Broken Frontier

David Lapham returns with a comic about America.  This one is a barn burner, folks.

The writer is no stranger to controversy.  Well, maybe he is.  No one read Young Liars, that’s why I can’t read it now.  Seems maybe you guys made Lapham mad by not buying his last comic.  'Cause this one has a mean streak.

Welcome to Sparta, USA.  A small little town, where everything centers around football.  No, seriously, babies are drafted!  The Maestro leads with an understanding yet firm hand.  Life, Liberty, and Treachery.  That’s all one needs to run a nice town.  No intruding governmental rules or laws.  Just the pigskin and hard work backed with guns.

It is seemingly impossible that anyone would want to leave this little conservative utopia, but Godfrey McLaine did just that.  Three years ago, he climbed into the mountains, presumed to be eaten by John Prufrock’s kin.  Now he returns all red skinned (in contrast to the Maestro’s blue skin) and he holds the truth about the state of the Union. 
   
This one is incendiary.  Lapham leaves no stone unturned.  Godfrey is definitely a riff on Jesus.  The story itself is some oddball conglomeration of Any Given Sunday, the Book of Exodus, The Postman, Greek history, and Liberality for All.  There’s a couple of references thrown in there just to make you run to Wikipedia.  Heck, I’m not even sure I got them all.  The cover recalls Red Dawn in its picture of a lone gunman looking down on what appears to be a sleepy town (even if it does have a giant coliseum in it).

That comic book reference, Liberality for All, strikes a chord with me.  For all its other influences, this is the one that sticks out in my mind.  Liberality for All was a little indie comic that was all about how Liberals were going to destroy the country.  It took everything to its slipperiest of slopes and the first issue ended with a hero like Bin Laden walking into the UN carrying a dirty bomb on the tenth anniversary of 9/11.  It was a nightmare of a comic and, whether intentional or not, was clearly the most controversial comic I have ever read.  It just tried so hard to push buttons.  Unfortunately, from the first issue - that is what Sparta, USA seems to be, except in reverse.  Here we see what happens when the lack of Big Government is taken to its illogical but easily seen ends.

I don’t know where this is going and it is certainly intriguing, but Lapham just seems to be trying too hard to hit every hot topic discussed on some weird male version of The View and that was the other book’s downfall.  Hopefully, Lapham is powerful enough of a storyteller to overcome the potency of his concept, but I would guess that a lot of potential fans will be turned off after one issue.  Although, I guess it begs the question of how many Bible thumping fundamental right wing nut jobs read Lapham to begin with?  It’s a brave thing to do.  Americans don’t take lightly to criticism and this is a highly critical view of what is important to America.

I can honestly say that I don’t ever recall seeing a comic illustrated by Timmons before.  He has a style not unlike Tommy Lee Edwards or J.P. Leon.  Some of this is brought about by the offbeat coloring that WildStorm FX studios brings the book.  I wonder if Melissa Edwards would have been cheaper.  It certainly recalls Earth X or Marvel 1985 and that is a good thing.  If one style was begging to see more prevalent use, it is theirs.  It is good to see its kinetic lines and solid storytelling evolve into a school.

Hopefully, this one will rival Lapham’s other self created work and benefit from being an obvious water cooler type book.  Controversy sells, after all.