The MAXIMORTAL is from the Hong Kong guys but it isn't a really great example of what they can do. The original art to that was lost so I had to scan from an earlier printed version and futz with it in Photoshop. The greenish cast on the melting MAXIMORTAL head ended up a little stronger than I wanted, but I liked the way it looked.

ABRAXAS is scanned from the originals which were done with Dr. Martin's dyes and which are so vibrant they are nototiously hard to duplicate on press. These guys pulled it off.

This from Shabbir's Diary.

"Can't Get No" by Rick Veitch

I am slightly hesitant to make this comparison, but I think I just read the "Howl" of the 9/11 generation.  Generation is probably an incorrect word, as several generations have been affected by 9/11, but I think it's fair to say that the book I just finished, "Can't Get No", by Rick Veitch is by far the most insightful treatments of modern culture after 9/11 that I'm likely to ever come across.

When I first flipped through the book, it read like a comic and so I bought it without thinking.  When I got it home I realized that Rick Veitch had intertwined an epic poem about modern culture and the death and rebirth of our souls after 9/11 with a graphical tale of one man's journey through the same.  The graphic story and the poem are both linked and separate, and can be read one at a time as well as simultaneously.  I found it all too much to take in at once, and read it for the graphics the first time, and then returned to the story.

There's a lot here.  The roller coaster of emotions we've all felt during and after 9/11, a modern treatment of the spiritual void of consumer culture, the disconnectedness of modern techn-fetishism, and many other angst-ridden elements of our modern life are all treated beautifully.

This will most certainly be the book that defines my adult life for the decade without being so much 9/11 nostalgia.  I recommend you pick it up.

From Line Of Fire on Silver Bullet.com.

Can't Get No

Posted: Wednesday, September 20
By: Stephen Holland


by Rick Veitch
Publisher: DC/Vertigo
An original graphic novel in black and white, landscape format, which is Veitch's personal reaction to America-gone-mad post-9/11. Veitch, of course, went mad a long time ago (just kidding, Rick), which is why this narrative quickly takes a turn for the surreal, launching itself into the LSD cosmos of Veitch's imagination, before touching back down on Planet Corporation whence the protagonist came. Now, as evidenced by that previous sentence, I'm not immune to purple prose myself, but, compared to language on offer here, that was a mild and miniscule detour. Neil Gaiman calls it "...supremely, magnificently strange, and like nothing else I've read," and that's a fair assessment of a book which is at once silent (no dialogue), yet at the same time thundering with a relentless, unremittingly metaphysical commentary. Let me give you an example from the opening sequence of the second of three chapters, as waves break upon the shore:

"Behold the sagging sky...
"How it collapses along a perfect curve...
"...of rising uncertainty.
"Subatomic yeast is fermenting...
"Possibility is kneaded like ropy dough.
"Baked into spongy molecular meringue.
"Coughed up like single-celled jellies...
"...twisted and stretched by the rigours of transmogrification.
"Slates wiped clean...
"...of the great salt sac from which they have been expelled."

I've never read anything like this, either - it's a very brave book! If you recall from a previous review, Veitch brought his love of language to SWAMP THING, but here he unleashes his entire poetic armoury without compromise, and in some ways I heartily applaud. Unfortunately, as you'll also recall from another three dozen reviews, I'm not keen on poetry, and to be subjected to 200 pages of similarly dense metaphorical musing does my bloody head in. You might fare far better than myself, of course, and there are passages here even I enjoyed, as when Veitch sums up the act of blind and self-righteous carnage which destroyed two towers and thousands and thousands of individuals' lives:

"For when men gave name to that which they worship...
"And claimed to know its motives...
"They described that part of themselves...
"That is at war with its own divinity.
"Man against God.
"Man against nature.
"Man against himself."

There are plenty of examples of that on offer, including the lynching of a kindly Lebanese couple by rednecks on a beach (building tanks instead of castles in the sand!) acting on their not-so-latent xenophobia, which, I can only suppose, they believed 9/11 gave licence to. The link above will give you a breakdown of the actual plot, as well as a sample of what's on offer. It's not an easy one, I warn you now.

http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=86307

For those interested, good interview with Rick "Pool Party At His Place" Veitch over at Newsarama, talking about Can't Get No, as well as projects old and new.

Rick, your dissonance vs. resonance comment was a really great way to frame the juxtaposition of text and image in Can't Get No; that's very much what the "drift" between the two often felt like. Two pieces of music often at odds with one another.

Finished reading it yesterday, Rick, very impressive.

Funny, just as I reached the pages where the plane hits the towers, a plane flew in very low above me. Unnerving.

Yeah , it is good news, the novel will come out soon, I am a reading lover, and it is lucky to join the community to enjoy the updated information about you guys.
Thank you again!
Rgds,
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This from Modern Mask.

Rick Veitch’s bizarre and idiosyncratic Can’t Get No touches on some similar themes, but could not be more different from The Left Bank Gang; where the latter is intimate and quiet, its ambitions modest, Can’t Get No aims to be a Major Contribution to Our 9/11 Literature. I use the slightly mocking capitalization because the florid, often purple writing in Can’t Get No seems to invite it; we are being given a lesson, by some kind of mystical adept, in the Meaning of It All. What makes Can’t Get No interesting, however, is the primary way in which it takes advantage of its medium: the silent, dialogue-free pictures tell a story on their own, without reference to the captions, which comprise an extended prose-poem that runs parallel to the story and make up a kind of skewed commentary on the action. Our protagonist is Chad Roe, the type of soulless businessman who tends to populate stories about the emptiness of contemporary Western existence; the difference here is that the termination of his employment, which kicks off his existential crisis, happens to coincide with the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. Having gone on an all-night bender culminating with his waking up to find himself covered in a full-body permanent-marker tattoo, Roe wanders off into a series of increasingly surreal escapades in various locations across America. When Roe is peeing at a roadside urinal, being ogled for his bizarre appearance by other bathroom-goers, the caption-story is going on about how “we” (there is much use of the all-encompassing “we” of humankind in Can’t Get No) have become “crystalline structures of palpable light . . . free of all the antiseptic framework . . . that defines our social etiquette.” The metaphors pile upon each other in waves, making the prose-poem aspect of the book impossible to follow on its own, but taken as a kind of seasoning on the main story told through Veitch’s busy and detailed artwork, Can’t Get No’s ditzy and “deep” meditations are more digestible.


Can't Get No by Rick Veitch

From Creem Magazine.

Rick Veitch – Can’t Get No (Vertigo) :: Forget the Stones allusion, this 200 page allegorical history of America, triggered by the events of 9/11, is a surprisingly better read than I anticipated and has an unexpected ending that makes it all worthwhile. Guaranteed to contain at least one drawing that will send a chill through you.

I recently read Can't Get No. At first I found it hard to get into the book. The text and images didn't seem to flow well at first. Alot of the text felt like word association cliches.

It wasn't until second part of the book that I think it found it's pacing and its rhythm. When the journey really begins at the Beach it feels like a dream. Like other nonsensical Veitch dream comics which flow somehow with incongruitous content. The book finds its legs then when it's out of the city and exploring strange terrain and strange people.

Sometimes the text and images really resonant and sometimes they are completely at odds.

The bit with the hobo dog was so moving for me and I don't know why. Following a dog might have been just a technical way of connecting scenes or it might be some sort of following the wise old mysterious zen master. Why not follow a lame blind mutt when you have nothing else to lose?

I hope I'm not spoiling the book for anyone.

So while I found the beginning of the book hard to get into, the remaining two parts seem very lively and freeform in comparison. I was easily lost into the strange narrative of the last two thirds of the book.

Oh and the milirary guys on the beach was bit much. It felt too heavy handed. Their appearance later on seemed more forced, more "plotted". It's funny how the visual images stay in your head longer than the words. I could most easily talk about the book and summarize it by it's visual story, but I wouldn't be doing the "prose" part of the book justice.

I think one of my favourite parts of the book is the scene where the women begin to draw on him for the first time. "Suffers...? A shot of open hand and wrist and the threat of impending offence. A nail through the hand of Christ? Followed by "... and creates?" with a extreme close up of the human made mark being applied to the figtips. Fingerprints being the Creator's mark, each of us an individual creation?

That's some good shit going on right there on those pages. The images alone might speak to some of some of those ideas, but the text really reinforces and often creates new meaning and power for scenes like that.

Let's talk sequel...