|
PUBLIC DOMAIN: A CHANNEL ZERO DESIGNBOOK
Recommended (7/10)
|
AiT/Planet Lar
Writer/Artist: Brian Wood
Price: $12.95 US |
Brian Wood. Hell of a writer. hell of an artist too. I wish we saw more of his work on comic-shop shelves today, but man, the guy is horning in on my racket. His introduction here sums up this book better than I ever could. He talks of creation. Of progress and process. His introduction is a review of the book itself, and it's an honest and accurate one. Still, I'll try to muddle through and follow in his footsteps.
"That's as close to a 'DVD commentary' of Channel Zero you're likely to get." Those were publisher Larry Young's words, used to describe Public Domain. It's a solid analogy. When I pick up a DVD, it's for all of the extras, notably director and cast commentary tracks. They provide a glimpse into the process of creating the film, and Wood gives us a look at an evolution of story and art.
Wood cites Korean comics as an influence on some of the work in this book, but I see a lot of Frank Miller, notably in the story entitled "The Evictor." The cop character from which the story derives its title reminds me more than a little of the hard-boiled heroes from Miller's Sin City stories.
The themes explored in this book are urban, rebellious and cautionary. Wood screams at his readers to open their eyes and look at the world around them through his visions of New York under siege. This is about ideological warfare. A graphitti artist is transformed into a freedom fighter and a martyr. A hacker is seen as a messiah.
On the other hand, I find there's a balance to the views Wood offers up here. One rebellious young woman in one of these early stories isn't set up as a visionary, as someone to be admired by the downtrodden masses. In "Hyperkarma" (the most real-world, here-and-now story in the book), Halo is self-destructive, self-absorbed and self-pitying. There's little in her that one could see as a redeeming quality. Her wild side isn't representative of a lust for life or an attempt to thumb her nose at the System. She's simply a lost little girl that has yet to be smacked down by the rules.
Some of the pieces in this book are hard to read, because the lettering has been reduced to such a level to be somewhat difficult to decipher. But that's OK. This book isn't about plot and dialogue. It's about the never-ending nature of the creative process, and it's about themes. Wood isn't trying to send a message to the establishment; he's fighting apathy, not oppression.
This book was not among this week's new releases.
Email Don MacPherson comments about this review, or discuss it on the Fourth Rail message board.
|
