be leaning toward supporting the North, should war come). During their raid they kill a young boy named Gabriel Moore, who is reanimated through black magic.
Flash forward to December of 2005, in post-Katrina New Orleans, where the now black-skinned, dreadlocked Gabriel fights gangsters and corrupt government types using supernatural powers and some voodoo spells. Basically a voodoo version of The Crow without the poetry or sharp visuals, or Spawn without the superstar art of Todd McFarlane to buttress it, Voodoo Child is pretty derivative.
It’s hardly a terrible comic book, although there’s a palpable mediocrity to it; one which perhaps makes sense given the odd pedigree. It certainly reads like a polished-up idea for a superhero that a teenager came up with. Were I Carey or Hyrapiet, I don’t think I’d mind the Cages getting credit for creating the book one bit. Why not let them take the blame?