by: David Hine (story/writer), Shaky Kane (story/art), Richard Starkings & Jimmy Betancourt (letters)
The Story: Steve Neuman is a “Voids Contractor”. He cleans out the houses of the dead when they have no heirs, but he has a sweet deal with his boss allowing him to enter the night before and snatch any especially precious items. Steve is also a comic geek with a full-on comic geek lair in his attic, so when he finds a stash of old Golden Nugget comics in a house he’s working on, he is like a pig in shit. Not only that, but he finds what appears to be the costume of the Coffin Fly (one of the Golden Nugget heroes).
What’s Good: I was tremendously disappointed not to be able to review the first issue of this new series at WCBR because my LCS didn’t have it, but I’m going to pour a little love on it here. Anyone who reads my reviews here knows like I like whack, off-the-wall comics when I step away from Marvel/DC. But sometimes a comic is just whacky. I enjoy it, but at the same time I’m glad it is a 4-issue series because I know it’ll get old pretty fast. Bulletproof Coffin is both whacky and GOOD. Hine and Kane have enough of that weirdness in here to satisfy people who have already read their Captain America this week, but on top of that they are building a fleshed out world. That is a very hard thing to do. Many creator-owned comics try to build a world, but it is usually boring as hell to watch while they do it. So when you read a review of those comics, you’ll see comments like, “I’m going to stick with this through the first arc because I think I like where they are going with these concepts.” None of that here: You’ll marvel at the world building AND enjoy every panel of comic goodness in Bulletproof Coffin.
One of the things I love in Bulletproof Coffin is that Steve’s life is so drab…..He’s a 40-year old comic geek, stuck in a loveless marriage (no hate, just no passion anymore), with two fat, couch-potato kids and a weird dog. The only reason his job doesn’t suck is that he gets to swipe a few goodies on the side and the only refuge he has in his home is his comic lair in the attic, so it is fun as hell watching him dress up and play Coffin Fly. And at the end of the issue, we learn that there could be more to the costume than Steve had assumed as it appears that the world of the Golden Nugget comics real (or at least an alternate universe that Steve can access as the new Coffin Fly).
Another clever thing in Bulletproof Coffin is that both issues so far have shown Steve pausing to read one of his old Golden Nugget comics and then the comic actually shows what he is reading (as in it is a comic-within-a-comic). In this issue the Golden Nugget comic is “Shield of Justice” following some brutal pre-comics code vigilant who stalks the streets. Dude leaves the bad-guys staked out for the cops to find and by “staked” I mean up in the air with the stake up the bad-guy’s you-know-what. These Golden Nugget comics are both serious and parody at the same time.
None of this would work without Kanes’s art. It is all beautifully flat-colored, so the comic has a golden or silver-age vibe to it, but the line work is so much more evocative than most comics of that era.
What’s Not So Good: Nothing so far. Seriously, you should run out and buy the first two issues off eBay if need be. This is such a comic book experience that you don’t want to read this in trade.
Conclusion: Kane and Hine have created a world that they can play with for a LONG time. Get in on the ground floor.
Grade: A-
- Dean Stell
Filed under: Image Comics Tagged: | Bulletproof Coffin, David Hine, Dean Stell, Image Comics, Jimmy Betancourt, review, Richard Starkings, Shaky Kane, The Bulletproof Coffin, The Bulletproof Coffin #2, The Bulletproof Coffin #2 review
