A few caveats: this book is an 18+ read. I'm talking "hard 'R'" rating. The language is very strong and some of the imagery is very disturbing. However, I think the disturbing imagery was important for the subject matter. The comic book is about coming out of the dregs of an alcohol addiction and the hypocrisy of some religious institutions. The goal of the comic book is to lay the darkness of the human soul bare. You can't do that without using some disturbing imagery...you just can't. Notice, too, that I did not label this "Off-Topic" or "Not Really Off-Topic". That is because it is in no way off-topic. The book is heavily theological, and a review of it is well placed on this blog. Finally, note that the comic book is not complete. There have been four issues so far, and it is a five-part series. The book has been so good so far that I'm almost worried about reading the last one, as comic book mini-series that are really good tend to fall flat in that last issue.
The artwork is appealing to me, but it probably wouldn't be to most people. Ted McKeever wrote and drew the comic, and it is his vision. IMAGE produced the comic and they should be recognized for their bravery in doing so. I'm not sure this story could find an outlet many places, and it is good that it found one here, for it is a story that truly has the power to speak to people in very difficult situations. McKeever must have first-hand knowledge of the subject matter about which he is writing, which is addiction. As a person in recovery, I can say he has captured the experience of getting clean superbly. If you want to know what it is really like to try and get sober, read this book. The art is a part of capturing that experience. The whole thing feels very 2-D and that is how life feels when you first start to get clean: it feels flat. The images shift and there is a very chaotic feel to the whole thing. Again, I found the art compelling, but many probably would not.
The pacing of the book is not very good, but I don't think that is by accident. There is this feeling like life is passing you by when you are dealing with addiction, and the book really captures that. In most comic books, this kind of pacing would be ruinous, but in this case, pacing that would be 'good' in another comic would be detrimental here.
There isn't really much dialogue, more like a series of monologues. But what is said in those monologues is beyond compelling. You are riveted as you get into the inner workings of the main character's mind, and the minds of those spiritual beings that are accompanying him on his journey. I have re-read the books several times because I am enthralled by each individual's speech (not to mention the story). This book reads like a play, with each character taking center stage and speaking to the reader like an audience. Again, in another book this would be disastrous, but in some books it works. It worked in TIME LINCOLN and it worked here.
The story is what really makes this comic work. Two separate story lines develop in the first three issues and they finally have come together in the fourth. One story involves an alcoholic whose drinking has completely ruined his life. He is homeless and has no relationships of any substance. We enter the story a few weeks into his attempt to get himself sober. In the depths of his struggle, spiritual beings begin to enter his life. There is a mummified cat who claims the mantle of the ancient Egyptian God Bast. And there is a demon that is taunting and pushing the main character to give up his vain attempt at sobriety and to accept that being a drunk, and indeed leading others into debasement, is his true lot in life. The man struggles against the tiny demon, convinced at first that it is no more than a figment of his imagination, but questions why there is no angelic force that has come to counter balance the evil images that torment him. He questions why God doesn't 'throw in' and help him against these evils now that he has made the decision to get clean. Why does sobriety bring with it his own disturbing past now made manifest?
I want to pause here and comment that this is so very realistic. Hallucinations are not uncommon when you are getting clean, and they are almost always disturbing. One man once told me about a disturbing dream where a prostitute kept telling him that crack was 'his god'. You sit with all the mistakes you made coming to life and tormenting you, and you spend the whole life wondering where the heck God IS in all of this. Why doesn't God come down and give you the salvation you need? You accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. You KNOW you need Him and you have no other way to find salvation, yet it doesn't seem to make the difference you think it should. This is not unlike my own experience when getting off of drugs.
But I digress. As all this is going on with our hero, across town in a small church a small statue of Jesus comes to life in a church, and the pastor of the church is convinced that it is the work of demons. There is this very powerful image at the end of issue one with the pastor stepping on Miniature Jesus, who is holding up the pastor's foot with all his might. I could spend hours talking about that one scene, but this is a blog and here the law is brevity.
To save Miniature Jesus, the Hand of God comes down and causes the church to collapse, just as the tormented drunk and a sheriff walk by. The sheriff, the pastor and a family all confront the man even as the demons up their own attacks. All of a sudden, the demons bond with the sheriff who becomes a living embodiment of the devil. The man now realizes that his demons are not all in his head, and that what he has been experiencing up to this point is real. The beast attacks the family and the homeless man, still trying to push our hero back into the drink.
While all of this is going on, the bast character from earlier on confronts miniature Jesus, who has lost his arm in the church collapse. The creature seems intent on learning Jesus' true purpose in appearing, but Jesus won't bite. He simply responds to the creatures taunts with a series of hand gestures. Meanwhile, in a scene almost out of EXORCIST, the alcoholic agrees to become a vessel for the demons who attack him, which means simply returning to the bottle. In that moment, when all seems lost for our hero. Jesus finally approaches him. The man suspects this vision is yet another demonic attack at first, but soon realizes that God has sent an emissary to help him. Jesus helps him not by giving him some magic fix to his problem, but by giving the man a chance to fix him by gluing his arm back on. The demons scream and rage that Jesus is giving this man a chance to do this wondrous deed (gluing Miniature Jesus' arm back on) and issue four ended with the man clothed in light and facing what seems to be God in the form of a baby.
There is a powerful theological message here. In the end, an addict doesn't really begin to find freedom until he or she gets the focus off of the self and onto other people. God's salvation comes, not by coming in and freeing us, but by giving us the opportunity to step outside ourselves and our own problems. The main character gets the help he needs, but not by God coming in and 'saving him'. Rather it is God who needs the saving, and by taking the opportunity to do this, the man finds a way out of darkness and back to the light. I don't know if these themes will continue to the end, but I hope they are even more fully embraced in the last issue. There is something supremely moving in all of this, and the absurdist imagery simply captures the true nature of religious experience, it does not detract from the message. Helping God, we help ourselves, and it is through the opportunity TO help God, that we find meaning in life, and salvation from the demons that torment us.
No comments:
Post a Comment