So. Loveless? Rambling, go nowhere, genre-less, messy, unfathomable nonsense. Or. Experimental, decade spanning, genre busting, intelegent work of near genius?
If Loveless had been the former it would have Secretly Invaded the top of the sales charts. If it was the latter it would have died like a gut shot rabid dog. It died.
There's still plenty of reasons to seek it out in TPB though. Let's try some out... Loveless was a series with many facets although the bleak and nasty ones tended to crowd out the more subtle shadings. It contained for example a d!ck joke supreme. In one issue Wes Cutter wanders through the town elliptically conversing with the townsfolk and same old same old, except...Cutter "forgets" to button up after making water and so is going about this chin wagging tour with his tallywhacker hanging out. It is very, very funny, and all the more so for the low key approach.
Nor did the series shy away from sentiment. Many of the issues were stand alones which fleshed out the main players to give them depth and motivation not readily apparent in the main narrative. The high point of these was issue #13 with the Colonel and his Memory Hole, a tale in which a man struggles to come to terms with the physical and mental costs of his search for Glory, together with a reminder to all of us that we might be the star in our own life but we're mostly just walk-ons in other peoples (despite what we might fervently hope). Did it win an Eisner? It should have.
As for the art, well, it's all good. Marcelo Frusin's soft and pulpy art which appropriately gave everything the air of something rotting from within seemed perfect, but this quickly gave way to Werther Dell'Edera's thin and scratchy linework. Initially jarring Dell'Edera's work soon revealed itself as equally apt by making you intermittently check your fingers for splinters so brittle did everything appear. And in between times there was the purely astounding work of Danijel Zezelj in which the humans appeared as though formed from the natural textures of stone, leaf and water around them. Not a piker in the bunch.
By way of the wordsmithery Brian Azzarello didn't lack for ambition but he surely did want for clarity. Perhaps constantly pushing narrative conventions into new shapes on the fly was more messy and confounding than totally satisfying. This book required, nay, demanded effort on the part of the reader. I'd be inclined to say that this organic riff approach was the main stumbling block for most readers. It's perfectly reasonable to expect the author to have his techniques ship shape before setting them in motion. Equally though is such experimentation really so terrible in a medium where we have the daring re-invention of the thought balloon met with chin stroking and back slapping? I'll answer that for you: no.
That's the thing right there though, Loveless wasn't written like a comic book series, it was written like a novel, dense, multi-layered, richly characterised and with a complex structure. This novelistic approach couldn't help but harm it when taken in monthly doses. In TPB however it is both absorbing and rewarding. The pamphlet based nature of the market hobbled Loveless from the off. Loveless needs to be read in TPB like Once Upon A Time In The West needs to be seen at the pictures.
its a shame to think a series like this is cancelled just because Vertigo didnt feel it was selling enough. the other positive thing about tpbs is it means they can still be sold years in the future. walk into any comics shop and you can still see the collected editions of Preacher, The Sandman and many others on the shelves, not because they are historical curiousities but because people are still buying them. and guess what DC? if a Loveless trade is still selling in years to come, you still make money from it!if they had let it finish properly it would have still made them a bit of money in the long run, so to me, seems like a silly idea to drop the book.
i'm halfway through the second trade, so at least i've still got some more to read before the cancellation affects me.
I think DC would have kept the monthly going if the books were selling. But, as they recently put them on a discount sale list, I don't think they were. How often do you see shelves full of American Century, Human Target or Brian Vaughans Swamp Thing?
At OK Comics we'll continue to point out that Loveless is much better than the glut of recently canceled Vertigo series (Testament, American Virgin, Exterminators etc).
I checked, you are correct. You did not, in fact, say that, I did, in fact, say that, but crucially and unforgivably under the guise of saying that you had, in fact, said that. I misrepresented you in public. I took your words and made them cheap and tawdry with my twisting of the truth...and I don't even work in an editorial capacity at a comics company. There's no excuse for that. I am scum. I am going to read Elektra: The Scorpio Key as fit reward. May mine eyes burn with a most vicious fire.
You realise I have everything collected between those two covers don’t you? Sometimes twice. Were I normal the answer would be “no”. Luckily for you I am not normal so the answer is “maybe”. Soon I can have a copy of Elektra: Assassin in every room of my tiny house.
I am definitely looking forward to the Tomb Of Dracula Omnibus though. I haven’t read them since I was a tiny comic hater and a substantial proportion of the royalties will go to making Gene “The Dean” Colan comfortable too! Won’t they Marvel? Eh? Big ole fluffy pillows for The Dean coming right up!
