Broken Frontier

Atty & Max is a book starring two entities who share, not just the same body, but the same head!  “Atty” is the gentle soul, a naïve  schoolboy personality and the one who wields dominant control of his body below.  Max is the verbally abusive alcoholic bastard who, thankfully, can only occasionally grasp minor control to slap Atty around.  Together, this dysfunctional duo journeys through a wasteland world of bizarre creatures, mutant outlaws, and any sci-fi craziness that creator Michael S. Bracco can come up with.  While Birth and Novo are Bracco’s critically acclaimed professional debuts, Atty & Max was the book he cut his teeth on, both artistically and authorially.  Thanks to his recent rise as superstar-in-waiting at small press publisher Alterna Comics, Bracco’s loveable duo gets a special collection and pro release, exclusively via free download at Wowio.com

So this is the early stuff, the rough stuff, the is-it-any-good stuff.  Is it?  I’d highly recommend checking out Birth first, and Novo if it’s out (it hits June 25^th), because then you’ll get a good sense of where Bracco’s earlier works rest in relation to his newest, but honestly, Atty & Max is a blast no matter what.  The GN collects the four full chapters/issues—#2-5 of Bracco’s long-ago self-published editions (#1 was, apparently, bad enough that Bracco decided it shouldn’t ever be seen again by anyone)—and while they don’t claim the finesse of Birth and Novo, the flavors and general navigation through wild plot elements are fundamentally the same.

The story of Atty & Max depends upon a dense quantity of dialogue, which is a novelty.  Birth and Novo are, due to their natures, sparse on the text, but half the fun of A&M is the incessant banter between the two body-brothers.  Max gets to shoot off at the mouth and Atty gets to whimper and beg Max to stop; this is the shtick that keeps up throughout, as the two fight off monsters, fall in love, suffer (honestly, pretty horrific and shocking) tragedy, and even tumble through one of the coolest dream sequences you’re likely to encounter inside fiction.  The plotting is always highly imaginative, and while Bracco’s dialogue here isn’t much beyond the silly and straight-forward, it’s perfect for the subject matter and lead characters.

The art in A&M, as one might expect of a first ongoing work, improves with every chapter.  The first part is rough by comparison to the second, and so on and so forth, but never is the work awkward or unlikable.  In fact, the second chapter is the biggest leap, with every chapter beyond more-or-less approaching the clean and solid lines of Bracco’s modern-most work.  My best comparison (because it just plumb fits) is that he’s like a Seth Fisher mixed with Eastman and Laird, with more of the clean and polished quality of Fisher and less the inky scratchiness of the TMNT fathers as the pages progress.  Even better, because these early stories are Bracco being a bit experimental, trying to find his voice and style, there’s a lot more to feast upon visually, more than in either of the more streamlined Birth or Novo.

So Atty & Max is “rough” yes, but only in a deeply entertaining way, one which makes a person want to make their own comics, because if only our own early attempts could turn out anything remotely approaching Atty & Max, then it’d all be worth it.  Inventive storytelling, lush art that grows ever lusher—this entire 108 page graphic novel is now available for free download over at Wowio.  So take a gander and, if you like what you see, you’ll love Bracco’s other material.  This is wild-awesome comics, so don’t miss out just because you’re too lazy to visit a website!

And be doubly-sure to check out Bracco’s other downloadable GN: The Collective (and Other Stories), which actually concludes the story begun in Atty & Max!

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Birth can be ordered through your favorite comic shop with the Diamond Code: DEC07 3331 or downloaded for free online HERE.

Novo Volume 1: The Birth of Novo, the first in a 7-volume series that serves as a sequel to Birth, can be ordered with Diamond Code: APR08 3509 or downloaded for free online HERE.

Atty & Max GN can be downloaded online for free HERE.

And finally, The Collective (and Other Stories) can be downloaded free HERE.