The Death of Comics Bookcase, Vol 1. w. Zack Quaintance. Art by Nick Cagnetti, PJ Holden, Luke Horsman, Ryan Lee, Anna Readman, & Pat Skott. 48 pp. Funded via Kickstarter. Original Comics Bookcase.
A comics bookcase host.
A werewolf. A teen-aged superhero. Dueling wizards. An old man. Super-powered gorillas and sharks. These are characters with nothing in common in the real world. However, in Zack Quaintance’s imagination, they come to life and share their fears and misgivings about their own realities. There’s even a talking bookcase going through its own existential crisis, something of an alter ego for the author. This comics bookcase acts as a Rod Serling-like host both introducing each story in this comics anthology while also confronting its own peculiar mortality. You see, the possessed bookcase plays many roles, including that of a former comics blog. In fact, the author was once the host of his own comics blog, Comics Bookcase. If that sounds weird and intriguing, then you’re in luck, since there’s more I can tell with you.
Life is made up of much that is ineffable: the stuff that is beyond our meager grasp and simple discernment, be it grand or mundane, to fully understand and articulate our own existence. We miss a lot. We take in what we can. One thing we humans do well, it seems, is to come up with ways to pass the time, like the creation of comic books. It is with this lofty preamble, that I offer to you the comics world of Zack Quaintance. This writer has been up to quite a bit in the last few years, all in the service of storytelling, leading up to his comics anthology, The Death of Comics Bookcase. This 48-page comic (with a deluxe version well worth seeking out too) is the first volume in a proposed series. This comic book is loosely based upon Zack’s Comics Bookcase blog (2018-2022), its demise and the stories it has inspired.
That’s one freaky werewolf!
What happens within the pages of this comic book is something of a love letter to comic books as well as an impressive showcase of comics talent. Yes, we have stories, much in the spirit of some of the most celebrated anthology formats, from The Twilight Zone to Tales from the Crypt. The idea here is what it’s always been: to provide some thrills and chills along with offbeat humor. What really stands out for me is the variety of stories, mixing different genres and viewpoints, all held together by a certain dark fantasy sensibility. Some might call it, “a touch of strange,” because that’s really what’s going on here. It’s a particular strain of spinning yarns that has been brewing for at least a couple of hundred years, reaching new heights with the advent of pulp fiction and fully blossoming into what we have come to know and love as modern horror or dark fantasy.
Art by Nick Cagnetti.
Let’s dive deep into this comic book and consider one of its stories, “Responsibili-Teen.” This is a homage to Steve Ditko and proposes not only an off-kilter Ditkoesque comic book superhero for the age of social media but a clever analysis of where we seem to be heading with ever-expanding Big Tech, particularly, AI. Because, well, AI seems to be both the great boon and the great threat to humanity that we can’t seem to get enough of talking about on . . . er, social media.
The new-and-improved does battle with the ineffable.
In this story we meet a character as familiar as our own childhood and as up-to-date as our latest post. Meet Maxwell, a dorky high schooler, with no parents, being raised by his Aunt Jen and Aunt June. This would-be Spider-Man is even more repressed than the original. No radioactive spiders for this guy. Instead, Maxwell stumbles into the high school computer lab and confronts Tacky, an experimental AI word processor who promptly bites him and sets him on his pre-programmed new life. This is all, of course, hilarious. Nick Cagnetti’s artwork not only leans into the humor but taps into the spooky quality as well since nothing is quite right in this story. That touch of strange is milked for all it’s worth.
Art by Nick Cagnetti.
Nothing is as it should be, as if reality as been processed and regurgitated. Nothing makes sense, as if all real meaning has been drained out and simply repackaged as new. The big clue is at the start when Maxwell must contend with his new marching orders in life: “With great responsibility comes great power.” This inversion of an all-time classic superhero call to action is what Maxwell must work with, turn into something new, until he begins to question everything: himself, his purpose, his whole reality. And it all began with Tacky taking a bite out of him. Wow. This is a great mix of offbeat humor and social commentary that ultimately just goes to show that we humans, believe it or not, can do reality better than any machine. As Quaintance so eloquently states, there is no “new” AI content that can match the authentic and ineffable human hand.
Art by Nick Cagnetti.
Zack Quaintance aspires to join the ranks of the great writers of the spooky and the macabre and he has plenty to show for his ambition in the pages of this comic book. We both have a keen interest in writing which has carried over to writing about comics and actual comics writing. We’ve gotten a chance to chat and to exchange each other’s work and, in a natural fashion, we’ve connected some dots. I believe in serendipity. Zack has followed his intuition and ended up writing a terrific review of my graphic novel, George’s Run, which is greatly invested in exploring the elusive and mysterious storytelling process. And I, in turn, after reading his Death of Comics Bookcase, can’t help but be equally inspired. Whether Zach is pursuing a crime procedural involving werewolves or a mystical and whimsical homage to the great comics of yesteryear, he is consistently expressing spirited creative energy.
As I go back and re-read passages from the advance review PDF, I find myself briskly scrolling back and forth and marveling over the art, color and overall design. If you enjoy behind-the-scenes stuff, I highly recommend the deluxe version which provides a generous sampling of pages from the script along with a break down on the comics process. The first set focuses on a page from “The Werewolf Priest.” The clear and thoughtful notes evoke a cluttered, stifling and antiquated newsroom, a most unlikely place to prepare to do battle with a supernatural beast. The script notes are written out in such a way that it makes clear why the resulting work came out as well, and as spooky, as it ultimately did.
This is an impressive anthology with a team of first-rate creatives. No doubt, this was a colossal undertaking: a full-on mainstream comic book production with separate artists, colorists, and letterers. Just a quick shout out to the key artists: Ryan Lee. Anna Readman. Nick Cagnetti. Luke Horsman. Pat Skott. PJ Holden. In fact, each story here is like a whole universe to itself while adding up to a tidy and seamless whole. All in all, I think that this anthology has set the bar high with a confident promise of more fun and weird comics to come. And, with all this said, it’s important to emphasize that this is basically an advance review and the comic book is still in the process of becoming available to the public. Stay tuned via the Kickstarter campaign and the original Comics Bookcase blog which this comic pays tribute to. This comic book is what the ideal comics experience is all about: weird and intriguing and always, always, about that ineffable human spirit! Thank goodness we have comics and this particular comic book is a prime example of comics at its best.
Death of Comics Bookcase, Vol. 1 Deluxe Edition.
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