The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1592: Hilly Rose #4, December 1995

I really did want to love this series. It's got an amazing aesthetic, straight out of the old movie serials, and Boyer's artwork is dynamic and beautiful. But it's such a boring story.

I feel like there's a bit of false advertising going on with the series. Each cover depicts an action sequence in a wilderness setting, pitting our heroine against either her antagonists or against the very environment itself. Hilly wields a laser pistol on each cover, sometimes firing, sometimes readying it for trouble. But here's the thing: the contents of the comic have been basically 4 issues of Hilly and her friends flying around a city, looking for clues to uncover a terrorist cell and never actually seeming to arrive anywhere, while her father, who is behind the terrorism, misleads her, all in the name of what he seems to think is love. It's a situation in which the exterior and the interior are completely unrelated, aside from the main character. So there's that.

My other complaint is that the editing on the book is just awful. And that's surprising, seeing as how cat yronwode, editor extraordinaire of Eclipse Comics, is at the helm. Admittedly, I'm a little more sensitive to such issues given my educational background, but when you're running across 3 or 4 errors in an issue, you have to wonder if anyone was paying attention. There are the usual "you're" and "it's" errors (if you can't use the uncontracted form in a sentence, it's the wrong word), but there's spelling errors too ("deminished"), and straight up factual errors (grass that might be a clue is called "fauna"). To me, when I run across such things, it smacks of laziness, or simply a privileging of the art over the words.

I'm going to give the rest of the series some time. Perhaps it's my state of mind, or the constant rain in Calgary for the last few weeks, but I'm not feeling as magnanimous toward the medium as I usually do. If you're going to put something out to the public, make sure it's a finished product. This, to me, is still a draft.

"Due to my undercover work, I have determined they are in actually terrorists." ("actuality," Boyer, "actuality")

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1590: Hilly Rose #2, July 1995

Thus far one of the things I like most about this series are the back covers. Each is laid out like the cover of a magazine, Rocket Times, the paper at which Bach is trying to convince Hilly to work. There's a lovely Norman Rockwell aesthetic to the pieces, showing the characters in situations that, in the course of the narrative, they are unlikely to encounter. There's something about this kind of outside-narrative depiction that gives one the feeling of the characters actually being characters played by people who, simply, look exactly like their characters. I got a similar feeling from the Cutey Bunny stories in Army Surplus Komikz.

In some ways, the characters are simply roles being played, though it is B.C. Boyer who is playing all of the roles. In an independently-produced work such as this one, I have to imagine that each character represents something of the creator, or at least represents something the creator has internalized. This is what Foucault and Barthes talk about when they (Foucault mainly) theorize on the "author function." But, to be honest, it's too early in the morning for Foucault.

Oh, and in this issue, Hilly's Dad is just wrong and creepy.

"Please, Hilly, whatever you do, put away that cute little journalistic bug you have...and stay being my sweet...innocent...naive girl."

(Seriously, those pauses at the end? Gross.)

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1589: Hilly Rose #1, May 1995

I don't know anything about writer/artist B.C. Boyer, though I've got a bit of his "Masked Man" work in some of my Eclipse books. His style is kind of cool and retro, carving a future out of glimpses of it from the past. Hilly's world is more Flash Gordon than the Matrix, as you can probably tell from the strange fins on the clothing. Who ever thought that that would be a fashion thing? Wouldn't they just get in the way?

Not much to say about the series yet - this is definitely an introductory issue, though we do seem to be joining the story in media res. Hilly is already a successful reporter, and the action of the comic takes place as Mister Bach is trying to convince Hilly's father that she should cover news on Earth, rather than on Splatt 4. Though Hilly does assert her own agency in the face of her father's commands, it's unclear whether or not she'll actually disobey him. Perhaps this conflict of gender and generation will underpin the series.

One thing I did wonder about was the character of Blossom, up there on the cover in black and white. She looks a lot like she just wandered out of Boneville with Jeff Smith's famous cousins, though I suppose the design for the cousins is based on older strips like Pogo. Boyer's retro style certainly speaks to a love of the old comics, so perhaps Blossom is more Walt Kelly than Jeff Smith.

More of this tomorrow, and we'll see where the story goes.

"You saw how I pummeled his fist with my face!"