We Don't Have Television. We Have This.
I picked up First Second's upcoming graphic novel
Ball Peen Hammer multiple times before I finally decided to read it, and I'll admit to some trepidation. It's not because I'd heard something bad, or that I'd had any prior problems with either of the creators involved--to be perfectly frank, First Second has spent the better part of the last few years publishing more than a few comics that I've found to be challenging, excellent work. The trepidation stemmed from the blurb that's found on the front cover flap:
THE WORLD IS DYING.
Chaos bubbles out of the sewers of an anonymous, desolate city, ravaged by war and plague. There is little humanity to be found in the diseased, deranged mobs that roam the streets.
Like a lot of people in my age/tax bracket, I'm a little worn out with that setting. Post apocalyptic-ism is fun and all, but, like starfruit and kiwis, I'd rather not eat it on a constant basis. To everything a season and all that: but can we take a break on the Mad Max stories?
I'm willing to tolerate something like the
Walking Dead, which is a series that is starting to rival
Generation Kill with its "This is what happens next, and it is very bleak and depressing, events occur in real time" attitude, because
The Walking Dead is an addictive soap opera, no matter how artless and routine it can sometimes read. But the idea of another one-shot graphic novel--one by a non-comics writer trying his hand at the form, with a hired gun artist to boot--well,
Ball Peen just seemed like a hill not worth the climb.
I'm happy to say that my cautiousness turned out to be unwarranted. I read it, I liked it, and in the days since my first taste, I've found myself more interested in returning to it than I expected.
If you know going into
Ball Peen Hammer that writer Adam Rapp is a playwright by trade, you'll probably notice that the plot has a bit of a theatrical structure to it. The majority of the action takes place in one of only two specific locations (making it easy to stage), the cast is small, and, with only one difficult exception, all of the stylistically heavy portions are doled out in what would be played as monologues. In a play, Rapp would have depended on the skill of the director and actors to show the audience the grief one character felt at a remembered moment of loss. Here, he relies on George O'Connor--Hammer's artist--to draw a heavily stylized panel of anguish amidst a speech to get the same point across.
Mostly though, what exposes
Ball Peen's author as a playwright is the dialog: it's very good. That's a lucky break too, as everything in the comic ends up delivered through Rapp's dialog and O'Connor's art. (Like most comics nowadays, Rapp doesn't use "thought balloons".) And while the setting advertised on the cover blurb is one of a Thunderdome-era time, the plot itself shares little with it's post-apo brethren. Without ruining the book's major conceit--suffice to say, the various characters, with one exception, are all tied into a barbaric project that may or may not be a massive art piece--
Hammer isn't violent escapism. There are no heroes here, although Exley--the comic's only real female character--mostly escapes the book with some measure of decency intact. Unlike most of the other zombie worlds and disease-as-landscape comics, Hammer isn't interested in depicting acts of violence as exhilarating action pieces; there's nothing here that's going to make one say, "That was totally badass."
It is, however, a pretty violent story. Set in some non-specific urban environs after a disease (which may or may not be curable) has broken civilized society down to a martial law/fight for water sort of place, the story focuses on two conversations. One is between the aforementioned female, Exley, and a little boy named Horlick--"Like lick a whore backwards", as he puts it--and the other is between two men, one a new recruit for "The Fellowship", the other, a more experienced hand. As the book cycles through the conversations, two things become apparent: this is a world that has been broken for a while, and this is a world that seems to be struggling to abandon hope completely.
It's hard to go into detail about the meat of those conversations without out and out spoiling parts of the comic completely. Considering that Hammer won't be released until September, that seems a bit unfair. What they aren't though? That's fair game. And what they aren't is another parable on how violence is cyclical, or how easy it is to become a murderer, or what one will do to survive when backs are pressed against walls--in other words, this isn't the story of how Johnny became a killer because Johnny got hungry. This isn't character study. What it is, in a word: complicated.
In the time since first reading it, I've picked it up again and again--sometimes it was because I wanted to see if one of the characters knew what he was agreeing to, sometimes it was just to take in the near silent eight pages that conclude the work once more, and sometimes, it was just because I wanted to confirm the unusual feeling that I had as I walked around, thinking about the book. That unusual feeling, one that I'm glad to say has come up more than once in the last few months of newly released comics?
It's awe. This is one hell of a comic. As subtle in its delivery as it is painful in its reception, it's the sort of release that worms its way past defenses and sets up shop in one's mind, as if to say: "Maybe you don't want your art to make you think."
"Tough shit."
Tucker 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
