Review: Can’t Get No
Comments Off | Posted: June 15th, 2006 | Filed under: Uncategorized
Rick Veitch is not an easy talent to pin down. His most popular mainstream work managed to keep the frank weirdness of Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing while bringing the narrative to a more human plane and when his heady synthesis of art and story hits its peaks – Brat Pack and The Maximortal, very few mainstream-friendly creators (seriously, Aquaman?!?) can touch him.
His latest work, the sprawling Can’t Get No, shows a casual mastery of his craft and manages to enthrall without ever making it look like he’s working for your attention. When pill-popping, ultra-successful Chad Roe’s company, makers of the Eter-No-Mark Ultra-Permanent marker is sued for $6,000,000,000 by the City of New York and property owners who find themselves unable to remove graffiti, he begins a surreal journey that starts at a bar and ends in the desert, surrounded by a circus. Along the way, he receives a full-body tattoo courtesy of two women and the product that brought his downfall, watches the Twin Towers collapse and meets an astronaut in the middle of a deserted amusement park dedicated to the Bicentennial among other beautifully realized moments that mash up cultural icons of the last half-century.
The entire thing smacks of Douglas Coupland after a particularly good ether binge – business, commerce, drugs, and sex with a woman who looks like Jackie Onassis, but it doesn’t have that smug-with-itself feeling that sometimes is a bit cloying. Veitch manages to be very experimental – dropping dialogue entirely for the sake of a rambling monologue that provides both counterpoint and contextual narration to the story – while clearly delineating the fall (of sorts) and redemption of Roe visually.
Special attention should be paid to Veitch’s use of 9/11 – that day has cast a heavy shadow on pop culture this year. The stark United 93 and the upcoming World Trade Center address the actions of people involved directly in the event, but the author uses it both as a metaphor throughout the story as well as a catalyst for Roe’s change at the beginning of the second act.
It’s nice to see Vertigo put out something like this – Can’t Get No is the sort of graphic novel that revels in the medium and wouldn’t translate to another form, so it doesn’t feel like a TV series or movie pitch in the same way so much of their output (like Y: The Last Man) often does. Well worth your time and a perfect bridge to Veitch’s more esoteric work.
