The Pickytarian

« Subway Reading | Main | "It’s too easy to write stories about Spider-Man kicking the crap out of the Green Goblin." »

November 12, 2004

Subway Reading: Cenozoic & Plastic Man

Cenozoic #1 - I love a good humor comic. The best ones will have me chuckling, snorting, and drawing looks of mild concern from my fellow subway riders (anybody audibly laughing to themselves is cause for concern on the subway: you never know if they are chuckling about the bodily function they are about to undertake or the machine gun they are about to whip out). Cenozoic #1, written and drawn by Mark Fearing and published by O-P-P, earned me some glances this morning. Not as many as, say, The Goon, but it wouldn't be fair to hold it up to a standard that high. Fearing knows a couple of the cardinal rules of humorous cartooning: buck teeth are funny; misaligned eyeballs that point in 2 directions are funny; feces-flinging monkeys are funny. Combine all that into a buck-toothed, cross-eyed caveman who goes through an entire story with a monkey-poo stain on his forehead and you're halfway home.

The stories in this book are the tales of animals and humans fighting for dominance in the era immediately following the Ice Age. The underlying joke is the question of how in god's name did the humans come out on top? The thing that makes this book click is that the cavemen are not just one-dimensional dummies. They are trying to cope with an increasingly complex world, armed only with their opposable thumbs and whatever inventions that Jerry the Caveman Inventor can provide them (these inventions include a great visual gag: the still-in-progress toilet paper that is represented by a mass of scribbly leaves). That undercurrent of pathos is what makes the cavemen endearing.

Fearing's art has an attractive loose-handed energy that complements the light tone of story. My only complaint would be that the character designs might be a shade too greeting-card cutesy, but that's a matter of taste and it didn't really bother me. All in all, a great effort and a worthwhile read. I am looking forward to more. 4 stars.

Plastic Man #12 - On the other end of the comedy scale we find Plastic Man #12. Scott Morse fills in for Kyle Baker this month and does a great job... of making me miss Kyle Baker. Morse shows off something new: decompressed humor comics. You're getting one joke every page or two, and by joke I mean unimaginative pun on the word "sticky." See, Plastic Man is fighting an enemy who shoots glue out of his fingers. So he wants to make sure that the guy doesn't "stick around" any more. Hardy har har har. Whereas Cenozoic's slapstick comedy was made more effective with a subtle injection of empathy for the characters, this book wears thin pretty quick because the characters are no more than one-half-dimensional pun spouters.

A lot of people like Morse's cartooning style, but for some reason it leaves me cold. He has a unique and beautiful touch with his colors, but his laboring on these colors and textures robs the finished product of immediacy, energy, and life. His characters are almost too stylized for me to accept them as people. This is a matter of personal taste; like I said, Morse has a lot of fans. I just don't think that I am one of them. 0.5 stars.

Posted by jdonelson_nyc at November 12, 2004 12:56 PM

Comments

Posted by: macstukuls at November 14, 2004 09:56 AM