By: David Hine (story/script), Shaky Kane (story/art), Richard Starkings & Jimmy Betancourt (letters) & JG Roshell (production)
The Story: Bulletproof Coffin comes to an end. Will Steven find The Creators and save the world? Or will the sinister G-Men thwart him?
What’s Good: What an awesome comic! This series started out with an interesting concept: Steve Norman is a Voids Contractor who cleans out the homes of the recently deceased; who’s also a comic collector. In doing his job one day, he comes across a pile of Golden Nugget comics (that are a clear spoof of the pre-comics code era) and gets sucked into the world of the Golden Nugget comics as the Coffin Fly. The story’s main thrust was that Steve had to find “The Creators” and get them to write a new ending to the story so that the entire Earth wouldn’t be plunged into a zombie apocalypse.
Hine and Kane really bring this series home in a strong and self-aware way. That was a huge relief because many interesting creator-owned comics start with a neat concept, but don’t wrap up very well. That’s not a knock on creator-owned comics, but more the fact that they’re trying to tell a complete story and endings are hard. Marvel/DC don’t have the same problem because they are not trying to tell the ending to Batman/Captain America.
This ending was just awesome as the weirdness very quickly takes a back seat when Steve finds The Creators . What is hilarious is that they are the actual creators of this comic book, so we get to see comic book versions of all the folks listed in the credits above. Hine and Kane turn out to be grizzled old guys who pack heat while they write comics. Kane spends most of the issue with a cigarettes dangling from his lip while threatening to shoot Steve. But just as Steve is prevailing on them to save the world, the G-Men show up. But they actually turn out to be corporate lawyers from Big 2 comics who are there to buy out Hine and Kane so that they can make a movie featuring bastardized versions their characters.
So, what stated as a weird spoof of the pre-comics code era, ends-up being a satire on the topic of creator-owned comics and creators who “sell out”. I love it.
Through it all, the art has been such a star. Kane does the entire thing in a very old-fashioned style with flat colors that are themselves a spoof of older comics. Anyone who has looked at an older comic and said, “Why is every background on this page a different color? And why are they green, orange, pink and purple?” will know what I mean.
What’s Not So Good: The story that we get has no problems, but I would have liked to revisit Steve’s family. His vacuous wife, weird kid and strange, hairless dog were so much fun and such a part of the first issue that I really hated that we didn’t get to see them one final time.
Conclusion: A real gem. THIS is why you buy miniseries from Image and other smaller publishers because it makes all the “neat concept – mediocre ending” comics that you wade through worth it. This is also the kind of comic that could make me completely stop reading most superhero fare. Nothing DC or Marvel does is remotely this clever or original.
Grade: A
– Dean Stell