As some of our long time readers may know (that is, if they’re really good at retaining knowledge and read our decade lists with a fine toothed comb), I stopped reading for a 2 or 3 years at the beginning of the 2000’s. When I returned, the first three books I picked up were Y the Last Man, Fables and The Walking Dead. What some do not know is there was a fourth book, and that was Bill Willingham and Paul Guinan’s Vertigo mini-series Proposition Player.
This book was not nearly as well known as some of Willingham’s other work, but it preceded Fables and managed to capture a lot of the spirit of that table. Plus, it’s damned entertaining.
Find out more about this book after the jump.
Joey Martin is a proposition player for a small-time casino in Vegas. If you don’t know what that is, basically he is a salaried poker player who fills holes in games if they are short handed and has to gamble his own money while he does it. It’s a great gig for someone who is looking to build their bankroll and keep their game sharp, and that is exactly what he’s doing.
However, he’s bored with it. In reality, Joey is an apathetic guy who goes about everything in the bare minimum sort of way, which eventually leads him down a path that causes all of the dominoes in the story to start falling. After his shift, he and a number of other house employees (including his mistreated kinda, sorta girlfriend Lacy) go for drinks. While there, talk moves onto superstitions and whether or not souls exist, at which point he offers to buy anyone a beer who will sell him their soul. A short time later, he’s significantly poorer and is now the proud owner of 32 napkins with signatures signing souls over to him.
While you’d think it would just make him feel stupid, it sets everything up for the remarkably brilliant (in a “holy crap, how is this the first time anyone has thought of this?” and a “this is awesome” sort of way) concept of all of Heaven and Hell (and everyone in between) trying to sway him to their side and to figure out what exactly his plans are for these souls. Will he make his own religion? Who is his god? Will he go after more souls? These souls make him a new player in the world of religion, where soul power is the only real type of power there is.
I don’t want to go too far into it, but it’s obvious to say that this is a book that thrives in its strangely realistic absurdity. As his advisors gather (in the form of ravens Hugen and Munin, aka Higgins and Colonel Pickering, Moloch, and Anubis – these should sound familiar), he starts slowly but surely realizing that this is a game in which he’s an exciting new player: he with the most souls is the most powerful god, not to mention the fact gets the bigger G at the beginning of the word. The more he realizes, the more riveted by the base idea we are, and the more fun the whole thing becomes. I mean come on, how many books have you read that have Hawaiian shirt wearing Egyptian and Semitic gods? This book really is one in a million.
Willingham pushes us from entertaining moment to entertaining moment, constantly drawing us in with his bizarre ideas and keeping us around with his wildly diverse cast. Martin himself is a bit of a jackass, but his loutish and selfish ways are entertaining in their own right. His advisors are my favorites, especially the aforementioned ravens.
The art is solid enough, never really standing out as anything exceptional but always getting the job done. Guinan and Willingham (I’m not sure who handles what parts) are good storytellers, and whenever they need to convey visual humor they succeed.
Ultimately though, this is a book whose core concept is the point in which the success or failure of the venture is derived from. As a person who isn’t religious, the whole thing rings strangely true (a religion’s power is taken from its popularity, in this book) and incredibly hilarious, in a pitch black sort of way. I love the concept, I love the application, and I will always love this book.
And if you don’t read it, just remember that the Great Chaos Monkey will come looking for you. Ain’t nobody who wants that.
