GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #537: CLIVER BARKER AND MY MOM'S COMA

 So today is Clive Barker's 70th birthday. It's weird because Stephen King just turned 75 last month, still alive despite struggles with addiction and having gotten brutally hit by a van. I've mentioned it elsewhere, but I'm of the firm belief that King is the best he's ever been now, and considering the beloved classics he gave us once upon a time, that's saying something huge.

But it's hard to think of Barker at 70. I imagine (Imajica?) he's more or less retired from writing, considering his ill-received The Scarlet Gospels. I liked it, but I understand why most everyone despised it. I met him a couple of times and enjoyed both experiences. I know he's had some struggles of late what with the toxic shock incident, but it's good to know that he's still around.

So when I was in high school my mom was in a coma. I know that sounds like an odd transition, but I promise it will make sense soon. She was in a drunk driving accident so severe that she lost a year and a half of her life in the hospital.

I only have a teenager's memories of this, so I might have the details wrong, but she had been partying at a bar and got a ride home from a guy who was also pretty drunk. They wound up crashing into the back of a UPS truck at full speed. I'm told the car looked like an accordion. The driver was OK. Mom was not because she had a lifelong habit of not wearing her seatbelt properly. You know the part that's supposed to go across your chest? She always put that behind her back because it irritated her, she always said.

So instead of protecting her, the seatbelt destroyed her guts to the point that she had to have her belly open for about a year. The doctors had to keep going in for surgeries, and sewing her up would defeat the purpose. She lost a lot of her insides because of this. The nature of her injuries was pretty singular, and the doctors who treated her wrote her case up in medical journals. All in all, it was a pretty grim situation.

I visited her every night with my family. We would spend hours at Loyola, usually in her room, but a lot of times the doctors had to get inside of her, so they asked us to wait elsewhere. The caf was kind of awful, but the waiting room was decent and comfortable enough.

I forget who gave it to me (I want to say my dad's friend, Garth, but I don't recall for sure), but I had a gift card for the local B. Dalton. Remember those? If you don't, they were a chain of bookstores. Not too long after the accident I went into that B. Dalton to cash in the card. They had a bunch of Clive Barker books, and I'd heard a great deal about him and had seen Hellraiser (and possibly Nightbreed, but I can't be certain), so I bought the first three Books of Blood. I would sit in the hospital room and the waiting room and even in the dreaded cafeteria reading those books.

So my earliest memories of Barker's fiction will always be entangled with my mom's coma. See? Toldja I'd wrap it up in a nice bow.

Happy 70th, Clive Barker! And many more!

COOL SHIT 1-16-14

GRAVEL: COMBAT MAGICIAN #0: FUCK YES! The return of William Gravel! I’ve been a fan of this book since I stumbled upon the first issue of STRANGE KISS at the Graham Crackers in Wheaton. Hot off the fucking press. I only wish that Warren Ellis was still writing it. Don’t get me wrong, I like Mike Wolfer, but Ellis brought a harder edge (and a darker humor) to Gravel. In this one, Gravel expounds on the history of combat magic in Britain, and of course he has to go up against a French combat magician. This is a bit of an odd #0, though. Usually, when Avatar Press does a #0, it’s a smaller book, maybe 99-cents, with a black and white preview, or maybe the first five pages of the first issue with a bunch of artist sketches. This one is fucking massive and comes in at $4.99 with a story of its own, which looks a lot to me like an issue one. There is a great combat log in the back of the book, giving readers Gravel’s history, starting with STRANGE KISS and going through to the final issue of GRAVEL. (Although the order is kind of off, and I can’t figure out why.)

CRYPTOZOIC MAN #3: This is an odd book for me. I can read any comic book with shitty art, just so long as the story is good. I’ve been fond of saying the opposite is not true. No matter how good the art, if the story sucks, I can’t get through it. I’m not saying the story of this book sucks. I just can’t get into it. However, the art is so mindblowingly amazing, I can’t ignore this book. There are so many great images, I found it really hard to settle on the one I wanted to sample for Cool Shit. I think I made the right choice, though.

GOD IS DEAD #5: OK, the gods are still kicking the shit out of each other. That’s not the cool part about this book. You know how the geniuses are trying to create gods of their own to fight the real gods? Well . . . they succeeded with this issue, and not in a good way. That last panel will make you clench your asshole.

NEXT TESTAMENT #7: This is probably my favorite miniseries going on right now, and Clive Barker and Mark Miller have upped the ante big time with this issue. God demands that his new followers fucking BUILD HIM A PYRAMID. When they fuck it up, he gets rid of them all. Next on the agenda? Blacking out the sun and raising a plague of locusts. And he’s acting like he just did everyone a favor. It’s unreal how good this book is.

COOL SHIT 8-1-13

G.I. JOE #6:  All right, I’ve been ragging on this new incarnation of G.I. JOE, and well within reason.  It’s a jokey, bullshit book which destroys the great storyline that came before it.  But this issue made me laugh.  I couldn’t help it.  It goes into Cover Girl’s history and why she decided to join the military.  Apparently, she was on an army reality show, in which celebrities (she was a model, remember) go through basic training and then face off against each other on TV for some prize or other.  While they shoot the season finale, a crew of pirates raid their desert island and take them captive, and only Cover Girl can save them.  It sounds stupid, I know, but it made me laugh, mostly because it skewers reality shows, and I FUCKING HATE REALITY SHOWS.

THE TRANSFORMERS:  MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE #19:  Wow, this one adds a lot to the mythology, in particular a few interesting uses for the Matrix in the old days.  But the big shocker this time out is . . . Ultra Magnus was never Ultra Magnus, not in all the time we’ve known him.  He’s not an impostor, nor did someone control his mind (like with Prowl in ROBOTS IN DISGUISE).  Ultra Magnus has been gone for centuries.  However, he created this armor that looks like him that other Autobots can wear so that they can be the ultimate lawman.  And it’s passed down through the generations.  How weird is that?  And ballsy.  I wonder how many Ultra Magnus fans are weeping right now.  But goddam!  IDW is kicking ass with this one!

THE WAKE #3:  I’ll be honest, I didn’t know what to make of this series with the first issue.  It didn’t really say a lot, aside from introducing characters and mystery.  But plot?  Conflict?  Not so much.  This is quickly growing into one of my favorite miniseries.  Killer mermaids have been done before, but not like this.  The power they exert over their victims is astonishing, especially when it happens to the big game hunter.  You can practically hear him say, “Clever girl,” at one point.  Scott Snyder is an animal, and I wish he would cut back on the superhero stuff and concentrate more on stuff like this.  (And, of course, I’m going into AMERICAN VAMPIRE withdrawals.)

NEXT TESTAMENT #3:  Remember in last issue, when Wick had that dinner party of powerful guests at his mercy?  Well . . . not anymore.  They’re dead.  All of them, and in fantastic ways.  It’s an orgy of gore, and it’s a beauty to behold.  Not only that, but on a whim, he decides to change airplanes so they can’t fly anymore.  That’s right, all of them.  At once.  One has to wonder what the fuck this guy has in mind for the human race.  He’s delighted by them, but he seems to have no problem killing them off en masse.  This book gives me such a hard-on.  I can’t wait to see where Clive Barker brings us next!

COOL SHIT 7-11-13

NEXT TESTAMENT #2:  Ah.  It’s so good to have some new Clive Barker.  Since he’s lost himself in the world of ABARAT (which isn’t a terrible thing, by the way), he hasn’t had much time for anything else.  I’m glad to see him working in comics again, and this is a hell of a book.  In last issue, Julian Demonde (get it?) went in search of God and found Wick.  Wick is a multi-colored man-shaped being (complete with multi-colored speech bubbles), and while he claims to be the Father part of the Holy Trinity, I have a sneaking suspicion that he’s lying to everyone.  That wouldn’t be so strange for Barker fans.  Check out WEAVEWORLD if you don’t believe me.  In this issue, he blames all of the horrible acts of God—Sodom and Gomorrah, for example—on the Son and the Holy Spirit.  He also says that he fully intended Abraham to kill his son, but the others stopped him.  They locked him away for thousands of years, and now he’s back to check things out.  He’s constantly thrilled by the ways human beings have adapted when it comes to technology.  However, he’s disgusted with the greedy, slovenly scumbags human beings have become.  He laughed his way through the New Testament, and now he’s ready to deliver unto the world his Next Testament.  And he’s not fucking around.  The dinner party he throws so he can meet all the world’s most important people in one go is amazing and worth the price of admission on its own.  Ten more issues to go.

THE WALKING DEAD #112:  Of course.  What would Cool Shit be without talking about TWD?  And after last issue, you know this one is going to be fucked up.  Negan gutted Spencer, and now he’s kicking back and relaxing, ready to surprise Rick.  In the last few issues, Rick has been gathering his forces in an attempt to stage a coup.  But now that Negan has surprised him, he decides to jump the gun.  And then we find out just how cunning Negan really is.  Things get really intense by the end of this issue.  Next month will surely bring a lot of death.  Personally, I think Rick’s going to get the iron treatment.  It’s been a while since a major character has been mutilated . . . .

Incidentally, fuck the Governor.  Negan is by far the greatest villain of this series.  A part of me wants Kirkman to kill Rick off and use Negan as the protagonist instead.  I just hope that whenever his story is inevitably revealed, it’s not lame.

CHRISTOPHER CARRION LIVES! A review of ABARAT: ABSOLUTE MIDNIGHT

It’s hard to write really good children’s books, mostly because a lot of people don’t realize that such books have to have a really, really dark side to them. J.K. Rowling understood this, and as a result the Catholic Church has put her on their Shit List. Clive Barker is another writer who gets this concept. Once upon a time, he said one of his favorite books is PETER PAN, mostly because young Pete happens to be a murderous little bastard, which is the general mindset of children when you think about it. They’re walking ids, waiting for age and influence to add conscience to their chemistry.



The one truly annoying thing about Barker’s kids’ series, ABARAT, is that it takes soooo fucking long for a new volume to come out. Years pass between books, and it’s hard to remember exactly what happened in the previous installment. Harry Potter didn’t have this problem because his adventures came out approximately annually.


But Barker is worth the wait. For the most part, his adult work is much better. He is allowed to work through the really dark complexities of the human (or, in many cases, inhuman) condition. When he’s writing for the kiddies, he’s got to play it relatively nice (for instance, his author’s bio makes no mention of his lover of many years, David Armstrong). Still, he doesn’t take it too easy on the little fellas. There is plenty of nastiness to find in these pages.


Candy Quakenbush of Chickentown accidentally found her way to the Abarat, an ocean world where there are 25 islands, one for each hour of the day, and an extra one, years ago. She’s been through many adventures and has gained many allies (and quite a few villains to boot). This time, she has a number of difficulties to deal with, mostly to do with Mater Motley, a vicious witch with a cloak of dolls filled with the souls of her vanquished enemies. The old hag wants to bring darkness to a world where the sun always shines regardless of the hour. She calls this Absolute Midnight, and it is a tribute to the wishes of those she serves, those who live behind the stars. She intends to fill this world with her stitchlings, ragged mud creatures worthy of their scrotum-shrinking name, who will then murder her enemies. “A knife for every heart,” she intones darkly.


Poor Candy also has to deal with Boa, who is a very different kind of villainess. You see, we learned last time around that the Abaratians of old hid Boa, a witch in her own right, inside Candy’s brain, where she lived for all of Candy’s life. Candy never noticed and always thought that Boa was actually herself. Yet now Boa wants out, and while Candy is happy to oblige, she’s deathly afraid that she’s going to lose a part of herself in the process.


And then there’s Christopher Carrion, perhaps Barker’s greatest villain. Thought to be dead at the conclusion of the previous book, we find him washed up on a beach of rotting flesh, where he somehow still lives. At his most powerful, he was the Prince of Midnight, a ghastly gaunt man with a glass neck collar, in which swam the diaphanous nightmares that eventually saved his life. He has a horribly scarred mouth because when he was a child, he had the nerve to utter the word “love.” As a result, Mater Motley, his grandmother, sewed his mouth shut. We found out last time that he was once in love with Boa, which explained his obsession with Candy in the first book. Now that he’s been resurrected, and Candy no longer has Boa in her, he feels nothing but sorrow for our protagonist. You see, the reason he’s such a good villain is because he doesn’t want to be, but he’s too scared to not be his grandmother’s servant. Near the end of the book, he says to Candy that he wishes she’d gone back to the Hereafter (earth) when he’d told her to, because now he has to kill her. He is easily the most sorrowful character in the series, and even though he has done many terrible things, a reader can’t help but feel sorry for him. Even Candy herself admits this later in the third volume.


It takes a while for Barker to get into the swing of this story. There are a few false starts throughout the first quarter of the book, which weakens this volume a bit. However, even if the narrative falters at times, the true star of this book, as with the others, is his artwork. The paintings are the reason it takes him so long to get each volume complete, but he takes such care with them the wait is worth it. Think about some of the darkest images you’ve ever seen in a children’s book, and multiply them by a hundred, and that’s what you get here. Barker’s not playing around; he’s out to give your kids nightmares as frightening as those that float around Christopher Carrion’s face.

Even if you feel like giving up in the beginning, don’t. The ending is completely worth it. Although he chickens out when it comes to killing one of the main (and most beloved) characters, the rest of it is mindblowingly awesome. To most of Candy’s companions, it’s heartbreaking, but to Candy and Malingo and Gazza . . . it’s a new world of gods and monsters! A new world full of potential and possibilities! Yes, there is a fourth book on the way, and a fifth after that, and it might take a half-decade before we get to come back to the Abarat, but anyone under its spell already knows they’ll be willing and eager to buy the next volume.


ABARAT: ABSOLUTE MIDNIGHT
Written and painted by Clive Barker
Published by Harper
569 pages
$24.99