Written by Richard Starkings
Illustrated by Shaky KaneBULLETPROOF COFFIN artist and Legend, SHAKY KANE, joins ELEPHANTMEN for the freaky tale of Doctor Sebastian Bone and his wife, Victoria, and her lust for something belonging to Elephantmen.
I’m gonna spend most of this review talking about how much I love Shaky Kane. If you don’t know who Shaky Kane is, then there are way worse things you could do than find out, after the jump.
Yeah, yeah, forget about the eternal mishandling of Cassandra Cain or whatever for a minute. If you want proof that there is injustice in the comics industry, you need look no further than the example of Shaky Kane. In a comics industry where the past 25 years have been shaped almost exclusively by the formative work of British creators, Shaky is one of the many who slipped through the net of influence. Out of that lot, though, I can think of very few who deserve as much success as Shaky’s failed to receive.
Put it this way: If we’re playing the comparison game, we’ll start by saying that Grant Morrison is Philip K. Dick, visionary narco-shaman receiving code from beyond. John Wagner is Kurt Vonnegut, all grunted truth, no matter how absurd. Alan Moore is Robert Anton Wilson, bringing the mad ideas of the heavens into the pop-culture arteries. Warren Ellis is J.G. Ballard, Neil Gaiman is Neil Gaiman, etc., etc. Anyway, if we’re going to play that game, then in its context, Shaky Kane is the secret William S. Burroughs of comics. I don’t mean this in a particular literal (or literary) sense — I can’t recall Shaky ever making comics about having sex with underage North African boys, or anything like that. It’s more in the feeling one gets from looking at his stuff, the idea that he has somehow mastered the art of accessing the back of his brain and letting the undiluted idea-mass spill out through his pen. His comics in 2000 AD were frequently ugly and opaque, but captivating in their brutal (and brutish) humor, just like WSB’s best writing.
For purposes of just getting on with it, though, just imagine this: somehow, Bob Burden and Geoff Darrow had a baby, and it learned about the world through Kirby and Ditko comics. Then it learned to draw and became Shaky Kane. If I seem like I’m going on about this guy endlessly (trust me: I am), it’s because Elephantmen #33’s spotlighting of Shaky’s art is a rare treat. As it turns out, coming off like the mad lovechild of Burden and Darrow doesn’t actually get you a lot of calls from Marvel and DC, you know? Still, all the credit in the world to Richard Starkings for yet another example of his impeccable taste in artists.
Elephantmen is a dense comic on the best days. In theory, it’s about the lives of group of animal-man supersoldiers after the fighting ends and they’ve been placed into ‘normal’ society. In practice, it’s more about the continual fleshing out of this near-future world. There are times where I feel like the very act of reading Elephantmen is interrupting what Starkings is trying to do, as if it was some massive invocation not meant for the eyes of just anyone. Starkings doesn’t build this cityscape through writing, though — he brings in the best artists you haven’t heard of, often for an issue or two at a time, and in each of their art styles a little bit more of this world-vision is revealed. No one takes the same route through the city, and even one different turn shows you something no one else would.
To #33’s credit, this is a spectacularly easy issue to follow even for the uninitiated. What you need to know: that there is such a thing as “elephantmen,” which are exactly what the name makes them sound like. From there, we drift into a river of blood that carries us clear to its logical, if grisly, conclusion. Stories about the obessions of cosmetic surgeons — not to mention the obsessions of cosmetic surgery addicts — are rarely fraught with things like “upstanding moral convictions” or “respectful attitudes toward the natural design of the human body,” and Elephantmen gives us no exception. Where it breaks away is in getting Shaky Kane to draw it.
If you’ve ever read a horror story about a surgeon’s obsession with perfecting his work (complete with discussion of the body as canvas), you know what to expect here, narratively. Richard Starkings is not a trailblazingly innovative writer. What makes him one of the best writers in the business, though, is the trust he puts into his artists. They carry Elephantmen by taking these standard story ideas and running with them — Shaky Kane turns a plastic-surgery psychodrama into a brightly-colored pop-art parade of exposed spinal columns, replacement teeth, glowering artisans right out of some 60s Italian movie, and women whose comic book figures are played as the grotesqueries they really would be. It’s a fantastic blend of well-chosen words and beautifully deranged art. You’re probably not reading it, so you’re definitely missing out.
Final Verdict: 9.5 / Now I just have to wait for the Kane-drawn Elephantmen thing in the CBLDF book this fall, ugh
