Some time ago, I talked about Brandon Graham's KING CITY, a fat little comic put out by Tokyopop. And last night, Graham's latest project was waiting patiently for me in my mailbox. The first issue of Multiple Warheads, put out by Oni Press, who are also responsible for publishing Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim.I've been really enjoying Graham's work and picked up his collection of short comix, Escalator a little while ago.
(Cover art for Multiple Warheads by Brandon Graham)
"Tear drop adventure. Read 'em and weep. Russian werewolf epic.So opens the first issue: a vast, Buddha-like statue of Chairman Mao, pocked with frozen, crashed rockets and MAO AND LATER painted across the chest. Overlooking this is our heroine, Sexica. Yes, Sexica. Sexica, one of Brandon Graham's punker, big-lipped women, is climbing over grandiose communist statues to cross the wastelands and make it to the Dead City. She's smuggling bizarre organs. The Dead City: if King City were Graham's private New York, Dead City would be his Moscow, Sexica smuggling organs into the city from elsewhere, to sell them to strange alien creatures that combine Lovecraft's sense of design with plush toys. She's got a boyfriend in the city, Nikolai -- Nik's the source of the title. She smuggled a werewolf penis on one expedition and grafted it to him as a birthday present. Consequently, Nik turned into a werewolf.
Made with: bitter struggle, blind faith, licorice and sugar."
And that's the set-up, more or less, when we're introduced to the characters. The series is to be a road comic -- the kids are heading out in a living car Nik built out of spare parts, they're leaving the Dead City, and this is very much an opening issue. It's got Graham's usual high standard of rubbery, smooth-lined organic drawing, strange designs and firings of grafitti. His realities are always flexible, ill-defined enough to give him room to move without feeling lost in a tailspin. It's very casual world-building. It's very erotic in a sloppy, goofy manner -- sex is handled with an off-handed reverence, subtle, and blends into the rest of the story without standing out too much. Nikolai describes his dreams, his wolf-dreams. You can see the Herge influences, the Tintin undercurrent, the adventures woven into the Dead City's daily life. There's myth and horror and sex and love and cute things. Rocket ships fall out of the sky. I'm looking forward to the second issue, I walked away from this comic wanting to know where they're going to go, I want more of wolf-dreams.