As a White Male In The SoutheastTM, I was never really exposed to graffiti growing up. The closest that you generally saw was "MAYBELLE I WANNA MARRY YOU I LOVE YOU SO MUCH LOVE CLETUS" on the occasional overpass in white paint. It was during my thankfully brief period as a "raver"1 that I came across artists that worked with graffiti as their primary medium doing flyers, posters, and mix tape liners for some of the DJs. Some would even come up with pieces during DJ sets in some sort of performance art jam, which was as much a reason to spend time in the breaks room of a party as anything else. It was obvious that some people that work in graffiti take their inspirations from comics and pop culture - Luke Cage was in one piece I especially loved (which I'm sure has been buffed) in Atlanta's Little 5 Points, and the seminal documentary Style Wars features Beetle Bailey and Spider-Man in several pieces from the early 80s.
It wasn't until I saw Jim Mahfood's work in the Clerks series that I saw the artform coming back to the medium that inspired so much work. He'd done some minicomics that started off with a let's call it "homage" to Jamie Hewlett style before gradually finding his own style and managing to somehow hoodwink Marvel into letting him do the Generation X Underground Special. I love Mahfood's work - his Grrl Scouts comics and Smoke Dog tap into hip hop culture for inspiration without ever seeming tied to "the scene" hopelessly. Ed Cunard, my strange spiritual brother, told me I should check out Escalator by Brandon Graham, as he knows of my continuing interest in graffiti and love of Mahfood's work.
Graham's world is unique - anime, Blade Runner, old Kung Fu flicks, and street art are mashed up to create a world that's as much New York in 1978 as it is Transmetropolitan. In Escalator, the reader gets the chance to explore many corners of it, too, swerving between tiny science fiction epics and streetwise meditations on art. The first story, "Breakfast," was originally conceived as a pitch for a series that never got picked up - zombies and long distance romance is what we get in this opening salvo and Graham's description of the rest of the proposed six-issue mini sounds like it would singlehandedly fuck up more people than the brown acid at Woodstock.
Speaking of supremely fucked up stories, the story about alien porn is a 22-page Warren Ellis script reduced to seven while never losing any detail. Joining it in the science-fiction group are "Devil and the Deep," a rescue story in set in an arctic cave; "Eat Here, Get Gas," about interstellar truckers; and "Ieonium Blue," a long-ish tale set on an atmospheric cruise ship and featuring a wandering musician which reminded me, oddly enough, of a Human Target story. The final story in the collection is a sequel to a porn comic Graham made for NBM, but isn't particularly salacious - it barely mentions werewolf penises.
These are all quite fun and enthralling, but where Graham really excels in telling more human stories. "Gone Fishing" explores what graffiti means to one artist while letting Graham enjoy showing off that he can tag with the best of them; "Sugarless Candy" is based loosely on a real experience Graham had with his girlfriend staying in a luxury hotel room in New York City; "I Owe You" is autobiographical tribute to his friends that helped him stay together on a lonely holiday that manages to riff off Dark Knight Returns quite hilariously and "Survive" reviews the horrors of being around Catholic schoolgirls. Trust me - I know where he's coming from as my first apartment in Boston was about 2 blocks from a Catholic high school. The deck was rarely unoccupied on weekday afternoons in the spring and summer, I'll tell you what.
For $13, you get in on the ground floor of a real talent, somebody I'm looking forward to seeing more work from. I'd love to see him tackle a longform story, as the shorter pieces in Escalator have quite a lot of impact on their own but many feel like they're opening chapters or bits from longer works. As a reader, you get glimpses and snapshots into a universe that could use more exploration - I hope Graham gets the chance, as "Breakfast" was intended to create, to do just that.
1I loved the music, met a lot of great people, hated the PLUR and ecstacy bullshit. Hippies didn't change the world and neither would candy ravers.
It wasn't until I saw Jim Mahfood's work in the Clerks series that I saw the artform coming back to the medium that inspired so much work. He'd done some minicomics that started off with a let's call it "homage" to Jamie Hewlett style before gradually finding his own style and managing to somehow hoodwink Marvel into letting him do the Generation X Underground Special. I love Mahfood's work - his Grrl Scouts comics and Smoke Dog tap into hip hop culture for inspiration without ever seeming tied to "the scene" hopelessly. Ed Cunard, my strange spiritual brother, told me I should check out Escalator by Brandon Graham, as he knows of my continuing interest in graffiti and love of Mahfood's work.Graham's world is unique - anime, Blade Runner, old Kung Fu flicks, and street art are mashed up to create a world that's as much New York in 1978 as it is Transmetropolitan. In Escalator, the reader gets the chance to explore many corners of it, too, swerving between tiny science fiction epics and streetwise meditations on art. The first story, "Breakfast," was originally conceived as a pitch for a series that never got picked up - zombies and long distance romance is what we get in this opening salvo and Graham's description of the rest of the proposed six-issue mini sounds like it would singlehandedly fuck up more people than the brown acid at Woodstock.
Speaking of supremely fucked up stories, the story about alien porn is a 22-page Warren Ellis script reduced to seven while never losing any detail. Joining it in the science-fiction group are "Devil and the Deep," a rescue story in set in an arctic cave; "Eat Here, Get Gas," about interstellar truckers; and "Ieonium Blue," a long-ish tale set on an atmospheric cruise ship and featuring a wandering musician which reminded me, oddly enough, of a Human Target story. The final story in the collection is a sequel to a porn comic Graham made for NBM, but isn't particularly salacious - it barely mentions werewolf penises.
These are all quite fun and enthralling, but where Graham really excels in telling more human stories. "Gone Fishing" explores what graffiti means to one artist while letting Graham enjoy showing off that he can tag with the best of them; "Sugarless Candy" is based loosely on a real experience Graham had with his girlfriend staying in a luxury hotel room in New York City; "I Owe You" is autobiographical tribute to his friends that helped him stay together on a lonely holiday that manages to riff off Dark Knight Returns quite hilariously and "Survive" reviews the horrors of being around Catholic schoolgirls. Trust me - I know where he's coming from as my first apartment in Boston was about 2 blocks from a Catholic high school. The deck was rarely unoccupied on weekday afternoons in the spring and summer, I'll tell you what.
For $13, you get in on the ground floor of a real talent, somebody I'm looking forward to seeing more work from. I'd love to see him tackle a longform story, as the shorter pieces in Escalator have quite a lot of impact on their own but many feel like they're opening chapters or bits from longer works. As a reader, you get glimpses and snapshots into a universe that could use more exploration - I hope Graham gets the chance, as "Breakfast" was intended to create, to do just that.
1I loved the music, met a lot of great people, hated the PLUR and ecstacy bullshit. Hippies didn't change the world and neither would candy ravers.
