Tue 7 Jan 2020
Comic Books I’m Reading: AFTERLIFT: Chapter One “There Are Rules.”
Posted by Steve under Comic Books I'm Reading[6] Comments
AFTERLIFT: Chapter One “There Are Rules.” ComiXology (an Amazon company), October 2019. Writer: Chip Zdarsky. Artist: Jason Loo. Colorist: Paris Alleyne. Available only on Kindle.
A young Chinese-American girl named Janice Chen makes her living driving for Cabit, whenever she’s not driving for Lyft or Drivepal. Her parents, especially her mother, do not approve, but she has a technique that often works when a fare starts to get a little too friendly. She stops the car, says it looks like construction up ahead, asks to check on the passenger’s iPhone, clicks on five stars, and drops him off.
Street smart, that she is, but her very next passenger is one she has no way of being prepared for. It’s a man who is escorting a young girl, but not just any young girl. She is dead, and commandeering Janice’s car, the man is taking her to her afterlife.
This is but the first of a five-issue limited series, and it ends with a horde of demons chasing the car. Where the story goes from here, I have no idea, but the setup is certainly a doozy.
The art is terrific, maybe even better than the story I’ve read so far, bright and extremely colorful. On the other hand, I can’t believe that this is the future of comic books. On my Kindle the lettering in the word balloons is so small that I have to keep zooming in and out, first to read the dialogue, and out again to see the larger picture.
Then again, I am Old — I have been reading comic books for almost 75 years — and I need cataract surgery. Printing comics has to be expensive, and maybe eliminating a printed version will catch on. With this particular comic, I am impressed with the final product, the way it looks, if not how it feels, but… Perhaps your guess is better than mine.
January 8th, 2020 at 5:52 am
I wax nostalgic for the days when ten cents bought a comic with three complete stories, a 2-page written filler or letter column, and ads for amazing x-ray spectacles.
January 8th, 2020 at 7:36 pm
Those were the days, Dan. One of my earliest memories took place in a doctor’s office when I was in the first grade. I don’t remember why I was there, or why I even remember this, but it was a Felix the Cat comic book published by Dell. I think this was even before ads for X-ray spectacles.
January 8th, 2020 at 8:02 am
The comic book/graphic novel (if you’re pretentious) I like best is Martin Rowson’s The Waste Land, which involves a Marlovian PI investigating Eliot’s poem. It was turned into an opera, which I wish someone would film and make a novelisation of, so I can ask for “The novel of the film of the opera of the comic of the poem.” in a bookshop
January 8th, 2020 at 7:42 pm
Roger
You had me at Marlovian PI. Eliot is only a bonus. I’ll have to chase this one down.
January 8th, 2020 at 7:45 pm
Here’s more, taken from Amazon’s description of the book. Heady stuff, and obviously a long way from Felix the Cat:
“Marlowe, searching for his dead partner’s killers, is lured into a web of murder, deceit, lust, despair and, of course, a frantic quest for the Holy Grail. Doped, duped, pistol-whipped, framed by the cops and going nowhere fast, Marlowe enters a nightmare world where Robert Frost, Norman Mailer and Edmund Wilson drink in the gloom of a London pub; where Auden is glimpsed entering the men’s room; where Henry James, Aldous Huxley and Richard Wagner share an ice cream aboard a Thames pleasure steamer; and where, out of luck and out of clues, Marlowe finally tracks down T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.”
January 8th, 2020 at 9:11 pm
Blacksad, is a fine hard boiled private eye whose main character just happens to be a black cat in a world of Disney like anthropomorphic animals. It’s funny, sexy, cool, and tough.
I happen to enjoy the Largo Winch albums from France (available in English) about a young man who finds himself inheriting the billion dollar industry owned by his late father and the intrigue and danger that entails. So far there have been two feature films and a hit series.
If the old fashioned comic book as we know it is gone, though there are several good sites where you can read some of the great Golden Age material on-line, there is more than enough good material available to read today for all tastes.