CatFang
Uber Geek!
Joined: 24 Oct 2007
Posts: 1144
Location: Where Your Eyes Don't Go
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 Posted: Tue Mar 04, 2008 4:24 pm Post subject: Jack In The Box & Last of the Chickenheads |
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UK Indie Double Feature Review Special
Sometimes you have a day when everything goes right. Saturday was one of those days. Being handed copies of “Jack In The Box” and “The Last Of The Chicken Heads” and then asked to review them were two of those things.
Jack In The Box
Story and Art: Tony Wicks
Script: Martin Buxton
This is the story of the world’s loneliest boy meeting the girl with the biggest heart. It’s also a story of alien abduction, sensory deprivation, nature vs nuture, worlds colliding, sinister doctors and big purple monsters with beautiful wet eyes.
How to tell you more without giving it away? It’s difficult because there are lots of very interesting ideas presented in this first issue and I want share them with you, NOW. On the other hand I don’t want to spoiler it because it really deserves to be read as I did – with no prior knowledge – that way the horror and the delight and the realisation of how everything starts to come together work to the fullest effect.
One idea that I can’t resist mentioning though is the idea of a human boy brought up seemingly without any human contact (if any contact with other living creatures at all) as part of a cruel experiment where his only understanding of the world is through a book of symbolic representations. The choice of comics as a format to explore this idea is inspired and raises some intriguing questions about the nature of perception, identity and isolation. I won’t say more, you have to read it for yourself.
The book is predominantly black and white, with vivid, aggressive splashes of Magenta wherever we encounter the monsters or the abandoned human girl they have raised. The use of pinpoint colour like this reminds me a bit of Sin City, and it adds an extra, deceptively simple, dimension to the visual structure of the comic.
Leaping out against the cooler black, white and grey the colour gives the characters a shocking vitality. They also seem, no matter how cuddly, somehow dangerous. An example of this can be seen the first time a Monster shows up. Its nature and its relationship to the character it speaks to are ambiguous. The alien body language and expression is extremely well done. Is it making threats or promises? Is the rescue of the abandoned girl as much an experiment as the abduction of the boy? What is the relationship between the main factions introduced so far, and what do they have to do with the human world above? I am looking forward to the answers to all these questions.
I am reminded of both Kev O’Neill and Bryan Talbot by certain aspects of the art, the sinuous strength of some of the specimens we glimpse in jars, the touches of madness and nightmare such as the floating head. There is also something of the sensibility of Gilliam or Guillermo Del Toro in both the magic realism and the twisting sideways of reality in the tone – for example my favourite panel of the whole thing, the “spider doctor” crouching unseen, above an oblivious happy couple, in a tree. *shivers*.
So what will readers of this also like? I would say Heavy Metal style European comics, Vertigo style Sci-Fi/ magic realism.
The Last of The Chickenheads
Script and Art: Tony Wicks
What do you get if you combine:
1) 70s Asian epic samurai cinema?
2) Nanotechnology and big Future Science?
3) Ethical discussions about power and control?
Did you guess “The Last of The Chickenheads”? Then you were right!
Issue one packs a lot in to its 50 pages. It is extremely dense storytelling and sets a lot in motion to be explored in later stories. I don’t want that to sound like it is all exposition though, there is quite an emotional punch at the heart of the story and I was reacting to the character as if I had followed it for a long time.
Again, a rough outline of the “what happens” (the “how it happens” is what will make sure you want to buy the next one) without spoilers is that a pandemic has wiped out nearly (if not all) of mankind. Genetic animal hybrids are left among the wreckage to fight for control of the future and the technology that will power it.
The use of animal hybrids to discuss ethics and “humanity” is going to allow the creators a lot of scope to play with expectations and lead readers in some interesting directions I think. So far the animals (with the exception of the chicken) have lived up to their animal characteristics. I wonder if they will continue to do so. Characters rendered as animals, of course, give a kind of freedom to deal with difficult and complex subjects under the guise of something much simpler. This already seems to have begun.
What makes this book stand out for me are little points of focus that bring the world and the characters to life, such as the way the main character curls his feet when he runs, and how he was taught to do it. His training in the circle, and his later drawing of the circle in the sand, is fantastic, especially if you are a fan of Japanese films, as I am. I also particularly like the idea of bug guards “defendthehivedefendthehivedefendthehive”
There is a magnificent full page splash (page 9) in the book that I wanted to scan to put into the review, but I was not sure if I was allowed, so I left it out. It might have been a bit of a big spoiler as well. I think it probably makes it into my favourite panels list though.
Overall the art has a strong, confident line. The characters appear solid and physically real. The page and panel construction have a cinematic feel, and you could imagine this on a screen. You could also imagine it in the pages of 2000AD.
So what will readers of this also like? Classic 2000AD like Rogue Trooper or Strontium Dog, Lone Wolf and Cub, Frank Miller’s Ronin.
I didn’t meet Tony or Martin at Bristol last year, but I shall be certain to track down their table this time. Hopefully there will be further issues of Jack In The Box and Last of The Chicken Heads – and I REALLY want to get my get hands on their new project Crowman, the art for that looks gorgeous.
You can find more info on their up-coming projects at C2D4, as well at blogs from both Tony and Martin and a several galleries of Tony’s art which spans a jaw-dropping range of styles over the years.
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