Madman Adventures (1993) by Mike Allred and Laura Allred

I was a huge Allred fan back in the Graphique Musique/Graphic Music days, but I lost track of him soon after, and never read his Madman stuff, for some reason or other.

He explains in the introduction that for the first time, his comics look like he wants to.

So I assumed that this was some sort of new beginning or something, but nope: We’re just dropped into a dream sequence at random, and then…

… we get the best action sequence ever.

Man, the artwork here is so fresh and good looking. Allred’s artwork can sometimes be a bit stiff, but here it’s so lively and attractive. Lovely colours from Laura Allred, too, of course. So I can understand what he meant in that introduction: If I’d made something like this, I’d be pretty proud, too.

Best love scene ever.

But… as much as I enjoy being dropped into the action without any explanation, Allred gives new readers little chance to catch up with what’s been going on. We probably don’t need it, but if I’d never read any Madman stuff before, I’d be pretty puzzled. (I’ve read some of the later stuff, here and there.) Like: Who are all these people, anyway?

Is Madman channelling Zippy?

We get a small handful of different adventures in this collection, and they’re all fun, told in a way that zips along, with gorgeous artwork. But there’s something slightly off sometimes, like when in this goofy story, the villain (an old scientist woman) disappears under some lava. It’s… “well, OK”?

It just seems off for something that’s this whimsical. Or perhaps it’s not whimsical enough, so her being killed off like this feels like more of a real thing that should have an impact, somehow?

I don’t know. It’s a fun book, anyway.

Comics Scene Volume #2, page 27:

Madman himself isn’t the psycho-
pathic kinkoid his name might suggest,
and the 1990s superhero code might
demand. He’s a sweet-tempered amne-
siac named Frank Einsteini who has a
face full of scars (mad scientists resur-
rected him after a car crash), a heart
full of wonder (he confronts new men-
aces with “Gosh'”) and a closet full of
costumes (he rarely wears the same
one twice). Playful would best describe
his exploits.
The all-ages sensibility comes easily
for Allred, a father of three whose ear-
lier comics were altogether darker. “I
was doing fairly esoteric, semi-under-
ground work before,”
says Allred,
referring to books like Grafique
Musique, Dead Air, Creatures of the Id
and The Everyman. “When my eldest
son wanted to take some of my work to
school for show-and-tell, I said, ‘Uh,
I’m not sure if they would like it.’
“I realized I wasn’t really enjoying it
that much either. I thought about the
comics I loved, like Jack Cole’s Plastic
Man, The Fox, Matt Wagner’s Grendel,
Bernie Mireault’s The Jam, the old
Fantastic Four…l wanted to do some-
thing in that spirit.”
When Tundra published Madman
#1 in 1992, though, its hero wasn’t
quite his modern happy-go-lucky self.
He sometimes behaved like, well, like
a madman, at one point yanking out
someone’s eyeball and popping it in
his mouth. Still, the three-issue,
two-color series had its wacky side.
Madman bopped the naughty with a
yo-yo, and danced the Batusi, the
swim and the jerk in the flip-action
corners.
The second three-issue series,
Madman Adventures, had day-glo
color from Laura Allred, Michael’s
wife, a former art major and lifelong
painter who manages a jewelry shop
full-time. Allred calls the series “a
burst of enlightenment—I was doing
exactly what I wanted to do.” No more
eyeball munchies—Frank Einstein
mellowed into a gentle goof, swooning
after his girl friend, the freckly Joe,
while tussling with robots, dinosaurs,
secret agents and ghost tribes.
Unlike Madman, Madman Adven-
tures wasn’t intended as a trilogy; the
back of #3 plugged the next issue’s
story, “Horror on the High Seas.” But
then-publisher Kevin Eastman sold
Tundra, his money-losing “alternative”
imprint, to Kitchen Sink, a bastion of
independent comics. Allred says other
companies courted him while he
waited for Kitchen Sink’s offer, and
there was even talk of a special Image
imprint to publish the book.
The best offer came from Dark
Horse; Allred says he consulted with
Eastman before accepting, “because he
really did right by me. Kevin said to do
what was best for me and the book.”
Once Allred signed, Dark Horse blitzed
the market with Madman promo piec-
es, retailer contests and such hoopla.
“Retailers looked at Kitchen
Sink/ Tundra as artsy, and appealing to
a little more selective crowd,” says
Allred (for “more selective,”
read
“smaller”). “On the other hand, work-
ing with Kitchen Sink/ Tundra proba-
bly gave Madman an extra push of
respectability. ”

Rich Kreiner writes in The Comics Journal #164, page 53:

Madman Adventures represents a distinct
improvement. It’ s shorter, better crafted, better
balanced, and more constrained. Allred plainly
has a clearer idea Of what he wants to do, and
here enthusiasm does carry the day. The plot is
a relatively steady escalation through to an
endi ng that makes your normal deus ex machina
resolution seem j ohnny-come-lately. More con-
fidence is shown in dialogue and art. A surer
sense Of direction allows a more natural flow Of
focused, throwaway jests. Allred avoids facile,
movie-grade embodiments Of foul eee-vil. The
character of Madman is more at peace in his
made-up world; he is happier in this series, and
so are we. Where the uneven deli very in the first
series stiffened our allegiance to reality, here it
is weakened. (Though I still wish Allred would
get a certain body of this world’s information
and knowledge straight: in the Adam and Even
myth, it’s applefirst, fig leaves second.) As has
been the case before, the addition Of color adds
clarity and a visual decisiveness to the art,
Allred’s most polished and conventional to
date.
While the second issue is consumed with a
quirky time-travel story, the first, with its more
mundane focus, shows Allred at his most irre-
pressibly representative — that is, careening
back and forth between the stoopid and the
inspired, the clichéd and the delightful. Take
the early sequence involving a meeting with
street beatnicks (funny!), a fight (dumb! con-
fusingly choreo-
graphed!), andhis
reward (funny!).
Since the reader
has already met
most Of Allred’s
Legion Of Un-
usual Characters,
the wild action
and ridiculousex-
planatory dia-
logue can unfurl
without fresh
weirdos continu-
ally popping up.
Theinquisitionof
Madman at the
handsofhis lady-
love’s father is a
fine sequence
where idiotic op-
timism meets a
true-to-life terror.
In Madman’ s
escapades so far,
the twin drives of
his personality,
lunacy and be-
nevolence, have
yet to approach
the frontiers
scouted by, re-
spectively, Bob
Burden’s Flam-
ing Carrot and
Mireault’s The
Jam. Still, in
stooping to a
straightforward
superhero mock-
ery, at least Mad-
man represents
Allred’s self-con-
trolled power
dive into a hell of
his own making.
And, to be fair, it
is not without its
moments… just
not so many as
one might wish.

Oh, Allred landed in the Swipe Files, but denies swiping?

Here’s the entry… doesn’t look extremely swiped to me.

Here’s a review of the book:

Allred follows that up with mad scientists, an invisible woman, time travel, robots, and dinosaurs. Those first two episodes are fast paced, fun, fun, fun and more fun. Then we have a road trip, but the dream sequences and psychedelic experiences of this final chapter are a more acquired taste. They’re still beautifully drawn, every panel a mind-expanding pop-art masterpiece, but for anyone wanting a little more story with their trippy hallucinations and chase scenes it might leave a little to be desired. In time Allred would learn to parcel out the real weirdness in smaller doses, and the strip would be better for it.

The Madman stuff has been reprinted many times, but as that page above mentions, it can be difficult sorting through all the different editions to find what you’re looking for.

This is the one hundred and fifty-first post in the Entire Kitchen Sink blog series.

Hyena (1993) #1-4 edited by Mark Martin

This is a magazine that passed me by at the time — it’s the sort of thing I would have bought if I’d known about it, but as the first three issues were published by Tundra, perhaps they just forgot to tell anybody about it.

Heh heh. I want a clothes shaver shaver!

So — this is a humour anthology edited by Mark Martin. It’s more chaotic than what I’d expect from him: He’s so meticulous in his own work.

The aesthetic they seem to be going for is a mix of old school underground comix and more early-80s punk stuff, I guess? The Pee Dog strip is credited to Eddie Jukes and Jocko “Levant” Brainiac 5, which I guess has to be Jay Cotton and Gary Panter? But it looks nothing like Gary Panter at all, so I’m wondering whether Cotton did it himself? Or… somebody else?

The magazine also has text pieces or varying types. (And Sam Henderson — I think he was in all anthologies at the time.)

One real surprise is this surprisingly nasty booklet by Walt Holcombe, which makes me wonder whether there was an editorial edict of some kind in place. That is, has everybody been told to try to get as many murders, mutilations and poop jokes in as possible? Or did it happen naturally?

Some people do their totally normal stuff, though, like Roy Tompkins.

The main attraction is, of course, Jim Woodring, who delivers two longish stories over the four issues. (Well, six to eight pages…)

Mack White does some stuff that’s, again, not typical for him. (But he did reprint this material in his one man anthology later.)

“P. Revess” does a couple of chaotic pages that (and this seems to be a theme here) are very different from what Peter Kupperman usually does. It’s funny, though.

These are the only two letters that appear on the letters pages, and I guess Bradley was offended by the first issue. So: Mission accomplished! Is my guess.

Just when I think I’ve got the aesthetic pinned down, we get Mark Campos with a non-gross story.

Terry LaBan shows us that the little engine can’t.

Oh, right… Rick Grimes…

But what is this! Yes, it’s a Joe Matt/Chester Brown/autobio parody, and this came as a shock — not because of the contents, but because reading this mavazine, I’d totally forgotten that it was published in the early 90s. It feels so much like an early 80s thing that this reminder that we’re in the 90s came as a surprise.

The story is credited to Sherwin Mudflapp, so whoever did this wanted to be anonymous, I guess? Is it really too controversial? It seems like a by-the-numbers autobio ribbing thing…

I tried googling who Sherwin Mudflapp could be, but found nothing. It doesn’t look like Sam Henderson, does it? Could it be Terry LaBan? Hm… the style somehow looks really familiar, but I can’t put my finger on it… Anybody?

Heh heh. That page ran as an actual ad in the Comics Journal, and it’s a very to-the-point parody of the Gary Groth/Todd McFarlane interview.

Mary Fleener! And this seems to be the only page by a woman in these 200 pages.

Another reminder we’re in the 90s — a Twin Peaks parody by Todd Camp/Michael H. Price.

The longest piece in the series is this thing by … er… Baxter? It can be a challenge to find out who did what in some issues…

And it’s a pretty puzzling piece.

OK, I don’t know what this is about either. (Brian Sendelbach.) But it’s a solid joke.

The final issue is published after Kitchen Sink “bought” Tundra, and seems to be more laid back, somehow? But it’s also more of a collection of odds and ends — perhaps things that had been submitted to Martin?

Steven Bissette was interviewed in The Comics Journal #185, page 54:

As I said, Taboo #4 was done with the help of Tundra,
and Taboo #5 was the first co-published issue. There was
a very strange conversation I had with Paul Jenkins, who
was working at that time at Tundra, mainly on the produc-
tion end ofthings. Paul’s a good guy, a talented writer, but
he was also a bit of a pit bull at Tundra. We always got on
fine. Paul was trying to get me to say that Taboo #5 was
better than Taboo #4. I said, “Well, it is better, Paul,
because I’m working hard to make it better, I think there is
better material in here, etc.” His thing, of course, as
someone working within the company, was, “Well, it’s
better because we did it.” [laughs] That to me embodied a
lot of what was going sour up there at Tundra. These was
a misplaced and disproportionate senseof”company pride,”
based on purely cosmetic matters: varnished covers, slick
printing, and the Tundra logo in place.
Publishers have their own sense of identity, they have
their own sense of being, they have their own sense of
importance. Again, it’s a sensible thing if you have a goal
and if you’re focused on what you’re doing, but it can be
a very destructi ve thing if you ‘re not focused and you don’t
have a goal and you don’t know what the fuck you’re
doing. Tundra’s identity was, essentially, a facade. God,
you look at the Tundra line these days, and it’s like, What
were these people doing? The product was cosmetically
professional: slick production, nicely printed. But the
content was an eclectic, haphazard potpourri.
THOMPSON: Some ofthis stufflooks like it appeared without
any interference from anyone, as if they had cartoonists
sending stuff straight to the printer and nobody ever even
read it.
BISSETTE: Well, that shortchanges the work Mark Martin
and the art department lavished on the books. They usually
weren’t working with cartoonists who were autonomous
enough to do that; and they got into trouble with creators
who were. I think that’s the beauty of the Xeric Founda-
tion. That’ s all it’ s about. You need money to print? Here’ s
money to print, if we look at your work and we think this
is something that is worthy of support. But if you’ ve got a
company set up that has its hands in there with production,
has its hands in there with all aspects Of working with the
creator, but is denying that there are any editors, you’ve
got this weird spineless, brainless creature [laughs]. It
meant that, from the selection process to final publication,
Tundra was a shapeless, spastic, amorphous monstrosity.
I don’t think itfairto denigrate the very hard work that was
done by the people up there in production. I always got
along great with Mark Martin and the art department. That
wasn’t a problem at Tundra. They were very conscien-
tious, the polish on a lot ofthe work that was published was
commendable. I think one of the few coherent movements
within Tundra were the books Mark Martin was
shepherding through: Roy Tompkins, Wayno, Jim
Woodring, and so on. There was an entity, but it was
invisible amid the Tundra chaos.
THOMPSON: I didn t think Hyena was that great a book, but
it had a point of view.
BISSETTE: It might have been a better book if Mark had
been able to focus on it more fully. There he was, every day
of the week at Tundra, juggling five hundred balls in the
air, and trying to make Hyena the best that he could.
THOMPSON: And asfar as I know, Mark had no control over
things like the Peter Pan book, the projects that went
insane and would eventually become legends to be passed
down from generation to generation.
BISSETTE: Yeah. See, no one had control. I had one ofthose
out-of-control projects that drove everyone nuts, Mark
included. There was going to be a two-volume Lovecraft
project coming out Of Tundra — Volume One was fin-
ished, but never published. Thank God Kevin only said
yes to Lovecraft; there was also going to be a Poe volume.
I was the one who went, “No, no, let’s get the Lovecraft
done first, let’s see what happens here.”

Oh, but I digress… Let’s see… any reviews for Hyena?

Roy Tompkins is interviewed The Comics Journal #203, page 84:

TOMPKINS: About 19901 decided I was ready for doing
my Own book and having it published. So I started
putting this book together that turned out to be Trailer
Trash#l. Originally I sent it out to a bunch ofdifferent
publishers. Fantagraphics wanted to do it, and I was
almost about to go with them when Wayno told me
about Tundra, and said to send it there. so I sent it to
them, and they wanted to do it, and they had pretty
deep pockets
GILBERT: That was a strange situation, wasn’t it?
TOMPKINS: Yeah. It was good offer, and at the time
Kim Thompson said, “Well, you might as well do this
because they can pay you a hell ofa lot better than we
can, and you probably won’t have this chance again.”
GILBERT: That was a hell ofa lot different money than
anything you ever seen, right?
TOMPKINS: Oh yeah. It was the gravy train. [laughter]
And actually, I don’t know ifthis is still true, but at the
time Wayno and I actually had the only books that
Tundra sold out of their print runs. That was my
Trailer Trash and Beer Nuts#l. Because so many of
the other books before that were so overblown and
underpromoted, and they printed way more than they
ever should have, that therewas no way they could ever
sell out of them. By the time I got in there, they were
starting to pull back a little, and were getting a little
conservative, and the money that I got was nothing
compared to what some of these people got, was what
I heard.
GILBERT: I can’t remember those books at that time. What
were they?
TOMPKINS: I can’t remember them, either. A lot of
blank books. They didn’t impress me then, and they
still don’t, today. They had very few interesting things.
GILBERT: That ‘ ‘Pretty •weird, can’t remember them.
TOMPKINS: They had our little underground group
GILBERT: Tbeyjust leftpu hanging there? Or was there a
phone call in the night or something?
TOMPKINS: It was really sudden. Mark called up one
day and said, There’s some shit going down here, and
this is what’s gonna happen. They re going to go ahead
and print what they’ve contractually agreed to, but
thaes going to be it for everybody. Everybodfs out of
here.” Mark lost his job as art director. The last two
issues of Trailer Trash were actually printed under
Kitchen Sink after they took over, because they had
had to contractually, and I had already turned the
artwork in for them.
GILBERT: Did thatputyou Off” a little Ofcomics ?
TOMPKINS: Yes. It was kind of drag. It was depressing.
The market sucked anyway, so I decided to blow
things off for a while. Butl had a lotofpersonal things
going on then that kind of lead me in some other
directions. That kept me from doing comics for a
couple of years.

No, can’t find any reviews.

Mack White is interviewed in The Comics Journal #203, page 86:

GILBERT: [to White] Were you aware of all this Tundra
Did you get affected by that?
WHITE: Yeah, I was aware of it. I was doing things for
Hyena and talking to Mark and he would tell me,
“Well, things don’t look so good.”
GILBERT: You guys were oldfiends with Martinfrom the
self-publishing thing before, right?
TOMPKINS: Yeah, Mark was in Blotter. Thaes my
original contact with him.

Oh, here’s a mention of Hyena:

Continuing the tradition of no-holds-barred humor is Mark Martin’s anthology title, Hyena. The material in Hyena ranges from short newspaper-style comic strips like “The Fruitheads,” to all-out gross humor like “Pee-Dog” or “The Return of Sherwin Mudflapp.”

Hyena has never been reprinted.

This is the one hundred and fiftieth post in the Entire Kitchen Sink blog series.

Neekibo (1993) ,
Grisnoir (1993) by Dieter/Michel Plessix

I’ve got the Norwegian edition of Neekibo here instead of the Kitchen Sink one, but let’s look at it anyway.

First of all, the art style seems pretty bizarre to me. The protagonist has a head that looks exactly like Fantasio (of Spirou fame), but the bodies and environments are generally drawn very realistically. The long, thin necks contribute to the confusion — it’s just hard to see what they’re going for here.

And there’s also excerpts from something that looks like a diary, but it’s told in third person, from a storyteller who seems to have total knowledge about the protagonist’s inner life, and these excerpts are placed below a run on panels, usually, and it’s difficult to guess what sequence we’re supposed to read these in. After the first panel? After them all?

It makes for choppy reading.

I assume that these landed at Tundra/Kitchen Sink via being serialised in Heavy Metal first, but it seems like an odd thing for Heavy Metal to run. It’s a rather serious book about African people being exploited by European multinational, and the art style isn’t something that Heavy Metal would typically go for.

There’s even just a couple of sex scenes? So that’s a mystery.

The second (and final volume from Kitchen Sink; it continued for two more in France) straightens out the storytelling a bit. We’re still getting bits of letters being inserted, but at least these more understandable now.

We do get a bunch of flashbacks that trip up the pacing a bit, though.

The artwork is less cartoony, but the mix of these bizarre head shapes coupled with “realistic” rendering (see that third panel up there) just makes things even more befuddling.

And again, it’s a serious, ponderous book, and like the first one, it doesn’t really have a really happy ending.

These are pretty compelling books, even if they aren’t completely successful — especially the second book, which is genuinely distressing.

I can’t find many reviews of the books, but here’s one:

Plessix’s art is fantastic, and in the bucolic scenes of the young Julien in rural France we see the beginnings of the pastoral beauty Plessix would later create for his adaptation of Wind in the Willows. Plessix revels in the scenery, creating sumptuous and elegant backdrops for the cast, and again the colouring of Isabelle Rabarot elevates the art. The cast come to life despite a choice of bulbous or snub noses, and Plessix is especially good at conveying age.

This is the one hundred and forty-ninth post in the Entire Kitchen Sink blog series.

From Inside (1993) by John Bergin

This is a thick book — more than 200 pages, I guesstimate? — but more importantly, it’s printed on the most reflective paper stock imaginable, so I’m trying to get some snaps of these pages without everything getting lost in reflective sheen… move that lamp there… turn those lamps off… angle the camera and…

No, still some reflections. Oh well. Anyway, this seems like it’s going to be another take on the post-apocalyptic train-to-nowhere kind of thing, but more symbolic? I wonder whether the Snowpiercer people had read this, because there’s a lot of similarities. But then again, perhaps that just goes with the territory: If you’re doing something featuring a train in a wasteland, there’s certain tropes that comes natural.

This is way more a symbolic journey than a sci fi story, though — you have entire lakes of blood etc.

And… it was kinda by this point my left eyebrow was starting to become arched, because how many clichés is this book going to cover? I mean — mutilated baby dolls? Švankmajer much?

And, yes, it’s not meant to be realistic, but c’mon: The train running into an endless buffalo herd, and then creating an abattoir in some train carts? I guess he thought it would look cool or something? (And yes, there’s cannibalism later, because if course there is.)

It’s also just thoughtless with trivial storytelling points. Everything is told from the point of view of a pregnant women (we’re reading her journal), but the images are constantly depicting things she can’t see, like the mountain being lit up with flames. Do we have an omnipotent third person viewpoint or a tight first person one anyway? Again, what’s depicted seems to be dictated by what the author thought would look cool. Is my guess.

And, yes, there’s a childbirth happening at the same time as the train emerges from the tunnel.

I don’t even know what to say. Is there some book people can consult to ensure that they manage to include all clichés in their works?

Don’t worry — the dog (because of course there’s a dog) survives.

This really is the quintessential Tundra book: I’m guessing Eastman forked over a huge advance to Bergin to do this book? And it’s of dubious artistic merit, with aesthetics seeming to be sourced from pedestrian horror, but “classed up” by being all metaphorical and serious and stuff. That’s what so much of Tundra’s output seemed to be: Wads of cash being dropped on people more comfortable with genre, but then finally being given the chance to be “more creative”, and failing completely.

And apparently they had more doll photos left over, so we get a bunch more after the story ends.

The shocking thing is that they have the audacity to call 2K copies of this a “limited edition”.

Wow — Bergin did a 70 minute animated version of this. Apparently it didn’t get much distribution:

Only 271 votes.

Oh, the full movie is on Youtube.

Robert Sandiford writes in The Comics Journal #183, page 45:

John Bergin’s darkly expressionistic, post-
apocalyptic graphic novel, may as well read
“Welcome to hell”: “I am walking down a
tunnel,” says the narrator. “Flames roar at the
end. The air is sooty and hard to breathe. The
floor vibrates with a distant rumbling,”
probably that of a train. Then she comes
across two men, one fat, the other thin, burning
bodies as if for fuel: men, women, children. It
looks like a scene from the Holocaust. It is a
terrifying, haunting scene; one that echoes
throughout the book and is recapitulated at
the very end.
All this is “just a dream,” she realizes when
she wakes up. But the reality is more than that.
A holocaust has indeed occurred; it is the end Of
the world.

[…]

The title of this graphic novel is as much a
metaphor for humanity’s condition as for that
of the woman; whatever the survivors have left
is whatever each holds and brings forth “from
inside”: memories, compassion, a will to live.
And although the woman is watched over by a
mysteriously bandaged guardian angel (who
resembles The Un-
known Soldier or
The Invisible Man)
perhaps the greatest
Of these is the memo-
ries. Despite every-
thing she has already
begun
to
forget, memories
are what abide when
all else is lost, the
woman discovers.
Memories, here —
of the love ofa good
husband or of the
pleasure found in a
chi ldhood toy — are
about trying to re-
main human under
the most inhuman
conditions.

[…]

The scenes with the buffaloes highlight one
Of the graphic novel’s particular strengths:
Rarely does a book achieve the fine balance
between words and pictures this one does. Like
his minimalist writing, Bergin’s illustrations
are not unique. There are too many obvious and
unobvious influences at play — Impression-
ism, Eastern European art, Russian cinematog-
raphy, American photography, alternative mu-
ABOVE: From early on in From Inside ‘s story: rhe
sic, the work Ofthe Dutch Masters, and possibly
a little of Chris Van Allsburg, the author Of the
children ‘s Christmas classic, The Polar Express.
Bergin (with some assistance from his wife,
Carolyn) has endeavored to make each painted
page, each panel, a work of art, yet From Inside
is more derivative than distinctive.
Bergin’s script
and artwork, how-
ever, work together
like a well-oiled,
smooth-running
machine. This is
largely due to his
commitment to his
bleak theme, his
care for his melan-
choly protagonist,
and his skilled shap-
ing of a nuclear-
scarred society. Af-
ter the buffaloes
have been cleared,
the woman is as-
signed to one of the
train cars that has
been converted into
a slaughterhouse.
She sings “Row
Your Boat” to pass
the time while she
cleans up one night
Only to pause at the
word “gently” as
she peers up at the
row upon row of
bloody meat hooks.

[…]

From Inside is a dark ride. Bergin has
produced a most unusual book in that it is not
relentlessly grim, but ultimately grim. By the
time the woman comes to accept her baby might
be “the miracle of a second chance,” the train
has come to the end of the tracks — at the edge
of a cliff. The birth offers hope, renewed love,
happiness — for all of humanity. But these
can’t last; at least, not in so devastated a world.
The spirit of her dead husband — her guardian
angle — can’t even protect her. The Book of
Revelation has a passage on it, and From Inside
echoes it: On the day of judgment, the living
shall envy the dead.

I guess:

John Bergin is (or was) friends with The Crow creator James O’Barr, and it shows. Though lacking the adolescent revenge fantasy of O’Barr’s chief work (he has chosen instead a pre-natal, post-apocalyptic nightmare), Bergin’s still feels a bit like a comic adaptation of a very long industrial-music video. And that’s not bad.

This is the one hundred and forty-eighth post in the Entire Kitchen Sink blog series.