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His run of Swamp Thing is absolutely amazing... rumors abounded the last few years that DC is considering printing his controversial last issue that featured Swamp Thing as the cross Christ is nailed into.
If this happens, I hope Veitch get scads and scads of money for it.
On Bratpack: I pulled the TPB off my shelf for the first time in a long time this weekend. Reading it, I was astounded to find that I had either forgotten its raw, hammer-punch of a delivery or had never really taken it all in before now. It's the blackest of black comedies and the book declares itself so in the first pages. Even the first cover, featuring Chippy shaving his legs and opening a waterfall of a gash in his calf, stood out on those long ago comic shop shelves of 1992. It declared proudly, "You don't come in here to fuck around You come in here to get fucked with." Thus began the Bratpack.
It's important to remember, when approaching Bratpack, just what was going on in comics at the time. Robin had just died at the hands of the Joker with Batman's readership egging him on, and Veitch had walked away from DC in protest over the Swamp Thing #88 fiasco. You can see in these pages the anger Veitch felt at the whole damn industry. And when he unleashes it, he uses both barrels. And he keeps on firing.
One cannot just waltz into Bratpack. Defenses must be readied, stomachs strengthened. Rick Veitch was, at this time, the epitome of the Angry Young Man. Within these pages are all manner of atrocity and they are never flinched from. Nothing in the book is implied or hidden from view. When acid-carved undead corpses enter the frame, they ENTER THE FRAME and present themselves in their dribbly glory. When a character coughs up blood, it is a torrent of gore, an ill tide glimmering on the lips of a madman. And make no mistake. Every character you meet in Bratpack is a damaged, twisted thing. There's not a hero or role model among them. Even the pure, innocent Cody, choir boy and two-time winner of the Zero Tolerance Award, is corrupted in the end. The adult heroes are played at full-tilt as well. Some of the characterization is patently offensive, and yet can't quite be taken seriously. The Midnight Mink, to take the obvious example, flouches about the pages of this book flaunting every gay stereotype known to man. It's awful. It's wrong. It should not be. But, when surrounded by such lunacy, one merely gives up. Midnight Mink is no more horrible a character than Moon Mistress. Or Judge Jury. Or King Rad. They are everything and nothing. The pessimistic extension of all that went before. Fredric Wertham was fucking right!
These characters, every one of them, are Rick Veitch. They are Rick Veitch cut loose from all constraint, all consideration for taste and decorum. This is every bad dream he's had about superheros. This is his chance to wipe them all out. And in the last pages, he does via the deus ex machina reappearance of the Maximortal. Using this superman, Veitch crushes the monstrosities he let loose, and makes room for his next target: Wesley Winston.
The black and whitie inkwash employed by Veitch on the mini-series (if inkwash it truly be) is brilliantly used. I have to wonder about the proces used, as I feel that I can see traces of Photoshop work here and there. Matteing, subtle lens flares, these types of things. In any case, it was a good choice of Veitch's part, as it gives the entirety of Slumburg and all her inhabitants a fine layer of grime. Heroic as they may endeavor to appear, it's never quite convincing what with all the dirt. |
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