Ryan Riley: November 2009 Archives

By Ryan Riley, Contributor

About a year ago I was lurking around the graphic novel rental section of Pulp Fiction (back when they had one) and I happened upon a little-known Vertigo book called Proposition Player. I glanced at the cover and probably would have put the book right back down if I hadn't come across the words "from the creator of Fables" just below the title.

Anyone that has read my previous columns can tell that I am an unabashed fan of the Vertigo comic Fables written by Bill Willingham. It is one of the finest comics around and one of the few I would heartily recommend to folks that aren't necessarily fans of comics. Fables is that good of a book. So that was endorsement enough for me to give Proposition Player a read, at least through a rental.

I read it and was blown away by both its unique premise and its unapologetically flawed characters. I took the book back and resolved to pick it up for keeps when I got my next paycheck. Unfortunately, the book was no longer in stock when I got paid, and Mike told me that the book had been out of print for a while, so no new copies were due in anytime soon.

A little less than a month ago I was looking through the half-price shelves at Pulp Fiction and found a used copy of Proposition Player. Needless to say, I grabbed as if I were Homer Simpson grabbing the last donut in the break room at the power plant. That is to say, I grabbed it really fast.

Written by Bill Willingham with art by Willingham and Paul Guinan, Proposition Player tells the story of Joey Martin, a semi-professional poker player. Joey works in Las Vegas at the Thunder Road Casino as a proposition player, which is a freelance employee that plays at poker tables in the casino to fill up space in weaker games until more paying customers get dealt in. The hourly wage the casino pays Joey is a pittance, but he gets to keep any money he wins and it helps him hone his poker skills in anticipation of the day that he saves enough cash to enter into a big-stakes poker tournament.

One day Joey and his fellow casino employees are having drinks after work and they ruminate on how miserly and superstitious the casino patrons are. One of them, Earl, remarks that he isn't the slightest bit superstitious, and Joey decides to test that by employing a variation on the Milhouse gambit from "The Simpsons": He offers to buy Earl's soul in exchange for a free beer. Earl decides to take him up on it, as does everyone else in the bar that overhears the offer. Joey's winnings are significantly reduced after this stunt-gone-awry, but that turns out to be the very least of his problems. Shortly afterward he is approached by an agent of Heaven named Bill about the souls he has purchased, which turn out to be very real indeed.

From then on, both Heaven and Hell are putting the full court press on Joey to get their hands on the inadvertently-obtained souls. Bill takes Joey into a bar in the ethereal planes filled with former deity-types like Moloch and Anubis, who ask Joey about his approach for obtaining souls and hatch a scheme to partner with Joey to get back into the game. Hell, for its part, takes a somewhat more subtle approach, sending the seductress demon beauty known as Hell Mary to try and coax Joey into selling them the souls. Then Heaven gets impatient and instructs its agents to kill the people whose souls Joey has in their possession in order to put pressure on him. From there things get really interesting.

Existential story aspects aside, there's just something about this story that comes off as realistic. Willingham gives his protagonist and his human supporting cast all-too-human dialogue and characteristics, and the artwork doesn't shy away from the fact that these people are all pretty average schlubs. You could actually see yourself running into characters like this at a third-tier casino in Las Vegas. The agents of Heaven and Hell and the rest of the miscellaneous deity-types are drawn in larger-than-life fashion, as they are meant to be, and stand out in sharp contrast from the human characters.

Proposition Player is, at its core, a story of a gambler that decides to place the ultimate bet. But the beauty of any well-crafted story is that it has many layers to it, like onions (and ogres). It's a story about subjects that some of us mere mortals take way too seriously, religion and the human soul, but the story itself never does so. In my opinion that is the most beautiful thing about this comic. It also offers a somewhat humorous answer to the question that Joan Osborne (and Dr. Evil) asked in the 1990's: What if God was one of us?

By Ryan Riley, Contributor

Newcomer Jonathan Hickman has been making quite the splash over at Marvel Comics. He is scripting Secret Warriors, which follows the adventures of Nick Fury and his new group of soldiers following Secret Invasion, and took over the reins of the Fantastic Four comic from Mark Millar based on the strength of his run on the Dark Reign: Fantastic Four mini-series. The new FF arc features Reed Richards being recruited into a multi-dimensional think-tank/support group/task force comprised of alternate versions of himself from every conceivable reality, including a couple where he ended up in possession of the Infinity Gauntlet. The story arc takes the concept of Grant Morrison's Superman Squad (featured in JLA 1,000,000 & All-Star Superman) to the next level, and is turning out to be a fascinating read thus far. But in my opinion, it is the work he did before he got snatched up by Marvel that is truly innovative and brilliant.

Hickman has written four separate mini-series under the Image imprint, three of which have been collected in graphic-novel form. It is those three books that I want to call attention to, as they push the boundaries of how a comic book story can be told and are among the finest books I've had the pleasure to read in quite some time. They are all incisive looks at human society both ancient and modern. More to the point, they point out some major problems with human society from many different angles.

The Nightly News

Writer: Jonathan Hickman
Artist: Jonathan Hickman

This story was Hickman's breakout hit over at Image. The main character, John Guyton, is a recruiter for a cult whose members have had their lives wrecked by irresponsible and inaccurate journalism. Their main goal? Kill as many journalists as possible. The cult receives its marching orders from a person they know only as "The Voice", who sends them their directives through an audio tape sent via Fed-Ex. The cult's war against journalistic excess takes place on many fronts, both overt (sniper attacks & suicide bombings) and subtle (taking faces of female news reporters, splicing them onto the bodies of porn stars and placing them on the internet). The story takes quite a few twists & turns, but the revelation of the person behind "The Voice" at the end of it all is the real jaw-dropper. Let's just say that bedfellows make for strange politics.

Visually, this book is less of a pure comic book and more of a hybrid of a comic and an art magazine. The artwork is primarily sepia-tone, which is almost ironic since the story deals with many shades of grey. All of the little factoids and statistic graphs that Hickman intersperses throughout the story (some of which he admits are completely fabricated) drive home the notion that the relationship between the political & corporate masters of America and the general public has become extremely dysfunctional. These are rendered in extremely small print, so be sure to have a magnifying glass handy as they add some real depth to what is going on in the story.

Pax Romana

Writer: Jonathan Hickman
Artist: Jonathan Hickman

This is easily one of the most ambitious stories I have ever read, and I've read a lot of books. In the year 2054, the Catholic Church is on its last legs, having been rendered irrelevant by almost every other religion under the sun. Looking for ways to regain its former prominence, it has been covertly funding scientific research into time travel. When their science team actually finds a way to accomplish it, the Pope and his inner circle decide to recruit the finest military warriors and strategists of their time to travel back to 312 A.D. to aid the Catholic Church of its time in dealing with threats to their superiority, such as the advent of Islam and the barbarian hordes that destroyed the civilization of Rome.

That premise would have been interesting enough on its own, but the story really takes off once the commander of their army, Brigadier General Nicholas Chase, executes the Catholic Cardinal in charge of the mission and decides to do something a little more ambitious: change the very course of human history itself. Chase and his army form an alliance with Constantine and help him ascend the Roman throne a full 12 years earlier than he would have on his own. Chase then uses their knowledge of the future to quell the threats to Roman civilization, whether they be obvious (the aforementioned barbarian hordes) or hidden (like abuse of religious power). But as they successfully execute their plan they encounter unforeseen obstacles, including disagreement on how to deal with Constantine's headstrong son Crispus, and political infighting between Chase and his inner circle that leads to open conflict.

There is really only one thing that could be perceived as a weakness with this book: The sepia-toned artistic style of Pax Romana is strikingly similar to that of The Nightly News, with alternate historical timelines and chat transcripts taking the place of the factoids & statistic charts. To more nitpicky readers, this might almost seem like a creative crutch. Personally, I quite enjoy the way Hickman employs this unique style of storytelling, and I wouldn't mind seeing a lot more of it. If only the text weren't so small...

Transhuman

Writer: Jonathan Hickman
Artist: J.M. Ringuet

Welcome to the future, where the post-human body of your dreams is available...for a modest price. This story chronicles the rise of two rival companies, Humonics Inc. and Chimeracorp, who are competing to deliver the next wave of human evolution to the public, each with a different focus. The initial product that Humonics initially offers is based in technology (a prosthetic hand attachment with basic household attachments that has room for better upgrades), while Chimeracorp tinkers with a pharmaceutical concoction that gives its recipient a biological enhancement.

The whole story plays out like a combination of a Michael Moore documentary and a VH1 "Behind The Music" episode. While the main focus of the story is on who comes out on top of the branding battle, the real fun comes from seeing the results of Chimeracorp's experiments. Their first batch of test subjects, a group of chimpanzees, end up with superpowers like telepathy, retractable claws and optic blasts (the X-Chimps!), and end up escaping from their cages. When their human test subjects (the ones that ended up with useful enhancements, anyway) get into superhero costumes and get sent out to recapture the chimp test subjects, it turns out about as well as the canoe trip in the movie "Deliverance".

Of the three graphic novels by Hickman, Transhuman is the one that has the most traditional comic book-style art and layout. Ringuet's artwork is just as gritty as Hickman's in The Nightly News and Pax Romana, but with a little more of a cartoonish bent. The story is a little more tongue-in-cheek than Hickman's other works, but the ending is probably the most subversive and unsettling (yet hilarious) out of all of his books. Be sure to look for the single-panel shout-out to Grant Morrison's WE3 when they show the test subjects from Humonics.