Age & Sex In Unknown Soldier #5 & Black Hole

In the last issue of Dysart and Ponticello's Unknown Soldier (issue 6 comes out next week), Moses reunites with his wife Sera. It's one of those inevitables that a lot of other comics would hold-off as long as possible. Dysart's confidence in characterization and interest human drama though, trumps forever-teasing comic narrative and we're treated to an incredibly moving scene of husband and wife back together. Of course, it's under strained and rather ugly circumstances.

We've been right there with Moses since he damaged his face and went stalking the LRA, so we've grown used to his hastily bandaged face, but it's entirely new to Sera. Employing the kind of emotional realism and wise shifting of feelings within a few pages--and often on the same page--Dysart has Sera scared, horrified, and then moved by Moses. They embrace and then she removes the bandages out of medical concern ("These desperately need to be changed") and a loving wife's need to see her husband. Their interaction bounces between the pragmatic ("We're going to have to shoot you up with penicillin...") and the romantic ("My love"), followed by a lustful kiss; Sera and Moses both forgetting his wrecked face.



After their kiss, the narrative quickly shifts to a few years ago, when in the jungle, Moses proposes to Sera ("Will you grow old with me?") and then back to the present, where I could be wrong but they might be having sex, and then, the couple on a bed, Sera nursing his wound-of-a-face. As usual, Dysart's daring narrative choices and well-wrought realism magnify the feelings, and Ponticelli's art, a mix of precise line scratched-about ugly detail, makes the whole thing oddly cinematic in the flashy, over-the-top sense, and documentary-like real too (you can get lost staring into Moses' wounds).

And at the risk of drawing more ire from the #1 comics creep, who doesn't really want to accept that weird pulpy, eroticism's one of of comics' selling points, this scene's both oddly romantic and realistically lust-filled. This mix is one that comics do well and in a way it seems, only comics can do because literature does not have the visual element and films are rooted in real-life human beings and so, there's an odd distancing effect.

Maybe someone like Bertolucci's gotten there a few times, but that's about it. I'm struggling with something as I write it here on purpose, as sex and sexuality's got this weird, indescribable balance of idealized in-your-head-ness to it and very real, messy, fumbling-ness too. This is something I've struggled with before, when I talked about Pirates of Coney Island and a Paul Pope illustration and I think Dysart and Ponticelli's scene adds a deeper, more mature context to this. Less a scene of adolescent lust that can't be contained, this is two people, still in-love, still in-lust, after years of marriage and they cannot resist one another despite the context--be it Moses' meat-grinder face or the LRA's pervasive threat.


The scene above from Charles Burns' Black Hole immediately came to mind as a kind of partner sequence to Unknown. Partner in that both are about a kind of overwhelming sexuality, but in another way, Rob and Chris of Black Hole representing the same kind of lust but from a younger, less mature point of view. This scene's the highlight of Black Hole and encompasses Burns' themes and ideas brilliantly. It's comic books doing what comic books do best, taking something very real and relate-able and blowing-it-up into some oddball, sci-fi, horror, out-there conceit that actually makes the scene feel even more real and relate-able.

In just this one page, there's so many of the concerns, fears, joys, and dangers of adolescent sex. The infected functioning as so many things, from H.I.V and less STDS, to the simple change that happens when you're no longer a virgin, to a kind of weird fear/obsession one has with the opposite sex that's inconceivable until you're you know, doing it. Dicks and vaginas are weird and bizarre and like, not beautiful or anything, but there's this odd animal-brain reaction we have to them, that's certainly enhanced as a hormones-rushing adolescent. The fact that Rob has the mouth on his neck and in effect, has a kind of vagina which Chris kisses, also hints towards a very-real, sexual ambiguity, flexibility, and confusion that teens, "straight" or "gay" wrestle around with. Like that one Replacements joint "Sixteen Blue" goes: "...everything is sexually vague/Now you're wondering to yourself, if you might be gay...".

And so, Black Hole's scene is about the kind of youthful awkwardness and self-consciousness of sex, when you're like "Okay, this is weird, there's this weird sex organ in front of me" and Unknown's scene is about later in life, when you've grown at least kinda comfortable with this whole sex thing. What I love about the scene is that it addresses age and maturity indirectly, you're mainly viewing the characters as two lovers reunited, but behind it, is a kind of healthy desperation, a wise disinterest in what's "weird" that's trumped by the same lust Rob and Chris feel, but directed towards true, lasting, love and romance.

Powerful Panels: ABC Warriors

ABC Warriors: The Black Hole is one of those comics that sums up these Powerful Panels posts. Every issue has at least one or two that force you to pause and take a closer look at what’s going on. Every panel gives the feeling that it could stand on its own and still have some meaning. It’s the equivalent of reading a book with all exclamation points or listening to Ghostface rap, rapid-fire details, ALL THE TIME.
Simon Bisley illustrates the most exciting issues. His art is a strange combination of extremely detailed realism with a cartoony surrealism. In the above panel you can see every wire on the robot, Mongrol, and every spike on the boot of the guy he’s crushing, but the tear of the woman, Lara, is exaggerated. This gives the indication of two separate worlds: the real world and the one inside Mongrol’s head.

The writing has the same weird contrast as the art. It’s extremely detailed, giving you way more information than you need to know, but the plot and characters are like something someone wrote in middle school. The art is really what keeps you turning the page. It fills gives meaning to what is being described. We know that Lara is always in Mongrol’s thoughts but having her hair as the background of the panel gives the thought a visceral quality.
A technique that Bisley employs with great effectiveness is the use of shadow. He blacks out the entire background so that only the characters are visible. It’s especially effective because so many of the panels are jammed with detail that it immediately stands out. The battle freezes and we are forced to focus on the act of the panel. It wouldn't be nearly as significant if you were just reading the text. The two characters haven’t known each other for long enough for it to really mean anything to the reader, but the strangeness of this panel and its black background makes it tangible.

This page uses all of the techniques: the baby is cartoony, the robot is detailed, and the last panels background is black. The death of the babby has a particularly uneasy effect because it happens off-panel. We’ve already seen so much violence that it’s really kind of stunning when we don’t see this death. The issues are in the super-short 2000AD magazine format so everything is dense and rushed. When the comic slow things down and focuses on a moment or a specific action it’s super effective.