There’s a cool like feature on Top Shelf 2.0 which organises related comics. There’s a fair amount of collaboration between artists and writers so following on from one team member usually leads to another team – it’s great way to make your own connected pathways through the catalogue. Sometimes the comics stack up – in more ways than one. Join me on a little journey through six comics and three creators to see what we can find.
Destructor Comes To Croctown and Destructor in: Prison Break by Matt Wiegle & Sean T. Collins seem, on the face of it, fairly pointless and empty exercises in cartooning. The stories are coldly basic and yet fantastic and begin and end with no explanation and no expected twist in the tale. I was quite prepared to write both of these cartoons off and leave it at that. But there is something going on beneath the obvious. Something quite scary. Destructor is some kind of retro styled robot, which though powerful is not completely impervious to damage when attacked. He passes through a swamp inhabited by war-like humanoid crocodiles. For reasons best known to himself he moves against the fortifications of their city Croctown, defeats their warriors, causes general destruction no doubt in order to live up to his name, and finally bags the prize – some symbol of power. Then he leaves. The one question you might be left with at the end is – who’s side am I (the reader) supposed to be on?
In the other Destructor adventure he turns up late to aid a prison break. The fight between inmates and guards swings first one way and then the other, but continues until the deadlock is broken by Destructor himself. There is much mayhem and cartoon violence. In the end Destructor is hailed by the criminals who swear loyalty to him. Again one wonders what the point of the story is. Two simple tales then that don’t seem to mean much by themselves. Just childish fantasies played out on paper for entertainment. Yet both stories left me unsettled, unnerved – there was something missing. And it took another couple of stories to make me realise what it was.
By the same team is The Real Killers Are Still Out There in which a man goes about his normal day surrounded by the bleeding dead! Everyone apart from himself appears to be a zombie. Instead of making his life difficult by trying to kill and eat him though they also go about their business as if nothing were had changed since their deaths. Once again the story ends without obvious comment or explanation.
Next in the sequence (as I present it to you) is It Brought Me Some Peace of Mind where artist Matt Rota joins Collins on another dark tale. This story which seems to lack actual story for the most part builds to perhaps a not completely unexpected climax and then anti-climax. Because of the single panel format this takes a lot longer to get to the point – whatever the point is – but it’s that slowed journey that makes for the shock/anti-shock at the end.
At this point you begin to see connections between all the pieces – a common theme. And this idea is cemented by the final two strips in this path towards ultimate darkness and horror. Matt Rota takes a wicked pen towards both stories again by Sean T. Collins. Cage Variations: 1998 High Street and Cage Variations: Kitchen Sink are both terrifying stories of ordinary evil. High Street makes you aware of the rather obvious set-up but it’s Kitchen Sink that makes you jump. I say obvious, but that’s a compliment, not a criticism. Both stories are beautifully written and drawn, and although on the surface they have nothing whatsoever to do with the other stories mentioned here the connection does becomes clear.
What is that connection? Well read these for yourself – in this order I think. Like I said, I thought I was on some kind of losing streak to begin with, but by the end of this little journey I was thoroughly excited, interested and also chilled to the very bone. Maybe comix ain’t so bad after all.
