CAN'T GET NO has been named a runner up in the First Annual PW Week Critics Poll.

Peter Hensel at Convival Parlays on CAN'T GET NO:

Can't Get No by Rick Veitch
After this was released, it suddenly dropped off the face of the planet. There was a tremendous buzz and excitement for a major new release from the critically acclaimed Rick Veitch, and after its release? I think I read one review on a blog, and the compulsory reviews on large reviewing sites weren't very clever or insightful.

The nature of the work makes it very hard to discuss or review besides a superficial reaction, though. Veitch's almost incessant prose style matches with a similarly meandering plot to make any writing on the subject tend towards unfair criticism that sounds like merely a negative reaction to the very odd choices Veitch makes. That said, I'm not about to write about the work, and it's best to be experienced by yourself with an eye slanted towards the visual storytelling as opposed to the written captions. I could easily see it becoming an unearthed classic twenty years from now when nostalgia for our current era sprouts (a possibility I'd have thought impossible before all the G.I. Joe and Transformers remakes), but for right now it's firmly defined as an odd book enjoyed by odd people in a very odd manner.

CAN'T GET NO is named #1 on the Best of 2006 list by Bob Weinberg at City Link Magazine.

1. Can't Get No by Rick Veitch. Comic book veteran Veitch penned an intriguingly offbeat narrative with this dialogue-free tale of self-discovery set against the backdrop of New York on Sept. 11, 2001. The fragile existence of a high-powered executive shatters after he becomes marked from head to toe with indelible pens. Can't Get No provides an important reminder that sometimes the most profound changes come when we're forced outside our comfort zone.

I've been watching this thread, hoping Rick's Google searches would turn up my writeup at DIMP ... but alas! no such luck. Google loves me not.

Shoe,
Feel free to post it (or send me the link and I will!)

Here's a CAN'T GET NO thread over on Newsarama with a great title: Rick Veitch: Comics most talented writer no one cares about.

CAN'T GET NO is named one of the Best Graphic Novels of 2006 by La Carcel de Papel.

CAN'T GET NO is named one of the Best Graphic Novels of 2006 by Matt Brady at Warren Peace Sings The Blues.

Every Day Is Like Wednesday names CAN'T GET NO as one of The Thirty-Three Notable Graphic Novels of 2006.

Here's an excerpt from from Rob Vollmar's review in The Comics Journal #279:

The logic of Can’t Get No is dreamlike. Its messages are at once garbled and instinctively understood. Its characters and symbols are the currency of American culture; the businessman, the bohemian, the foreigner, the bigot, sex, drugs, and, lest we forget the title, old-time rock and roll.

In order to evoke this state of altered consciousness, Veitch employs some fairly restrictive narrative conceits. The entirety of what actually happens in Can’t Get No takes place in the images. It is a 352-page parable in pantomime accompanied by a captioned narrative that obliquely references the emotional contour of that story in something resembling free verse. The extreme separation between the two streams of info is not a passive decision as it, in effect, shapes the way the reader is allowed into the story. It constantly begs re-examination of the page as the images flow across it, redirecting the eye to process the text, perhaps in tandem this time, with the discrete image with which each segment is grouped visually. The through-composed nature of the narrative verse discourages the cumulative association of what is happening textually on any given page with what came before or necessarily what comes after. In so doing, it invites the reader, with some degree of self-awareness on display, to be here now.

Moving from what Can’t Get No is to what it is about, one may be surprised to find that it is not really about 9/11 at all. The real events of that day are, within the context of this story, merely the impossible midpoint on a line composed of fantastic improbabilities. Enmeshed in this work of unrepentant fiction, the surreal nature of the World Trade Center buildings crashing to the ground before the eyes of millions transforms otherwise implausible coincidences and/or shortcuts necessitated by the mute visual storytelling into useful material. This freedom is exercised liberally throughout, adding to the dreamlike atmosphere by virtue of its purposeful randomness.
Even as he creates a story that is difficult to anticipate, though, Veitch stays committed to the purpose of the piece, which is to satirize and criticize culture through his morality play. In this sense, Can’t Get No is defined by the not-so-coy contrasts that it draws between the loose confederation of ideals associated with the American youth counterculture of the 1960s and the values he presents as being indicative of contemporary culture in America. The story’s protagonist, Chad Roe, is a soulless young businessman who is all too willing to despoil the world around him in his quest for more money and more power. His marked transition from his high position of status to social outcast not only ultimately spares him the fate of those who were trapped inside the WTC buildings when they fell, but sends him on a hero’s journey from which he returns transformed. While his tribulations are many and his suffering great, he does manage to consume a lot of non-prescription drugs and have wacky psychotropic sex with Jackie Kennedy inside JFK’s head, as well as make back all of his money with dividends by practicing a more responsible form of capitalism.

If that encapsulation comes across as inappropriately glib in relation to the somber 9/11 theme, there’s a really good chance that Can’t Get No will seem so as well. One of the unavoidable drawbacks of delivering this particular story through the images alone is the vacuum of nuance it encourages as the philosophical debate is waged in the narrative equivalent of semaphore code. As such, one could accuse Veitch of preaching only to the choir as his fable leaves little room for dissent, well-reasoned or otherwise. The values on display are the causa prima for the story’s existence, the very meaning of its purpose. Resting on a foundation such as this, the burden of reaching the intended response is placed squarely on the reader.

Even without the transpersonal catharsis, Can’t Get No easily ranks among the best of Rick Veitch’s as a solo act. For whatever it detracts from potential sophistication of its message, the creative decision to let the images carry the story provides an admirable showcase for his imaginative cartooning. Can’t Get No ambitiously builds upon pre-existing themes in Veitch’s work even as it commits itself narratively to the task of seeking previously untested storytelling avenues for its creator. Considered one last time in context with other 9/11 related comics and graphic novels, this feverish allegory is fundamentally unsuited to the tasks of clarifying its causes or ramifications in any meaningful way. Its purpose is limited to parsing a hopeful lesson from otherwise senseless destruction that, if properly motivated, even the most self-serving among us are capable of living a better life.