Broken Frontier

Talk about classic: what comic reader doesn’t have a notebook or scrapbook chock-full of notes and scribblings, ideas and character concepts alongside the odd plot outline, all of which we may or may not have ever had honest intentions of pursuing, but which we love musing upon and keeping records of for posterity’s sake alone if nothing else?  Dino Caruso, being a writer, is more involved with such a notebook than most, though he’s definitely preaching to the choir with A Cautionary Tale, and it’s a sermon the faithful ought to revel in.

A down-and-out narrator, drinking himself into a stupor in a local dive establishment, is coaxed into relating his tragic tale to a handsome young couple (who only half actually care, but hey, this disheveled stranger’s kind of aggressive, so let’s just let him talk…).  So the story is told, a story about stories, about unrealized stories that are written down, recorded, hoarded, until the world, to the writer, becomes a threatening place.  As time passes, the writer grows paranoid, obsessively so, and turns away from those once close to him.  To make matters worse, he can’t bring himself to actually show anyone his work for fear of concept-theft.  Will he lose everything before he comes to his senses and simply tries to be proactive about his writing career?

Ha!  The joy of A Cautionary Tale is that it is indeed a cautionary tale - it simply isn’t that easy.  Like the best Twilight Zone or Tales From the Crypt speculative horror short, Caruso’s Tale smacks readers upside the head, posing as a contemporary fable with a tail-end moral only to collapse into a fantastically vicious finale.  The characters are stylishly written, the emotion realistically represented, the pacing attractive; it’s a captivating one-shot, made unforgettable by its clever leap away from any overly naïve, morally enlightening end (a thing that would have been easy to flow into).  Caruso proved his steady-as-she-goes writerly chops with his Crossroads, but here he has a lot more fun, gets a touch more stylish, and showcases some unique qualities to his conceptual dexterity.

Artist Paul Quinn returns (also of Crossroads fame) and he, too, is allowed a greater level of artistry, moving from noir to slice-of-life to pulp and back again, as the story wills.  His use of blacks is hence heavier and more versatile, his range of characters and actions equally so.  He makes the book look like an authentic thing, from the very era its cover steals so liberally from (there’s irony for you, stealing from stories for a story about stealing stories), though the final product feels nicely modern nevertheless.  Composition is strong throughout, and never once does the art feel less than mainstream professional.

A much more ambitious and therefore impressive offering than Crossroads, A Cautionary Tale goes a long way to convincing that Caruso is nothing like a one-trick pony, and that, whatever else he does, it’ll be well worth a gander.  His style is classic while managing a certain fresh factor, or at least, it never struck me as stale or rote, and his taste in artists is impeccable.  I’ve got one more book of his to peek at for now, Olga, which I’m going to hit up this weekend.  After the last two…man…now I’m excited, but also, now I have expectations!  Let’s see how he does….

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For ordering copies of A Cautionary Tale or other Caruso Comics, go to http://www.carusocomics.blogspot.com and send Dino a message.

An official website (www.carusocomics.com) is in the works, though it’s only a homepage for the moment (see date of this article above for an exact definition of “the moment”).