The first comics I bought from Picturebox--the first of many--were
Cold Heat 1-3, a comic book series that Diamond had initially rejected because they considered the format "Unpopular with collectors and retailers." The format, by the way? It's similar to--and by similar to, I mean,
exactly the same as-- the format of every single modern age comic book that's been published by Marvel & DC since the 70's.
After the sort of public outcry that accompanies these kinds of decisions, an outcry that led me to hear about the comic in the first place, Diamond gave in and agreed to distribute the comic book. It's totally understandable why Diamond made the decision, if you look at the content of
Cold Heat--it is after all, a story about a girl with exceptional karate skills trying to stop evil forces from doing evil deeds. That's not the sort of thing that comic book readers have any interest in at all. A ninja girl fighting bad guys? Aliens kidnapping people? Evil politicians? There's no place for that kind of story in a comic book store. Get real.
Cold Heat's original four issues, out of a projected 12, were released back in 2006 and 2007, and then the comic series went dormant due to financial and creative reasons as well as a labor-intensive schedule. Writer Ben Jones' art career took off and the semi-monthly comic book schedule was put on hold.
Cold Heat wasn't abandoned by Picturebox or anything--the plan since 2006 has been and remains to publish it as an original graphic novel when it's completed. In the years since issue 4, artist Frank Santoro, as well as a rag-tag group of willing collaborators (including Ben Jones, after a fashion) have released enough
Cold Heat Specials to actually surpass the series, albeit not in page count or content.
Just a few months back, Santoro and Jones, with very little warning, released a double issue of the comic series proper, issues 5 and 6, and I was reminded once again why I'd been a little disappointed when I found out the series was going on hold back in '07. It's a tremendously good comic--if I had to pick a "best of the year" right now in April, it would be this--and it's a joy to know that the two guys are back together with their eyes on the prize. I had a chance to talk to Frank a few weeks ago about the series, and he had a lot to say. Not all of it was publishable.
It's not that Santoro is one of those Peckinpah-type interview subjects, where you never know if an easy question like "Are you still reading
Punisher War Journal now that Chaykin's done?" is going to get you a knife thrown at your head. It's that Frank's response to stuff can be just like his art and writing reads--fluid, dynamic statements that lead to a mention of this or that classic comic, that dive into a "you can't tell anybody this" anecdote about a comic creator with weird picadillos--and it really is, as cheesy as it sounds, difficult not to be entranced by. It's almost preferable not to have it transcribed--after all, some of what he says can be mean and dismissive, and the printed text would leave the nuance and passion in his voice to the reader's imagination--and that never works.
The subtlety of the conversation is never going to read as such in black and white, it's always going to be wrapped up in the timing of the thing--if talking to the guy taught me anything, it's that I finally feel a tiny increment of pity for the people who normally interview comics creators. It's hard to ignore that they're giving you a piece of themselves, and that you can take it, and without a lick of editing, unleash something that doesn't paint them in the brightest of lights. (Of course, that doesn't mean I have any sympathy for those who go the current, in-vogue route of publishing mountainous public-relation style manifestos where no one ever turns to the writer or artist of the 900th revamp of Spandex Property Z and says "Are you really proud of yourself for publishing something unfit to serve as hamster bedding?")
(For the record, Frank hasn't gone back to Frank Castle since Chaykin bailed out.)
The story of how
Cold Heat came about was pretty simple: Ben Jones, at the time most well-known for his involvement with Paper Rad, wanted to work with Frank, and Dan Nadel, the guy in charge of Picturebox, was totally down to support them. And yes, there was drinking and drugs involved, and sure, why not, Gary Panter might have been there when Ben and Frank first met, but hey: that's the way comics work sometimes. It's not all broken dreams and sketchbook queues for broken sad sacks in underground hotel bungalows. Occasionally it's a "drunken Christmas weekend in 2005" and it might involve left-over grant money.
Ben's idea for the series was built up and defined by a one-page synopsis--"a tri-racial, bisexual teenage girl ninja addicted to prescription drugs"--and while Frank dismissed his first drawings of the girl as being "too ethnic", he stuck with the contour line drawing style that he was working with, came up with the girl, and the three all agreed with Nadel on how they'd publish it: 12 issues, monthly, they'd include ads, it would support itself. Picturebox's graphic novels and mini-comics sold "okay." The hand-made stuff worked. So what if the budget for Cold Heat only allowed two colors? As Frank put it on the phone: "
We could do it, we knew that it would support itself."
Although the initial Diamond refusal was nasty, it was rectified quickly enough to keep Jones and Santoro moving forward. At one point, Frank watched Ben yank out a notebook containing the seeds of ideas and panel breakdowns that would serve to build the script for the second issue--and Ben just "listened to the Melvins and math rock and wrote" the whole thing, handed it to Frank, and that was it. Although there was some back and forth between layouts, Frank referred to the process as "
pretty solid. I was learning from Ben the whole time, the way he used romantic visuals married with cartoon timing, so it all ends up reading like an animated cartoon or a movie...the timing was so important to it, so much of it was straight out of Ben's conversational style. You can see it on the pages, it's all 1-2-3-4-gag, 1-2-3-4-gag...it flow, it isn't stop and start, with a bunch of set-up and complaining. Ben's responsible for the framing, Ben's responsible for the pacing. That's all him. My job was to never go off model and start doing weird shit."
One of the things that had bugged me most about my own relationship with
Cold Heat had been that I had started moving Ben Jones further into the background during the time period since those initial issues were released--Frank's vocal presence at conventions, my wife's bizarre and hurtful crush on him, his own cage match antics on the internet, as well as Ben's seeming absence--I know I'm not the first to make the mistake of, well, forgetting him for a bit. When I brought that up with Frank, he agreed that he'd seen that same thing--well, he actually said "heard that same shit"--wherein people at shows and online seemed to think that Ben was somehow holding Frank's towel for him while he was doing laps. As Frank put it, Cold Heat was Ben's baby, and while Frank may have raised it, "
Ben is my favorite artist! This guy's painting took him around the world, it doesn't matter if COMICS isn't paying attention!"
One of the questions I asked Frank near the end of our talk was about the future of
Cold Heat, and what he felt about the response to the series so far. The first thing that came out of his mouth was "Not super great." He said that the people who get it, get it, that "
there's like five people who we're making it for and for them, for us, it's like a new sound, something real." He couldn't confirm that the book would even be released, when we talked about it. The price for the double-issue--twenty dollars--was high, but easily explained as being necessary for an item that was being created via print-on-demand. Frank said he realizes that most people will "wait for the trade"...but that printing 300 page graphic novels is like "throwing a suitcase of money in the river."
So I asked him again about the "future" of
Cold Heat, and what he felt about the response to the project as a whole--and this time, what came out of his mouth was "
It's like a franchise. It sounds corny, but it's like a team...it's me and Ben, quarterbacking the thing, but it's also everyone we've worked with on a Cold Heat Special."
Did that mean that he was pushing it mainstream and we'd get to see Howard Chaykin take a turn dancing with a tri-racial, bi-sexual girl ninja? Maybe alongside Microchip and Jigsaw 2.0?
"
Well, her name is Castle. Maybe that'll turn Howard on."
For what it's worth, I think Santoro is right on. While the
Cold Heat aesthetic may look on some kind of surface level as if it's a distant cousin to the comics it used to share rack space with, I don't buy it. It's a comic book, all the way, and it's the kind of comic book that comes about when two people get together and bang something out together, as a team, when they take the tools of what's called "out there" and operate under the rules of their sequential stapled brothers and sisters. This isn't laboratory work that comes from a one-man (or one-woman) shop where the only rules are pleasing the individual, and the contracts are already laid out to accept the praise down the line.
Cold Heat isn't, and it hasn't been, auteur comics. It's something better.
A motherf***ing team-up.
Image credits:
Panels from Cold Heat issues 2 and 4, © Frank Santoro. Found at
http://www.coldheatcomics.com/Home.htmlTucker Stone's writing may be found in print in Comic Foundry and online at The Factual Opinion, where he frequently reviews new releases.
This Ship Is Totally Sinking is © Tucker Stone, 2008
