can't get no

a lot of what makes life exciting is seeing the old reinvented or reformed in such a way as to make it both comfortably familiar and then also tweaked or tickled enough to make it unfamiliar. and so “new” enough to excite interest in itself. people can do this sometimes in ways more powerful than cosmetic surgery.
the comic books that i read as a child and traded with my friends drifted off the radar of most kids and certainly most adults but have made a miraculous return that must have publishers and artists rubbing their hands as the graphic novel genre appears to be taking off. i have bought a few graphic novels - mostly remakes of classic novels like crane’s “red badge of courage”. nothing special really but engaging in their visualization of an otherwise occasionally tedious text.
more recently i have been coming across artists releasing their own graphic novels that function side-by-side as powerful graphic and textual statements while also digging deep beneath the skin of popular culture and baring societies' soul. i recently purchased rick veitch’s novel “can’t get no”.
open “can’t get no” to the first three pages and here’s what you’ll read:

“even as it opens . . .
the eye might recoil
fearing the temptation of all that low-hanging fruit ...
on the Tree of Knowledge.
Better to stare straight ahead...
and affect the chiselled grimace
that goes with one’s prescribed position...
on the totem pole of life.”

not your standard comic book fare. but this is not standard comic book fare. prior to the release of “can’t get no”, veitch was known for his clever but much closer to the mainstream work in comic books and graphic books featuring superheros. i wouldn’t have bothered with them myself. the days i read comic books are behind me now - or so i thought. i came across this book on the basis of a recommendation by author neil gaiman who is one of those amazing people who cranks out quality material without exception and so i took his high praise for this work by veitch as an unquestionable recommendation and got myself a copy. here’s what i saw when i opened the book.

page one

page two

page three

i was hooked right off the bat and read it in two sittings . . . . occasionally returning to view images more carefully because i have found with graphic novels that i tend to to be text oriented and don’t slow down enough to fill the words with the graphic associations that the author / illustrator intended. it’s a learned skill.

“can't get no”, is a stream-of-consciousness 'road' narrative about a failed businessman finding himself after the world trade center attacks. the story is told without the usual word balloons using free verse poetry that is jampacked with seemingly random and yet carefully interwoven thoughts and observations.

loosely retold the story goes as follows: corporate exec chad roe had the "perfect" turn-of-the-millenium urban life. however, the trophy wife, the prestigious job and the pills threaten to overwhelm him, and things go from bad to ugly when his company (a permanent marker manufacturer) faces a crippling lawsuit charging it with shouldering the fiscal responsibility for cleaning up all the tags its products have been responsible for throughout the city of new york.

reeling from the financial collapse of his business, chad descends into a night of wild, craziness, only to wake up a "marked" man - literally - his body covered in a permanent tattoo. the ironic twist of the tattooing is that it is his failed company’s product that is used in the tattooing process! then, instead of picking up the pieces of the wreck of his life, he hits the road.

cover image and excerpt at: http://www.dccomics.com/media/excerpts/5267_x.pdf

can’t get no.