This is the end. My only friend. The end.
Written by David Hine, illustrated by Shaky Kane, lettered by Richard Starkings and Comicraft’s Jimmy BetancourtCover by Shaky Kane
“HOLE”
Amelia is an overweight housebreaker in search of her lost daughter. Oswald Kiss tortures dolls in his basement. Henry likes insects. Deacon went into his bedroom eight years ago and never came out. Don’t miss the hilarious climax to Season Two.
I am not quite sure what to think of the protagonist of this issue, Amelia. The art seems to hate her, enlarging every negative aspect of her body, taking her from simply overweight to grotesque. One full-page image shows her crawling on the floor, her already large shirt barely stretching to cover her belly, wrappers of candy and junk food surround her. It’s no pleasant to look at. And everybody who’s a little bit over the accepted weight norm probably knows that pain, knows that people look at you and imagine you at exactly this position.
But the story, I think, does not hate her. The story hates society, the society that judges and categorizes her. When Amelia’s husband forces her to eat dietary meals and measures her at the breakfast table it is he who is judged, not her. And yet for the first time I feel like the story and art are at cross-purposes; possibly because Kane’s mood throughout is of satire and horror. There is little room for sympathy, which is what the script calls for in Amelia’s case. I guess you can’t read something like “Bulletproof Coffin” looking for sympathy, it’s not that type of story.
Still, despite all of that “Disinterred” ends in a manner as close to satisfying as possible. There’s a tying of loose ends, of sorts, but no attempt is made to answer all the questions. We do get an answer to who was it popping out of the sewer in the opening pages of the first issue, in a way that closes a circle. Other than that it’s a free-for-all regarding how do all the pieces fit together.
Suburban depression is one the most tired and over-used sub-genres of social critique. At this point I’d be far more surprised to see a story implying some people in the suburbs are not repressed serial killers, but thankfully Hine & Kane have enough panache to make a go with it without lowering themselves to the level of cliché. The nightmares that surround the characters here are far grander in nature. It’s about watching and being watched, it’s about a society whose oppression is so overwhelming people fail to even note it. it’s about loneliness. It’s about how we react to tragedies. It’s about how what other might consider to be ‘perversions’ are often just another way to get through the day.
It’s also about superheroes; I guess. The mother constantly leaves tokens at the grave of her youngest daughter; we get a Shaky Kane crowd shot with all the disturbing dolls (a great name for a rock band). It’s fun to see Kane finding dozens of different ways to re-work the three or so body types of these toys, knock-offs of popular brands possibly, into unique figures. His palate could be called limited, but once you read enough of his work you learn it is not a limitation but a choice. He chooses to be ugly because this is what the story needs (he can, and has done, some achingly beautiful stuff). Seeing the three-eyed blue Casper on the front row, something that I might have gotten from an uncle for a dollar at some cheap-o forgotten store, reminds me of how right his drawings are. He gets it. whatever the “it” might be. We all escape, run from the horror of day to day life. This is not judgment. The world is too often harsh and ugly. And so we run, we disappear, we emerge again.
There’s one more issue left in this review series. It’s a one-shot type thing. “Disinterred” is over. Except it’s not over. And not only because the story is cyclical. It’s not over because it is the type of story that lingers; for good or ill Kane & Hine have made something that seems familiar but is entirely their own. Bits and pieces of our collective childhood memories, dug out, stitched together in a Frankensteinan manner and brought back to life through the alchemy of creativity.
If this is not art, I do not know what is.
