Broken Frontier

The castle is being haunted by ghosts that only Jeremy can see. Will the girls believe him in time to uncover the truth about Jeremy’s long lost parents?

Platinum Grit was the comic that introduced me to the oft dormant but occasionally brilliant Australian comic scene. It had mature content buoyed up with irreverently silly and fantastical storylines. Its stories were often hard to follow due to a tendency on the part of creators Trudy Cooper and Danny Murphy to shift back and forth in time and place with little warning. You could be quite happily reading a conversation between two characters before you realized that the scene was only believable if you accepted the possibility that people could walk from Greenland to Australia via the Netherlands and Deep South USA.

After the naughty sex-comedy aspects of issue 13, ‘Come Sing the Waulking Songs’ introduces a more character based and mystery oriented tone to the comic. Jeremy and Kate are woken by an emergency call from the Jamaican wardrobe (don’t ask). It appears that Nils has accidentally awoken a malevolent force in the nearly completed castle. Mysterious rocks appear throughout the grounds, Ziegfried has gone missing and ghosts keep appearing out of the water.

After 10 issues in print and a three year hiatus, Platinum Grit issues have begun to be released on the net in easy-to-read streaming shockwave format. This new format has freed up the size of each issues to fit the flow of the story. The most recent issue, #14, would fill 49 comic size pages but it still manages to whiz by amazingly quickly.

For a comic that is essentially comedic and absurdist, the story’s ghosts and family secrets are presented in a reserved and highly creepy fashion. This does not detract from the humorous elements of the comic, however, which are still in rather fine form. The conversation between Nils and Kate is as snarky and bitchy as ever. Cooper and Murphy wring comedic gold out of near incomprehensible hangover-speak. Jeremy is the comic’s weak point. The creators have yet to come up with a believable reason why he is like he is and why Kate and Nils are so cruelly enamored with him. It does seem as if Cooper and Murphy are attempting to rectify that with some exploration into his family history and his experiences as a young boy.

Cooper’s art is at times more important than the story and is quite often far more successful. Her ability to handle physical comedy is simply amazing. I found myself simply in stitches at Jeremy’s battle with invisible ghosts in the hot tub. Cooper also has a wicked grasp on facial expressions with a lot of humour being drawn from sideways glances and rolled eyes.

Platinum Grit is continuing the absurd adventured of Jeremy, Kate and Nils in fine form and for free at www.PlatinumGrit.com.