Category Archives: Dash Shaw

Review: REVENGER & THE FOG by Charles Forsman

REVENGER & THE FOG by Charles Forsman

A vast and desolate wasteland, suitable for any action or exploitation movie, serves as the magnificent backdrop for REVENGER & THE FOG, the second collected volume of the ongoing Revenger comic book series by Charles Forsman. What I readily come away with is this: a horror schlock genre opens up a wide field for comics but it’s not so easy to get it right. You need a strong narrative backbone to keep all the flesh and blood moving along. Forsman jiggles it all into place with a masterful touch.

An instant taxicab ride.

Quentin Tarantino easily comes to mind as a practitioner of the type of movie terror that Forsman is channeling. Everything and everyone is cast in a pale yellow light of sheer desperation. We know from the get-go that the characters that dwell within mostly, or exclusively, eat raw meat…perhaps drink blood too. It is nothing to them to humiliate, mutilate,…well, you get the picture. A little goes a long way. Not my preferred cup of tea but, then again, it all depends upon the writing. Forsman is sensitive to those proper modulations of gore.

No one messes with Revenger!

As I understand it, Reggie, aka Revenger, is a one-woman force of nature, easily the lone wolf but open to companionship from time to time. For this collection, we follow Revenger when she belonged to a vigilante gang known as The Fog in Los Angeles in the late ’70s. This is a most unlikely assembling of brute force and cunning not seen since the A-Team. Revenger has fallen head over heels for Jenny, aka Dynarat. It is a love affair fraught with danger and ill-fated beyond words. Billy, aka Slim, offers some crude technical skill. Tara, aka Scalpel, is a martial arts guru.

The basic story here is a goofy nihilist joy ride. Dynarat is kidnapped by her abusive movie mogul father. Revenger must find a way to rescue her. The story dares you to take it seriously. Within context, it works its magic, much in the same way as other forms of parody and good obsessive autobio can sway the reader. The intriguing thing about this comic is that Forsman, like Tarantino, is intimately involved with his subject matter, both playfully satirizing it as well as paying it respect. There is irony but it’s not all irony. It’s a joke but it’s not all a joke. Essentially, Forsman works from a platform that provides exhilarating freedom for a cartoonist to take big risks: the arena of pure artifice, pure entertainment.

Revenger tells it like it is.

Forsman has an admirable control over some pretty weird proceedings and keeps to a steady pace, mindful of the distinct journey each character is on. It is one thing to create a scene with some impressive slicing and dicing of body parts. But your story will never truly succeed if no one cares. We care about all the characters in this story, even the most repulsive ones. We don’t wish the villains well but we do get caught up in them.

Well, you get caught up in everyone’s business as much as you please. This is a deliciously artificial world we are navigating through. No wonder this gritty pumped up terrain, this hyperreal wasteland, attracts some of the most creative minds. You can mix and match an endless sea of possibilities: the inane headbutts the profound.

Forsman, much like his contemporary Michel Fiffe (COPRA), has the admirable distinction of tackling all aspects of his work: the writing, the drawing, and even the coloring. While pretty common in indie circles, this kind of involvement is nearly unheard of within corporate comic book publishers. In the case of Forsman, he does quite well in serving his cryptic vision alone. His wiry characters get bathed in just the right quirky color schemes. Tongues can stick out and be painted a bright fire engine red! It all makes sense: perfectly oddball and compelling story, art, and colors.

The world of action B-movies, it turns out, is just another world, with as much to offer as any wonderland or netherworld. And, as I suggested early, it is a satisfying and quite apt playground for comics. There is a thread from Herriman’s Krazy Kat to Kaz’s Underworld to Forsman’s Revenger comics. A final thought: After you complete the main story, you have an extra feature which is Revenger lost, appropriately enough, in a hell hole. It is a fitting end to a most intriguing collection of work.

REVENGER & THE FOG, the second volume of Revenger comics, is a 160-page full color trade paperback, published by Bergen Street Press. For more details, and how to purchase the work of both Charles Forsman and Michel Fiffe, visit Bergen Street Press right here. Visit Charles Forsman right here. And be sure to stop by and consider becoming a patron of Charles Forsman at his Patreon right here.

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Filed under Bergen Street Press, Charles Forsman, Comics, Comics Reviews, Dash Shaw, Graphic Novel Reviews, graphic novels, Horror, Michel Fiffe, Satire

Review: COSPLAYERS by Dash Shaw

COSPLAYERS by Dash Shaw

COSPLAYERS by Dash Shaw

Dash Shaw‘s work keeps moving the ball forward regarding comics as an art form. With his new graphic novel, “Cosplayers,” Shaw provides us with a delightful look at the clash between the real and the unreal. The book promises to give you a behind-the-scenes look at the world of cosplay. Ostensibly, this is a collection of stories that add up to a tableaux of geek life. All that can be taken with a grain of salt. A hallmark of Shaw’s work is that he keeps you on your toes wondering about everything: the characters, the plot, the theme, the comics medium.

Meet Verti and Annie. They are taking a year off between graduating high school and going off to college. During that year, they just want to do what they want to do which involves cosplay and making videos. Annie is white. Verti is black. Both girls see themselves as unconventional in every way: looks, goals, and attitude. Shaw wants you to know that these two are a couple of misfits. But you are not supposed to know too much about Annie and Verti beyond the basic fact that they’re callow and bratty. Shaw’s aim is to provide you with two main characters that are disconnected from everything, including the reader.

Annie and Verti ask that you keep your distance.

Annie and Verti ask that you keep your distance.

Shaw is one of our more intellectual cartoonists, always looking for a tripwire to the narrative flow. So, don’t expect him to provide a straightforward guide to the world of fandom and cosplay. He is mostly interested in playing with characters from one scene to the next and more evoking a way of life than following a story’s arc or presenting specific information. When he does focus on a character’s feelings it can fall a little flat, as when Verti is remorseful for the way she and Annie have been pranking people. That said, for the sake of balance, that is a pivotal moment since Annie has a high tolerance for being hateful.

Channeling Osamu Tezuka

Channeling Osamu Tezuka

But you’re not supposed to get too close to Annie or Verti–or any of these characters, right? Just when you think you might have found a sympathetic character who you can trust, Shaw will yank you awake. You’re getting soft on Baxter, the expert on Osamu Tezuka? Well, think again, he’s a fool! Now, hold on, you think the kind and gentle comic book store owner is someone to put on a pedestal? Nope, you can knock that pedestal to the ground. After this comic book nerd gives Annie some of his most prized comics, she goes home and cuts them up to shreds. Ouch, how’s that for a wake-up call?

In the spirit of French new wave cinema, led by the work of Jean-Luc Godard, you can see this comic as a ship of fools out to sea. Each character has their own agenda, their own axe to grind, but no one really seems to know what they’re doing. With these lost souls engaging in the make-believe world of cosplay, Shaw has set up a perfect vehicle to explore issues of identity and self-empowerment. By initially coming across as presenting a random set of acts (Annie and Verti engaged in endless video pranks) Shaw lures us into a deeper exploration. It all adds up to something quite fascinating, with a French vibe.

“Cosplayers” is a 116-page full color hardcover, published by Fantagraphics Books. You can also find it at Amazon right here.

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Filed under Comic-Con, Comics, Cosplay, Dash Shaw, Fantagraphics Books, Graphic Novel Reviews, graphic novels, Humor, Osamu Tezuka, Satire