By: David Hine (story/script), Shaky Kane (story/art) & Richard Starkings (letters)
The Story: Steve Neuman becomes the Coffin Fly and teams up with golden age comic characters.
What’s Good: It is no secret that I LOVED the first two issues of The Bulletproof Coffin. Seeing this comic fan guy whose job was to clean up the belongings of the dead get sucked into a world where he has some connection to these “Golden Nugget” comic characters was just cool as hell.
What I’ve really loving is that as this 6-issue series moves into its middle issues, the story still has enough weirdness that the novelty isn’t wearing off AND the story itself is become entertaining in its own right. That is no small feat because we’ve all read series that had a neat hook, but either failed to be wacky enough to maintain the weirdness OR just never had a story to tell (or both). So far, that is not a problem here.
One thing that I found pretty fun about this issue is the parallel between Steve and his new alter-ego, the Coffin Fly. Steve’s job consists of cleaning up the belongings of the recently deceased. Coffin Fly drives around the post-apocalyptic wasteland in this armored vehicle (THE Bulletproof Coffin) dragging all the chains to dredge up knick-knacks (which he collects). I find this interesting and am sure it’ll have something to do with the story.
But, the real star of this issue was the fake Golden Nugget comic about “Ramona: Queen of the Stone Age”. These fake reprint Golden Nugget comics are just great. They are so obviously a loving spoof of pre-comics code comic books and this one follows Sharon Sharone as she is pulled through a time-warp to become Ramona. In this issue, we follow Ramona “as once again she falls into the clutches of LUST-CRAZED SAVAGES. What TERRIBLE FATE have these primitive brutes planned for our helpless heroine?” That is just the kind of stuff that you would never in a million years see in a modern DC/Marvel comic and that is mostly because when comics and movies talked about “savages” they were being incredibly racist towards people of African or Asian descent. But, here they avoid that problem by having these savages be of unclear race (although they’re white dudes if they’re anything) and having them all wear helmets so they are almost faceless. I love the nostalgia trip without the racial baggage!
I’m also loving how Shaky Kane is summoning that Golden Age vibe with his art. This comic wouldn’t work half as well if not for him.
What’s Not So Good: The only issue I’m having is that I’m a little fuzzy on whether there is a bigger story here or not. That might seem weird since I said above I’m enjoying the story, and I am… But, it is a little unclear how pieces tie together. I kinda think there is a unifying theme and we just haven’t seen it, but if I was trying to pitch this comic to someone who just wasn’t into comic weirdness, I might have a hard time explaining the story.
Conclusion: The magic is still working. If you like weird comics, this is one for you to try.
Grade: B+
– Dean Stell
Grade
Conclusion