“Elephantmen” #50 is the story of America. There is no better time for Richard Starkings to tell it than right now.
Written by Richard Starkings
Illustrated by Axel Medellin & Gabriel Bautista“BLUE COLLAR BLUES”
The work of an Elephantman who died quietly after living a solitary life in a loft in downtown Los Angeles, paints a different picture of the lives of all the Elephantmen.
PLUS: A gallery of art and ELEPHANTMEN #1, re-presented in celebration of our 50th issue!
For 50 issues now, “Elephantmen” has been a pulpy science fiction detective story featuring anthropomorphic creatures intermingling amongst humanity. Starkings has used the animal characters to filter common human feelings through animalistic needs and wants. This is sometimes used for humor and sometimes used for eking feelings of melancholy or empathy out of the reader. Never have the parallels between humankind and the elephantmen been more clearly drawn or effectively used than with the issue in question.
Starkings and Medellin bookend the meat of the story with young Miki turning over in her mind her relationship with the elephantman, Hip Flask, and the revelation that she eventually comes to. He sleeps a sleep that feels like the eternal, while she sits by and no doubt counts all of the things that stand in their way. But she has fallen too deeply for him, so patiently she turns to the unopened packages he’s received in his slumber. What is inside is the key to the issue’s ultimate lesson, an all-encompassing view of the world of the elephantmen, and a reflection of our own history as a country.
The gifts (to Hip Flask and us, the readers) are pages and pages of gorgeously rendered Gabriel Bautista full page watercolors. Scenes of elephantmen coming on ships, gathering resources, cooking, cleaning, trying to claw together an honest living. Starkings’ prose weaves through these scenes, describing struggles and triumphs that are, quite intentionally, exactly like so many other immigrants throughout the formation of America. It’s easy to forget about the blue collar class, but they were and are there at the very foundation of our world. As the scenes go on, the struggles begin to very specifically and uncomfortably mirror some very true-life economic and social problems.
I, for one, think we need more discomfort in our art. Art is the opiate of the masses, right? Well, maybe that’s not how it goes, but it should be. The polarity in America has most certainly never been higher – at least not in such a widespread and public manner. Events as recently as a verdict last week have ignited tensions that go far beyond a one-on-one conflict and the trial that resulted. In engaging with one another, it’s easy to forget that we are all each others’ fellow man (or woman). “Elephantmen” #50 presents the case that most people are just trying the best they can, and it’s valuable to take that in and digest it for a bit. Especially when the scenes are depicted with such honesty.
The contrast from Medellin’s rendering of Hip Flask’s flat, in all of its spare modernity and its carefully placed gadgetry, to Bautista’s still-life Americana works pretty beautifully. It makes tangible the idea that Hip Flask is living a life that is rare for the elephantmen and even more so, the clarity that Miki gains by having seen all of it for the first time. Yet those bookends, for all their ultra-modern sensibility, feel positively ordinary next to the lush depictions of the lower class. Replace the animals in Bautista’s paintings with humans, and the effect loses none of its luster. But it’s the texture that gives these scenes such great depth. Bautista blends grey elephant hide and mottled tans from the necks of giraffes into the greys, tans, and browns of life on the bottom rung.
But from that rung hangs so much of what makes a country work. It’s what makes home, home. And it’s what would make America a finer place to live in, if we keep it in mind more often. “Elephantmen” #50 means to put it in our minds. It means to keep us from taking it for granted, just like they did to the elephantmen, just like we did before, and like we continue to do today, sometimes. Starkings, Medellin, and Bautista decided to pull back the curtain for the 50th issue – and it made for an issue that everyone could and should check out, even if they’ve never read “Elephantmen” before.
Final Verdict: 8.5 – Buy
