It’s time for another Comics Comics critical cage match! And this time Dan Nadel, Tim Hodler and Frank Santoro are taking on Paul Pope’s Heavy Liquid. Nadel cuts to the chase right away:
This is the sort of thing I tried to pass off as “deep” at age 14, holding a bong in one hand and an issue of X-Men in another. It’s so dumb that I actually feel guilty pointing it out. I could look past all of this and just enjoy it if I bought into the attitude behind the work. Or rather, the attitude, period. Because besides the art, the whole thing is attitude: it’s one big trashy leer. It’s about being world weary, skinny, jaded, romantically paranoid, romantically tough and romantically romantic. It’s also completely humorless and un-selfconscious, which is surprising considering how brazenly it’s drawn from other sources (name your film noir or crime novel, your Fellini film, your late 80s/early 90s indie rock, etc etc.).
You know, I’d love to see these guys try something like this live at a convention some time. Just saying.
