The Wyrd -- Madman Atomic Comics #8
Find Out Why Madman Atomic Comics #8 Should Be Bought (and Cherished) Immediately!
Madman #8
March 25th, 2008 - The Wyrd is about weird comics. Obviously. Stuff that's on the fringe, stuff that harkens to older forms of entertainment/storytelling but brings its own inimitable sensibility to things, stuff that pushes at the boundaries of what you thought was possible in the comics world. Well I've been remiss in overlooking one of the hallmarks of weird comics, at least for me: MADMAN!
Where do we begin? How do you describe it? I know Mike Allred has described it in the past as "Pop Comics", and yes, that certainly fits--its got bright, zippy, 1960's-influenced touches all over the place, but, I don't know, it's more than that. It's more than just pop. It lives in this rare universe that somehow seamlessly mixes 1950's bizarro sci-fi, Silver-Age normal-guy superheroics, dashes of the 60's Batman series, G-men, spies, monsters, aliens, philosophy, religion, true undying love, and oddly-realistic-looking-action-sequences-for-an-otherwise- completely-off-the-wall-set-of-rules-type-thing. There is no other comic like Madman. And there is no better place for people to get to know Madman, his origins, world, and style, than in the upcoming Madman Atomic Comics #8. Even for me, and I've been reading Madman for years.
I've come and gone, it's true, but so has Madman, and The Atomics, Mike Allred's Madman-Universe beat-poets-turned-freakish-superhero team. The release schedules on these things have been less than systematic. But every time one of these zen-flavored wacko travelouges through Allred's brain appears, I'm more than game to pick it up. Because despite the weird release timings, besides the so-dense-and-bizzare-it's-hard-to-follow storyline, the Madman comics deliver an experience you simply cannot get anywhere else. And this new issue clears up a lot of the denseness and too-bizarre-to-follow-ness. It tells you, clearly and without wasting time, where Madman comes from, what he's been through, and where he is now. And that's all you need to know to jump into this delightful wonderland of tripped-out visuals, crazy scenarios, and wonderfully twisted/surprisingly well-chosen dialogue.
Notice how many hyphenated-combination-of-words-combinations I'm using here? That's because there's no clearer way to describe the Madman experience. It's quite simply some of the most fun you'll ever have with comics. You know how people hail Jim Steranko as revolutionizing comics with his pop-art-influenced, trippy panel/page layouts and stark costume/character designs? Well it's as if Allred takes Steranko, mixes him with truly awe-inspiring character work (seriously, the expressions on characters' faces are always spot-on, and quite a bit more realistic than some more 'realistic' artists' comics work; you BELIEVE what these characters are feeling, and that's all due to Allred's skill with a pencil) and some Kerouac, presumably after taking hallucinatory mushrooms and screened through a prism that fell out of a drive-in sci-fi movie. It's potent, meaty, complex stuff and demands of the reader more than is at first obvious.
Not to say that the Madman experience is a chore--far from it. You can simply enjoy it for its surface features of dazzling primary-color jazzy artwork, fun action-fueled storylines and quirky-clever dialogue, sure. But Madman is also there to ask questions about existence, and identity, and what it means to be a person--what's all the fighting good for if it isn't for a reason, after all? Why should I zip around the city on a yo-yo (how awesome is that, by the way?) if I don't have someone to zip home to?
Even though his story is so weird, so multifaceted, Madman comes off as 110% more realistic than, say, Spider-Man in terms of his angst and emotions because Allred isn't afraid to ask bigger questions through our exclamation-point-clad hero. He isn't afraid to honestly show his own thoughts and feelings down there on the page, and doesn't feel the need to seperate his own musings through the guise of 'comic book writing'. Somehow, even though all the characters have their own unique voices, and some of that is even clearly controlled to sound like it's coming from the character's source material (riffs on beat poets, 50's sci-fi scientists, 60's-era villianous madmen, etc.), it never comes off as contrived or misplaced. It just feels right. It's as if Allred's mind is an incredibly bright, specific world to live in, where he thinks not only about the fun of driving fast cool cars and getting into bust-ups with hapless crooks and aliens, but also about the place of humanity in the Universe, what true love really means, and What It's All About. It seems like an impossible contrivance. It seems that the worlds of philosophy and fun can't ever meet, yet here they do, in a whiz-bang, sock-hop, boogie-woogie funk-o-rama.
If you've never read Madman before, Atomic Comics #8 is ABSOLUTELY the place to start. And if you have read Madman before but haven't lately, get all caught up again and re-discover how much fun it is to think, and how cool the world of comics can ultimately be (when you have a tour guide as awesome as Allred).
For more information check out: www.imagecomics.com