Let's pick up from where yesterday's graphic novel left off.
I've said it before, and will likely say it again: Steve Gerber's work was well ahead of its time. But also very completely off its time. Void Indigo was cancelled after only two issues due to very poor reviews, many apparently in reaction to the violence of the piece. Having read it this morning, I can say with certainty it's not even remotely as bad as some of the Vertigo stuff from the 90s, or some of the more mature content of the present. I can see that it might have irked some people in the early 80s when it was published, but it's really pretty tame by contemporary standards. It's a pity Gerber and Mayerik never got a chance to finish it. The first issue has pulled me in. Well, second issue, I suppose.
There's a lot of the trademarked Gerber weirdness in this comic, but it's presented without the usual comedic undertone that we might see blatantly in Howard, or more subtly in Man-Thing. There are some wonderfully hallucinatory scenes in the comic, and coupled with the brutality of the violence that frames them, I can see why comic shop owners, especially coming into the heyday of raids and censorship being carried out on a pretty large scale on stores suspected of "corrupting minors," might have a problem carrying it. Which is unfortunate, because I think there's a pretty great story going on here. While there are only the two issues and the GN extant, a copy of the prospectus for the series was leaked some time ago, so we do get a bit of closure for the series. I'll post a link to it in tomorrow's post on issue #2.
To be continued.
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