Welcome to Comic Book Inflation everyone! Where Organic Non-GMO Non-Big 2-Garbage is gonna cost you an arm and a left nut. You want those cheap half dozen comic eggs that make you feel yucky after 6 issues then you'll pay your plebian 4 bux a book. But if you want grass fed stories made by comic farms that don't pump their creators full of anti-buy-otics then you're gonna haveta fork over at least 8 buckaroos or more. Enter DSTLRY and it looks like they’re putting their comics on the shelf at Erewhon which is the fancy over-the-top gourmet luxury grocery store here in LA where you can’t leave the store without dropping at least $20 or more and acknowledging that your chakras are out of wack..
I think we’ve slowly been nudged by the comic book industry into the land of ‘Plus Books’ even though they’re not telling us directly that this is what’s been going on. I mean, look at the landscape of comic books these days. For the most part, buying four dollar books is like eating a box of cereal called ‘Frosted Crunchy Stuff’ which is the fake yet cheaper version of Frosted Flakes. I don’t want to lump Image into this conversation because they’re still pumping out consistent greatness from their factory but they too have ventured into the land of pricy books.
Here’s the deal, if you want ad free, top shelf creators dropping deeply engaging books on high quality card stock or prestige format you’re going to pay almost double what a normal comic is going for these days. My response to this is, sure! It’s obvious you’re saving the goody good stuff for these formats so why should I continually bang my head on a wall by reading the cheap shit, it’s literally not good for my health just like it’s unhealthy to buy cheap chemically laden garbage groceries at the normal people grocery store where everyone is just contributing to their inevitable cancer diagnosis. Sure there’s good, maybe great cheap comics out there (looking at you Conan by Titan) but you’re going to have to comb through the solicits with a fine tooth comb to find them.
DSTLRY is a new imprint with the best creators in the biz that is promising the best monetary deal for those said creators so they can deliver us the best comic book content in the universe. Fine by me. They recently dropped an anthology book to celebrate their new imprint which included half baked stories from the great comic booky minds who had signed on to be a part of this imprint. The anthology was pretty much a wild mess save for one or two really good micro-stories. People were gushing about it, the ads on my socials were going bonkers about how it was going to break new ground and deliver ‘Oh my effin’ God never seen before’ content. It would be content that would get me to either spontaneously combust or content that would inspire me to wrap the book around my dick and walk outside naked with it. Yet if you want to get that Cock Sleeve content you’re going to have to pay $9 a book. That’s the deal. DSTLRY has officially called out the cheap books as just that, cheap. What started as a Black Label revolution last year from DC has now been taken up by these folks.
Jock, you’re first up to bat homie. I love me some Jock. His Bats Black Label drop from last year, ‘One Dark Knight’, was without question one of the best bat books of the year. The dude just puts out quality time after time after time. You could not have picked a better lead off hitter to start your line of comics; my man is like Rickey Henderson. The story is simple enough although I am completely exhausted over having to read another dystopian world book again. Seriously people, can we write a non-dystopian world book? Like, a world where everything actually turns out great and it’s a story of the putz who didn’t turn out great, something, anything other than a dreary techno world where the regular people crawl on their hands and knees in rags and crusted snot to scrounge for food and their dignity. In this world we have a kid (who I thought was a boy until way late in the story where it clearly is a girl) who is stealing food from space ships in the fancy elitist part of the city to bring back to her Hunger Game slovenly ghetto shit hole of a neighborhood.
Obviously this hits close to home because Los Angeles is slowly turning into the slovenly ghetto shit hole that Jock says is centuries ahead of us. Soon, perhaps by December, children of the next generation will be scurrying out from the shanty towns of Downtown LA with schemes in their minds to rob the Great Erewhon of their $43 Raw Goat Cheese and $150 sashimi sampler. These ruddy faced pigpen rugrats will have the proper tools to break the case that holds the $850 an ounce Manuka Honey so they can victoriously return back to their pisspot dwellings while sipping on market price reishi tonics.
For
this story, the rugrats are joined by some older counter revolutionary scruff
bags to steal the food off of a ship. The ship takes off before they can leave
and what was supposed to be a basic food run turns into a sabotage mission that
our lead rugrat gets wrapped up into. Jock really takes advantage of the
prestige format to show off his penchant for making gorgeous splash pages. The
enormity of the ship is really conveyed by the art; it’s a beautiful issue. That said, it's not a groundbreaking story by any stretch of the imagination despite the marketing telling you otherwise but there's enough substantive plot to bring you back; she's got model looks and actually reads books.
Look, here’s the thing, I would’ve bought this comic no matter what. I didn’t need all the bells and whistles by DSTLRY to tell me to do so. This could’ve been released by any publisher under the cover of night, anonymously tucked away on a solicit and I would’ve found it and purchased it. I didn’t need the countdown on the website. I didn’t need the yawn fest of an anthology to hype me up for it. I didn’t need the onslaught of targeted social media ads telling me of this ‘Cosmic Event’. I certainly don’t need your $100 variant covers and $300 plastic mascot. I don’t need your limited runs or digital cut offs. I could care fucking less of your alcoholic inspired imprint name. Dude, just put out good shit, period. All this hoopla from DSTLRY is completely unnecessary if you ask me. They’ve got the best in the business. You don’t need anything else. If you were hyping up a bunch of unknowns that would be one thing. Like, if you just grabbed a bunch of amateurs from an open mic and said ‘Here’s the best comics in the world, you’ll laugh until you pee and shit youself’ then the marketing would be warranted. But if you put together a show with Dave Chapelle, Louis C.K. and Bill Burr, do ya think that people would pay to see it? Or would you have to call it a cosmic event and have an Asian artist make a $300 plastic stand-up comedy mascot for the show to sell tickets?
If they just called their imprint ‘Pricy Good Shit’ it would have been more honest. Maybe they should just save all of their marketing money for their creators which could in theory knock off a couple bucks from the cover price. Bottom line, this is a really really good comic and worth the price tag. This is what a comic book should be: engaging, compelling, deftly written and beautifully drawn. Unfortunately, we’re at a point in the comic book game where it’s become like buying organic produce. If you want a pesticide drenched pink lady picked from a tree that’s glowing from radiation, then by all means buy your $4 comic. But if you want an apple that actually tastes like an apple and not a gummy bear from a factory in Seoul, an apple that won’t make you infertile and bleat like a donkey every five minutes then you’re gonna haveta pay at least $8 for one.
Maybe this is the world that Jock is really predicting for us. A world where you’ll scuttle along the pavements avoiding the AI sensors to find the LCS that has actual comics written and drawn by actual humans. A world where the elite will board a spaceship and eat real meat, have real sex and read real comic books. A world where I'll be sitting in my VR rocking chair telling kids in my VR connected world of an astonishing time where I only paid $8 for a real comic book. They'll flood my senses with WTF emojis and call me a lunatic. They'll tell me that there's no such thing as real comic books anymore. They've all been destroyed except for one that floats in the same vacuum sealed container that Bob Iger's head floats in and that's guarded by heavy AI artillery. I'll ask who runs the facility and the security that guards this floating head and real comic book? They'll answer 'The DSTLRY Corp'.
Rating: 8.4
Verdict: Pull
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