I find myself in a strange quandary on this one. I thoroughly enjoy the series I’m about to mention, yet I can’t recommend it to you. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Perhaps I should explain.
You know, Jamie Delano is really an under-appreciated writer. He is most recognizable for his groundbreaking work as the first writer of Vertigo flagship HELLBLAZER. He’s also received a lot of accolades for such wonderful books as 2020 VISIONS, CRUEL AND UNUSUAL and NARCOPOLIS. Once upon a time, he was your go-to guy for awesome social commentary through horrific tales and futuristic terror. Why doesn’t he get more work these days? His name should be mentioned in the same breath as Gaiman, Moore, Ennis, and so on.
Perhaps he was jinxed by the series I want to talk about. Anyone else out there remember OUTLAW NATION? It’s mostly about the state of American politics in the days just before 9/11 happened, but it’s also about the art of writing and what it sometimes means to be a writer.
Why is it that people in countries like England and Ireland are really good at writing about America? Okay, get this: OUTLAW NATION has at its heart the Johnson family, a group of nigh-immortal lunatics who have somehow become the biggest fugitives in America and at the same time are actually in charge of America.
We’ll get to that in a moment. Let’s talk about Story Johnson, the protagonist of this unusual tale. He’s been kicking around for about 100 years. Originally a Brit himself, he’s been wandering around America for most of his life, collecting stories about his outlaw cousins and publishing them as cheap paperbacks under the name of Drifter. During the ‘Sixties, he goes to Vietnam to get the real story. Instead, he almost dies in a helicopter crash at the end of the war. Everyone in the world thinks he’s dead, even his own family, but instead he’s holed up in the burnt out wreck of a plane, smoking a shit ton of weed, fucking a native girl (whom he thinks of as War Baby) and writing the great American novel.
Sounds like fun, right? Well, just as he finally hits those final keys on his typewriter, the ones that spell out THE END, his Vietnamese common law wife steps on a forgotten mine in a rice field. In his drug haze, he believes that by finishing this million-word novel about the Vietnam War, he has killed his beloved War Baby. This drives him to swearing off writing forever and ever, and now that he’s got nothing left for him in ‘Nam, it’s time to go home to America.
Here’s what he doesn’t know: his former hippie lover, Sweetcakes (who would rather you call her Ruth these days), gave birth to his child, Sundance (who would rather you call him Sonny), about whom he knows nothing, not even of his existence. And Sonny? Well, he’s got problems of his own. A lifelong fan of Drifter’s work, he has just discovered that he’s a Johnson, and he leaves his pregnant wife, Rosa, with his mother so he can find the Place, which is pretty much considered a headquarters and hideout for the Johnson family.
Who is in charge at the Place? The original Johnson himself, old Asa, who is learning that he isn’t quite as immortal as he thought he was. No, the old bastard is dying, and the only thing keeping him alive is the tender care of his nurses and constant shots of Johnson juice, the latter of which is derived from the blood of his relatives. (He keeps a lot of them locked up at the Place, since he needs these transfusions often.) His ghastly, pox-infested, claw-fingered form rests in a sterile environment, from which he conducts the business of the world. In other words, you know how people keep saying there’s a man behind the man when it comes to the President? Asa’s that guy.
His enforcer is his son (and Story’s half-brother) Evelyn, more commonly known as Kid Gloves, and if there has been a crazier, more depraved bastard in comics, I don’t know of him. Jesus de Sade from PREACHER is a self-indulgent brat compared to Kid Gloves. He’s allergic to women’s sweat, so those of the female persuasion are rarely injured by his cruelty (he just can’t be bothered with them.) However, it’s open season on men, and his appetites are vicious. He’ll fuck any guy, no matter the personage. More often than not, his targets are brutally murdered afterward. In one gruesome scene, he makes a man blow him and as he cums, he shoots the guy in the head, then just sits there grinning. He does some horrible things to a small town sheriff who erroneously thinks he can fuck with Kid Gloves. In another scene, when he shoots a guy he thinks is Story and later finds out is just some swamp drifter, Kid Gloves forces the helicopter pilot to go back so they can pick up the corpse and abuse it out of a warped sense of revenge.
You see, Kid Gloves is the first to discover that Story is alive, and the pale psychotic bastard, who is next in line to inherit everything from Asa, sets out to kill his brother before his father finds out that his prodigal older son has returned.
All that shit I just talked about? That’s just the first two issues. I won’t go into a lot of the rest. If that’s not enough to hook you on the story, I don’t know what will. Maybe the Devil Kid. All right, so in Story’s wanderings, he comes upon a teenaged kid on the run from the authorities. Why are they after the young lad? Because he wrote a story for class about a gun that begs him to take him to school. The teacher turned him in to the principal, who decided the boy was too dangerous to have wandering around. In turn, he called the cops. Now the Devil Kid (as the media labeled him) has partnered up with Story (and is it any wonder that the former is a Drifter fan?), and they soon join forces with the boy’s mother, Bad Momma, as they do their best to evade the cops and Kid Gloves and just about everyone else in the world except for Sonny. (Did I mention that as soon as Story finds out from Ruth about Sonny that he wants to find his son? Sorry, there are a lot of things going on in this book, and it’s hard to keep track of everything.)
Political intrigue follows. Social commentary on creative endeavors follows. And don’t worry, there are plenty of tits and violence to keep one interested. How could I not recommend this series to you?
Yeah, that’s the thing. Remember how I mentioned 9/11 earlier? This book was written at the end of 2000 through to 2002. Considering how many people didn’t really care for social commentary criticizing America around September of 2001 and beyond, readership of this book dropped off. Vertigo canceled it before its time. They were kind enough, however, to give Delano one last issue to finish up the story.
And that’s where the problem is. The ending is very, very unsatisfactory because there is a lot stuffed into it. Not only that, but some of the most important parts of the ending happen off stage and are explained in brief after the fact. For example, a lot of Johnsons die in a key moment, but the key moment is explained later. In another instance, a major character is shot in the back of the head, and we only see the results. We don’t even find out for sure who does the deed. (It was probably Kid Gloves. Probably. But I can’t confirm that.) Lastly, two major villains are offed off stage, and we’re told about it by one of the characters later.
Oh, and the cover for the final issue gives away the ending.
So . . . if you’re looking for something with resolution, I guess you have it, but it’s done in such a slapdash way that it’s almost not worth it. If you’re one of those the-journey-is-better-than-the-destination kinds of people, on the other hand, go for it. I recommend OUTLAW NATION whole-heartedly.
I realize that in this tirade, I have not given the artists enough time. I feel like a douche just tossing this in at the end, but what the hell? It’s better than nothing. The two Gorans, Parlov and Sudzuka, work wonders with the art throughout the series. Even if the writing got sloppy near the end, the penciller and inker never faltered. And they’ve got balls, those fellas. Some of the things they showed Kid Gloves doing were just nasty. And I will never forget Kid Gloves in the red-white-and-blue bikini with hand grenades in the cups for as long as I live.
And of course there is cover artist Glenn Fabry. Anyone who has seen his work on HELLBLAZER and PREACHER will never forget it. Here, he does an excellent job except for when he gets silly. There are just some ridiculous covers every once in a while, covers so silly that it detracts from the importance of the work within. Aside from these rare instances, it was a hell of an attractive book to see on the racks.
Anyway, I guarantee you’ll be able to find these books. If anything I said in this installment of Forgotten Comic Books has appealed to you, hit those long boxes in the middle of the store. You’ll probably find the entire run of the series, and you might even get ‘em for a buck an issue. Don’t look for it in trade, though. Remember, OUTLAW NATION has been forgotten . . . .
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