Looking at the thumbnails of the weekly comic book solicitations is like being a crotchety old Casting Director looking at headshot submissions from fresh off the boat Non-Union Actors. You’ve got a scowl on your face, an ashtray full of menthol cigarette butts and a desk full of unopened mail. You’ll see yourself saying to yourself:
‘What the hell is this crap? Who are these fucking people! No. No. No. Definitely no. Yuck. Oh please. Spare me. What in God’s name is that? More no’s. Jesus frikkin Christmas!’
As you scroll down squinting at each comic book cover in the solicits the taste in your mouth grows staler and staler and the pit in your stomach grows emptier and emptier. That was my experience a while ago until I saw the cover for ‘Dead Romans’. Historical shit, huh? Hmm. I’ll take a looky loo. I couldn’t make heads or tails of the plot, go figure, but the art? Wow. Who’s this Nick Marinkovich dude? His work is beautiful. Stylized. Detailed. Evocative. Flat out gorgeous paneling. Yeah, I can let this wash over me in my early morning coffee read, I’ll just pretend I can’t read English and forgo the story. Actually, I tried that. I ignored the text and just watched this book unfold before my eyes and it was quite an experience.
Ya know one of the greatest Acting Teachers I ever had said you should be able to turn off the volume of anything you’re watching and still be able to completely understand what the story is, that goes for acting scenes as well. I would say that also goes for comic books. A great comic doesn’t need exposition or thought bubbles, if the artist is truly keyed in and in synch with the writer the art will give you everything you need. I feel without question this is what happened with Dead Romans. Marinkovich’s lines tells you everything you need to know.
So I went back and actually read Fred Kennedy’s story the second time around. Fred Kennedy, who’s Fred Kennedy, sounds like a politician who gets caught with a trans hooker in Hollywood on a late Wednesday night:
“Councilman Fred Kennedy had no comment on last night’s arrest with famed streetwalker Binky McStinky. When pressed his press agent insisted that when driving home from a full day’s work of making his city better Fred likes giving rides to 24 hour supermarkets to ‘those who seem a bit down on their luck’. This of course doesn’t explain why his pants were down behind a donut stand on Wilcox and Santa Monica blvd.”
When you Shmoogle Fred Kennedy the first result that comes up is a Stuntman from Nebraska that worked a bunch of Hollywood films back in the 40s. The next result is firm that helps you with DUIs. So clearly Freddie Kay isn’t a huge name yet which is fine by me, let’s see what you got homie, I’m gonna read your tome:
Hmm, interesting, okay, not bad, ah, well, really, gotcha, wait [flips pages back and forth] huh? Ohhh. Wait [flips pages back and forth] hmph, alright. Got it.
So I’ll try and break this story down in modern LA terms. The story may be a bit confusing to some of you out there. Yes, this story takes place in Germany and involves a guarded Roman caravan with a Queen aboard that was sent by a high ranking Roman dude. But once you transfer it into a wackadoodle LA story, which for all I know it could be, then it all makes sense.
So instead of this being called ‘Dead Romans’ we’ll call it ‘Dead Homeless’ to make it more applicable to La La Land.
DEAD HOMELESS
So you got this douchebag Lawyer type with a tiny pee pee who lives in Agoura Hills. He makes beaucoup bucks but not enough to afford a spot in the hallowed Calabasas gated community. All he cares about are the dillies. He’s got a hot Armenian babe as a girlfriend. She was an actress who booked a commercial here and there but basically was staring down a life as a Restaurant Hostess until she hooked up with Douchy Lawyer Dude after he hit on her at her job. She banged him silly one night and now she shops at Rodeo on the regular thanks to his credit cards. She’s bored and unsatisfied but she likes the cushy home, the whip and the bottomless Mimosas with her pseudo friends on the weekends.
Since a girl like this ain’t gonna just sit around and not get her booty bell rung properly she ends up seducing one of the interns at Douchy Lawyer Dude’s office who falls in love with her and bangs her on the regular in his crappy NoHo apartment or in Uber XLs, she loves getting banged in Luxury SUVs for some reason. He obviously wants her to leave Douchy but he ain’t got the ends to satisfy her.
Douchy Lawyer Dude is involved in some shady shit. He runs drugs and other illegal paraphernalia from his office and has connects to multiple gang members in LA. His girl knows about it and doesn’t really care, she gets a thrill from it in a way and sometimes does a shady errand for him every now and then. Douchy gets a big multi million dollar shipment dropped in his lap from a gang connect and has to deliver it to a contact in Venice on the low. So he gets his girl to put the drugs in a suitcase and tells her to call an Uber Black to take her to the airport but to add a stop in Venice.
Homegirl tells her Intern Lover about the shipment and he gets an idea. He calls his homie who knows a rival gang in the area about the shipment and to hijack the delivery. His thinking is, he’ll have the gang members steal the shipment and grab his girl. He’ll take the money he gets from hooking up the gang with the drugs, about 250k, to fund his crypto venture which he’s more than confident will turn him into a billionaire. The Gang already is in deep shit with the local cops over a bunch of robberies and accidental shootings of randos on Abbot Kinney. So they decide to pay a bunch of raggedy homeless losers to ambush the Uber and snatch the babe and the blow. They hook the homeless up with a bunch of glocks and tell them they’ll get paid once they deliver both to them after the ambush.
Problem is, Douchy ain’t an idiot and had someone tailing his girl in the Uber. Once the Uber gets ambushed on Venice Blvd the dude tailing Douchy’s girl unloads on the homeless. The Uber goes up in flames and multiple homeless get drilled and killed. Several manage to grab the babe and the blow and take off into the sewer system. The word goes around the entire homeless pop in Venice (which probably outnumbers all the gangs in LA) that they were set up. The homeless rally around each other and put ransom demands on both the girl and the blow as they hide out in the sewers.
Now the Intern is fucked. He’s lost his girl and the blow. He knows Douchy is gonna come after both hard so he drives over to Venice to talk to the gang members about rescuing his girl and the drugs.
So there ya go! It’s not bad huh? Makes you really wanna read Issue 2 now doesn’t it. You’re welcome Fred Kennedy. Just stay away from the Trannies and keep your nose clean and I think you’ll be looking at a real successful series just as long as you get out of the way of Nicky M and his bad ass art.
Dead Homeless. Coming to a cheezy YouTube channel near one of your browser tabs soon!
Rating: 7.8
Verdict: Pull
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