Written and Illustrated by Shaky Kane
GET YOUR MOTOR ROLLING AND HEAD OUT ALONG COMIC BOOK ROUTE 666! Taking it’s stylistic cues from the silver age of comics, this graphic road movie by comics legend SHAKY KANE, pans out over 50 continuous panels, taking the reader on a hallucinogenic journey into the very hinterland of popular culture. Deluxe, recolored, remastered second printing of the WISHBONE STUDIO cult classic.
Shaky Kane is back. If you already know, you know what to do. If you don’t, learn and be ready.
Shaky Kane. To some, the name will inspire apathy. These people are what we in the soft sciences call “honestly pretty dumb.” Some of you may consider this an unfair generalization. That’s true, but I stand by it regardless. To those in the know — like the people who responded favorably to my review of Kane’s issue of Elephantmen — the promise of new work by Shaky Kane is a mouth-watering one. Not like food, though, if only because I’m not sure anything drawn by Shaky Kane is safe to put in your mouth.
We’ve got another six issues of Bulletproof Coffin coming along at some point next year, but until then, we have this: Monster Truck, an OGN written and drawn by Kane in the sort of format that very few creators could pull off. Monster Truck is one continuous horizontal panel, a hypermegapanorama detailing the lateral travel of a weird little toy truck into the recesses of something altogether too strange to be anything but the human mind.
Monster Truck plays out like a long-form concept album. Not one of those ones like Tommy or something, where the narrative is broken up into discrete songs with pop hooks and inconsistent tones. Monster Truck is more like, say, the KLF’s seminal Chill Out, an audio exploration of some imaginary American South, tracing the lines of a real road map over fuzzy afterimages of a dream. The only distinct character is the truck itself, motoring through waves of archetypes: zombies, superheroes, dinosaurs, bugs, mean-looking clowns, haunted houses, children’s toys. The danger of the journey is the only one a true road warrior faces — getting lost.
Monster Truck‘s narration comes in spare verse, fragmented but hanging together almost by sheer force of will. More than anything else, it brings to mind the last great comic book road trip, Rick Veitch’s similarly landscape-oriented Can’t Get No. Monster Truck lacks the free-jazz fire of Veitch’s lines, but its meditative, often tranquil tone keeps the day-glo universe of Kane’s imagery from tipping over into abstract silliness.
Put it this way: Monster Truck isn’t for everyone. If your main concern in reading comic books is serialized narrative (superhero) universes or keeping up on the newest, hottest pseudo-auteur (superhero) writers — well, go away, because this book doesn’t want you. Monster Truck is for people who don’t need concrete answers, people who don’t want mother birds puking in their mouths. People who look at a neverending streamer of subconscious back-brain splatter and draw in a breath and say: “Ah, Shaky Kane! Ah, humanity!”
Final Verdict: 8.5 – Pinhead Nation Seems a Long Time Ago
