Broken Frontier

Greg Houston’s Elephant Man is a parody of the superhero and his alter ego, but the joke can’t sustain itself for long and is oftentimes taken too far. Houston wants to lampoon pop archetypes like Superman/Clark Kent and Batman/Bruce Wayne, but his jest quickly turns into a flogging of the genre’s storytelling mechanics. The vehicle that makes this possible is the book’s main character, the hero Elephant Man and his alternate persona of reporter Jon Merrick.

From the very beginning of the book, we see Elephant Man receiving nothing but adoration from his raving fans. And yet for what, we really never know; he’s a hero in name only, acting as a proxy for Houston’s amusement. He doesn’t do much of anything other than posing for crowds, ready to receive their love. Of course, everyone’s love is curious: Houston’s oddball hero is modeled after Joseph Merrick, a man who suffered from incredible physical deformities but possessed a sharp intellect.

The real-life person was popularized by David Lynch in his 1980 film, The Elephant Man, which, while receiving mostly positive reviews, was criticized by some for using overt sentimentality. This makes Houston’s choice of a hero obvious but still interesting; I sometimes thought of Ren & Stimpy as I read Elephant Man for its use of subversive humor. But that’s the problem: the book is 80 pages of the same joke over and over again.

The Elephant Man’s villain is the suave and handsome TV anchor Dick Denton, who is driven mad each and every time the hero makes a public appearance, let alone receiving all of the praise that he does. It should be Denton who receives the approval of the masses, and so he enlists the help of the Priest, the Rabbi, and the Duck—a joke come to life after a science experiment goes wrong—to get rid of the Elephant Man once and for all.

The hero’s alter ego, Jon Merrick, works as a journalist by day; his colleagues are the bombshell Tracie Bombasso and the cub reporter Dud Cawley. The Elephant Man disguises himself with glasses and a hat, and that mixed with the reporter gig makes the jabs at Superman apparent. But that’s all Houston has in his bag of tricks: the entire book is the ugly hero being loved while the handsome villain is loathed.

There’s enough material here for perhaps a bi-monthly miniseries, spread out over time, but Houston simply cannot maintain this yarn for 80 pages. There’s not enough steam. There’re only obvious, booming jokes told with the grace of a sledgehammer.