BLOODY PULP

I have no idea why this entry is at the top of my personal list this month – I didn’t even read it properly first time out. Whatever appealed (and it certainly wasn’t genre) it must have had some weight behind it. Perhaps my subconscious asking the same question over and over – “What does he do with the heads?” Fortunately Rob is around to explain everything but the heads. I’ll take notes and listen … probably.

Bloody Pulp and Period Versus Genre

by guest-blogger Rob Berry

Mike and I were talking about H. G. Wells this morning and it seemed a particularly good way to start a conversation about my favorite Zuda submission this month; BLOODY PULP by Jorge Vega (writer) and Jeff McComsey (artist).

H. G. Wells, as Mike pointed out, wrote social commentary and not a “word of science fiction”. True. But science fiction as such hadn’t really been establish yet as a convention or, much more damaging to its potential, a genre.

Comicbook fiction thrives on the tropes and audience expectations created by genre writing. The larger history of American comics at least is based on the idea of presenting readers with uniquely written stories from a handful of categories of fiction that they’re already familiar with: superheroes, horror, adventures in fantastical locales, space opera, funny animals, out-spoken children, etc. As the industry moves it’s focus off the spinner racks of retail comicshops and into the potential for a new audience on the web, the same questions still arise as to what new genre is likely to be most successful in the new market. Unfortunately, there’s a predilection for narrow-minded thinking in adapting the old stuff for new markets that brought us such greatly innovative approaches to re-packaging as Lois Lane: Superman’s Girlfriend. Still, it does mean that people are looking beyond the capes and cowls to find some other vein of industry gold in comics, some new category of what comics can be about.

Any decently well-read comics fan can tell you how frustrating it is for them to explain that comics are a language and not a genre. No news there. But lately comic creators have been falling into the same trap by presenting historical settings as a genre or sub-genre for audiences to better understand what they’re selling. Period fiction has become a part of the pitching machine in the absence of a clear genre-style to dominate the scene.

Then along comes something rare in handling, a pitch that presents readers with a quick overview of when and where to establish context, but pulls off a flip on the preconceptions we might hold that limit period to genre. In television that was Deadwood. This month at Zuda it’s the eight clean and straight-forward pages of Bloody Pulp.

This comic seems, within the first couple of pages, to be another terse gangland period piece in the style of Collins and Rayner’s Road To Perdition, but it takes that energy and flips it around to present us with a Utopian character drama about building a better world and life outside of the city. The kind of social criticism that H. G. would’ve gone for using the trappings of science fiction to bring thrills and adventure to the story.  Its notable here that this was, in fact, a big sub-genre of 1930’s fiction by the way, these rural Utopian societies of artists re-imagining America. Its lies at the core of all the noir-style detective stories that there’s a cleaner, better world someplace to be had and life in the Big City has hardened our ability to be a part of it. The blend here works perfectly and, as rarely happens with Zuda entries, I’m certain after reading those eight pages that Vega and McComsey have a lot more to show us. That is, after all, what a pitch is all about; showing me a little bit of something I know to make me want to see more of how it could be different.

That’s what comics, as an industry, needs to do more of – stepping out of the expectations and narrow-mindedness of genre style and becoming what it’s meant to be, a language of stories.

-Rob Berry