"If I'm Reading Those Erect Nipples Right, YOU'RE Having A Good Time." COMICS! Sometimes They Might Be A Wee Bit Too Hard-Boiled.
/Hey, I wrote some words about a comic. They're under the break, somewhere. I think that's how it works. Mostly this one is about how people will still be awful in the future and how Rick Burchett is The Balls. Sorry, still shaking the rust off.
PULP FANTASTIC by Burchett, Chaykin & Tischman, Bruzenak & Loughridge
Anyway, this...
PULP FANTASTIC #1-3
Art by Rick Burchett
Written by Howard Victor Chaykin & David Tischman
Lettered by Ken Bruzenak
Coloured byand Seperated by Lee Loughridge
Covers by Rick Burchett & Howard Victor Chaykin
Logo by 52MM
DC Comics/Vertigo, $2.50 each
Pulp Fantastic created by Howard Victor Chaykin
Pulp Fantastic was published in 2000 as part of DC Comics’ fifth week wave of millennially themed/inspired mini-series. Older folk will recall that everyone expected the world to die screaming on the millennial stroke of midnight as toasters exploded, shoes refused to work and milk demanded equal rights. By continuing to publish comics in the face of this certain (certain, I say!) Apocalypse DC/Vertigo showed a touching faith in the survival of the human race. A faith that was well founded since we can all agree the world is still here. (Unless you are particularly philosophically minded, in which case; who knows?) What isn’t here in 2015 is a TPB collecting Pulp Fantastic, so it’s to the back-issue bins if you want to experience a beautifully illustrated but markedly mean spirited exercise in genre repurposing. Because while the series is draped in sci-fi schmutter so it can fulfil its future themed remit, it is quite clearly an exercise in the hard-boiled PI genre.
PULP FANTASTIC by Burchett, Chaykin & Tischman, Bruzenak & Loughridge
Pulp Fantastic is set on a future world far way to which the members of a (presumably very large) cult ascended on New Year’s Eve thanks to the benevolence of some passing aliens. The aliens have gone AWOL and the cultists have developed a society not entirely unlike a ‘50s noir world crossed with a Roman Catholic mall. It’s an utterly bizarre set-up that doesn’t seem to have much purpose as anything other than set dressing until the many, many, plot threads Chaykin & Tischman have been waving gaily in your face knit together to make an utterly bizarre pullover, I mean ending, in the third and final issue. Our narrator for the course of the series is one Vector Pope; a foul-mouthed cynic with the sex life of an alleycat who is drawn by the incredibly talented Rick Burchett as resembling a Peter Gunn/Howard Victor Chaykin hybrid. Pope is an ex-cop PI hired to find some shmuck’s frail but what looks like a cakewalk is complicated by the fact that the cake, it soon transpires, was baked with sinister motivations and fateful ramifications. And eggs, probably. Also, cakes don’t have legs, so I don’t know what that expression means but it sounded old-timey. And Pulp Fantastic is an old timey throwback with a vicious modern streak on top. I guess that's the cherry on the cake. (N.B. Writing is hard.)
PULP FANTASTIC by Burchett, Chaykin & Tischman, Bruzenak & Loughridge
Just as Robert Altman and Leigh Brackett famously updated Chandlers’ Marlowe to excellently sour effect in The Long Good-bye (“…it happens everyday…” Cheers, John Williams and Jonny Mercer. ) so Chaykin & Tischman, maybe, (possibly) try a similar trick with Hammett’s Sam Spade. Altman & Brackett recast Marlowe as comfortably inert (“It’s all right with me.”) until the accumulated effects of his inertia actually affects him personally. Beautifully played by Elliot Gould, he’s an affable prick; it just takes a while for the prick to kick in. Spade was already scrappier, blunter and, well, prickier, than Marlowe in the source books so Chaykin & Tischman’s trick doesn’t work so well. Also, Pope starts off as a turbo-charged prick so his pitiless pursuit of prickishness over the three issues means that when he performs an actual act of kindness at the end it’s as unexpected and shocking as someone shooting their best friend like a dog. If (if!) it is an update of Hammett’s Spade for a more cynical age it works a bleak trick indeed. In at the kill of the fin de siècle Pulp Fantastic suggests kindness is the surprise and cruelty the norm. Maybe they aren’t even doing that, how the good fuck would I know, I’m just spitballing here.
PULP FANTASTIC by Burchett, Chaykin & Tischman, Bruzenak & Loughridge
Anyway, it’s rapidly apparent that Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon is (really) being playfully, and primarily, bludgeoned throughout Pulp Fantastic but there are also nods to the usual commonplaces of crime fiction. Regular head traumas resulting in unconsciousness at narratively opportune moments for our protagonist? Check. Ladies who are like trouble: they’re easier to get into than they are to get out of? Check? Ladies who just like trouble. Check. Troubled ladies who like The Who? No, don't get smart. A client and a case neither of which are what they first appear? Check. A duplicitous dame who plays men like the spoons. Check. A maguffin. Check. A fool, a foil and a frail? Sordid secrets of the rich and powerful? Check. Check. Check. And Checkity-Check. Waiter! Check! As countless comics can bear tedious witness this kind of thing can quickly descend into lifeless homage, but whatever Pulp Fantastic’s faults (and there’s a few of ‘em) it’s certainly lively. A lot of this life comes from Chaykin & Tischman’s choice to be almost provocatively vulgar but this does have its drawbacks. The most successful spark is in the art, and the only drawback there is that there’s only three issues of it.
PULP FANTASTIC by Burchett, Chaykin & Tischman, Bruzenak & Loughridge
The cleanest thing about the book by far is Rick Burchett’s line which lends the world of Pulp Fantastic a hygienic aspect which the nasty narrative can bounce loutishly off to nauseous effect. Burchett’s future is an idealised one; a future informed primarily by ‘50s/’60s art-deco. It is in this sanitary and regular environment Chaykin & Tischman’s grubbily ‘70s inflected characters brutalise, intimidate and kill each other. And all those awful, awful characters are expertly designed by Burchett. I particularly liked the fact that Pope’s legs are clad in trousers so tight that his legs suggest those of a satyr. And Burchett’s got storytelling down pat. Guy’s got range, is what I’m saying. He can give you dynamic splash pages as with the opener of Pope hurtling through a stained glass window. Or if it’s a talky scene why not have Rick Burchett sprinkle some well-judged expressions to soften the exposition? Fancy a cat’n’mouse scene but don’t want the reader to notice it’s happening until afterwards? Call Rick Burchett on 0800 DOESITALL. Ma Burchett's boy - your one-stop shop for all your storytelling needs. Overall I get the sense Rick Burchett had a sweet time drawing these pages; I know for a fact that I had a sweet time looking at what Rick Burchett had drawn. Burchett’s often remembered for his work on the Batman animated comics but his work on Blackhawk in Action Comics Weekly and then, later, in the short lived Blackhawk series is well worth whatever pitiful sum your comic vendor will charge you. As is Pulp Fantastic.
PULP FANTASTIC by Burchett, Chaykin & Tischman, Bruzenak & Loughridge
So, Pulp Fantastic has a lot going for it. It’s got Rick Burchett. It’s got Ken Bruzenak too. The extraordinary Ken Bruzenak spatters the whole thing with his typographic magic. The world of Pulp Fantastic is lent an extra level of conviction through his wonderful skill with visual onomatopoeia, which proves valuable beyond the wealth of man in world building and character definition (some characters speak in different fonts). Ken Bruzenak’s lettering forms another layer of art, but one which works with Burchett’s, avoiding clutter and achieving a dreamy seamlessness of purpose and effect. It’s got those Chaykin names that crackle with fanciful implausibility to such an extent that you suspect they might actually turn out to be filthy anagrams. It's got a plot that just won't stop. It's got Lee Loughridge's colours which are super good but I lack the knowledge to pinpoint why (I liked the greens in the church scenes, they contrasted nicely with the purples. But I don't know why purple or green, see?) According to the credits Loughridge's colours are having such a good time that had to be separated like randy dogs.
PULP FANTASTIC by Burchett, Chaykin & Tischman, Bruzenak & Loughridge
Unfortunately, there are some editorial aspects which suggest something rushed about the series. The first issue says it’s “1 of 4” but by the second issue this is truncated to 3. Misprint or something else? My money’s on something else. But then I have no money, so the joke’s on you! Chaykin usually works at his best in a three act structure; four or five and some padding slips in; six issues and he gets a bit wheel spinney, but three issues is usually pretty golden. Yet Pulp Fantastic is three issues and things are clearly a bit awry. Only the thundering pace of the thing distracts from the fact that often events and people are linked without explanation, or that characters leap to conclusions with their eyes shut, and there are some linguistic infelicities which suggest one more polish wouldn’t have gone amiss. Also, I suspect Chaykin’s usual smut is set a little too high for most palates. We’re barely into the book and we hear of a man having an affair with the 15 year old clone of his wife, there’s a scene reeking with same salt-beefy stench as ‘that’ scene in Friedkin’s Cruisin’ and, well, I checked with the most rigorous thinker I know when it comes to offensive content and, yeah, my Mum said it was all a bit much too. To be fair some of this blue pays off later down the line, but there is a definite sense that Chaykin and Tischman are trying to push somebody’s buttons. They certainly overstep the mark at the last, I think, by having Vector Pope punish the mentally ill gender bending villain with a little bit of cheeky bum rape. I can only imagine te hullabaloo if this were published today. (Burn him! Ugh!) Ultimately, it’s only the strength of the entertainment provided which prevents Pulp Fantastic from being a mess. Well, that and Rick Burchett’s magnificent performance of smooth cartooning with an underlying noir bite. Sure, I’m all about the Howard Victor Chaykin comics, but they can’t all be winners, and the fact that Pulp Fantastic does (just) win is down to Rick Burchett. I like Pulp Fantastic, and I've liked work by all involved, but I think it’s Rick Burchett mostly who raises this one to VERY GOOD!
Let's have big round of applause for Mr. Rick Burchett there - or as he's known down the boozer - Mr. COMICS!!!
