Rub the Blood - The Dark Ages of Mainstream Comics Ridiculed and Respected

Bloodwulf...fuckin' hell

Alongside my Yeah Dude Comics subscription, I received a fantastic reward. A copy of an earlier Pat Aulisio and Ian Harker's Kickstarter project Rub the Blood, a tribute tabloid art comic that explores the early 90's mainstream comic industry, including the rise of Image Comics, with it's over the top art, stupid stories and Rob Liefield.

The 90's comic book era has often been referred to as "The Dark Ages". It is a thing of wonder, fascination and terrifying piles of garbage. The mainstream comic book industry spearheaded by Marvel and DC began changing. The superhero deconstruction style began with "Watchmen", "Marvelman" and many more. Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns" ushered in a new age of dark anti-heroes. Gone were the days of  hopeful good guys; it was now a time to get bleak and dark. Superheroes were no longer intended solely for a young audience. This redirection is still going on to this day. Just look at how many dismemberments there were last month in DC comics and the sheer volume of senseless violence. The comic book market also changed during the 90's. Collectibility, major crossover events, and speculation brought on more buyers. Image Comics was founded and Diamond took control of the market. Man, copies of X-men sold in the millions! A lot of crazy stuff happened, and only some of which are looked back upon fondly. The market crashed and many of people lost their jobs, mostly in retail. I'd recommend you read the archives of Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin on his retailing sections. It's a gold mine of information.

I was too young to remember most of it as I only started reading comics in the mid 90's. I watched the X-men and Batman cartoons and those were the only comics I read for a while. I remember enjoying the craft. The whole variant cover thing was really nasty. I remember having my parents buy me 4 different copies of X-Men #1 so I could have all the cool covers and impress my friends. It wasn't even a good comic book. Just people standing in awkward poses with ridiculous amounts of narrative captions. It's exploitative to a point of being ridiculous. And they've been peddling the same shit for longer than I've been alive.

Child abuse

I went off track for a while. Rub the blood is an homage to this period. It is irreverential, both ridiculing and and admirative of this time period. In spite of all the garbage spewn out of the 90's, a few nuggets of good came out and most of them came from Image comics. It is more culturally relevant than ever before, yet it started in such a weird way, with dark overstylized rip-offs of DC and Marvel comics. Rub the blood is an anthology of short stories; some last a few pages, some are a simple illustration. What emanates from it is a sort of admiration for the silliness of 90's comics culture, such as Rob Liefeld and Youngblood. This is a tribute to a decade of comics. Nostalgia and appreciation from a generation of artists who grew up with this vile material. Those comics were the pieces of garbage they grew up with. There has to be something there to redeem it, even if it's to put a spotlight on how terrible it was. 

I found the story of Josh Bayer on Herb Trimpe Trimpe Loses to be particularly interesting. Herb Trimpe is an artist who worked for Marvel for over 2 decades and is mostly associated with the creation of Wolverine in the pages of The Incredible Hulk. He stopped working for Marvel in the early nineties. Bayer assumes it's because the market was changing and consumers were only interested in the X-treme comics. Trimpe is driven away from his career by the ludicrous creations of 90`s comic book artists. 

Benjamin Marra's Prophet and Box Brown fan letter page are also quite fabulous.

All the public ever wanted, Deadpool decapitating shit

I'd recommend Rub the Blood to anyone with an interest in this decade of comics. If you have fond memories of Spawn, Nighthawk or Bloodwulf, then you may actually hate this book. Nonetheless, its satire is as sharp as Cable's sword. It should interest anyone who wishes to know what good actually came out of the 90's. It is a generation of alt-comix makers expressing their frustration and disappointment in the comic books of their childhood by recreating them in the only way they know how: awesomely and expertly.

Yeah Dude Comics 2014 Subscription: #1, Pat Aulisio's Stoner Alein: One-note, One-joke

It is what it is

A few months ago, I helped to kickstart Pat Aulisio's project on Kickstarter to fund the 2014 project for his "Yeah Dude Comics(YDC)" anthology. I took a six issue subscription and I intend to review the books as they come in until the end of the subscription. Each book is created by a different artist. I have also received 3 other comics from them that are not part of the subscription, but from previous YDC efforts that I will also review once I have some time on my hands. Let's take a look at the first issue by Pat Aulisio.

Aulisio's Stoner Alien is as blunt as its title suggests. It's about an alien (the little green men kind) and his buddy, a teenage mutant ninja turtle. They basically just hang out together smoking and getting stoned. They both have a mundane existence working in a grocery store. The story here is irrelevant; it is coherent in the sense that we see one day in the life of those `dudes`, but it isn`t the point of the issue. It is a cipher for a comedy and a way to make stoner jokes. One of the jokes happens to strike a cord, but the other just fall flat. I guess comedy is subjective and a matter of opinion in the end... Maybe some of you will find it hilarious, though I doubt it. The book itself is short and spends 4 of it's 16 pages on the actual consumption of drugs and not exploring the more comedic aspects of it, as one would expect.

I did some research and discovered that this happened to be an old internet meme that you can find on tumblr. Poorly drawn and coloured, its filled with jokes; some great, some not so much. The big punchline being mostly"Wait...What?", representing a marijuana-filled brain unable to comprehend complex events. I think it's a bit lacklustre in effort and just doesn't translate well here. I don't know, maybe the concept had some kind of deeper meaning for Pat Aulisio. He certainly seems to excel in stoner comedy. His entire concept behind Bowman and it's sequels (Bowman 2016 and Bowman Earthbound) are stoner comedies. Bowman, however, is excellent. Aulisio channels Stanley Kubrick by way of Jack Kirby and throws in a smattering of Cheech and Chong. There are clever page designs, introspection and character development. It's amazing. In comparison, Stoner Alien has one joke about gravity being light. This series is nowhere near as interesting as Aulisio`s other comics and it's a damn shame. 

The Hijman body? Wait...What?

I'll also nitpick on this one panel where no one bothered to correct the lettering. It just seems unfinished. A work in progress. I expected more from Pat Aulisio. Meant to whet my appetite for more, this first glimpse of YDC just leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. I am still looking forward to the other books of the subscription. In the meantime, I'll go read Xeno Kaiju and remenisce on how good Bowman was.