By: Kenny Keil (story & art)
The Story: Dying in your sleep isn’t all it’s cracked up to be anymore.
The Review: In my first year at WCBR, I had the pleasure of reviewing Giant-Sized Tales to Suffice. At the time, I didn’t have much exposure to non-Big Two comics, and considering the dubious quality of some of the indie comics I had advance reviewed, I had a certain skepticism towards comics that weren’t published through the traditional channels. Keil’s delightfully funny, self-published, Kickstarter-funded book converted me to an indie believer.
Tales was pretty much a sketch-variety show contained in a graphic novel, and though there were some recurring features, it had no overarching plot or storyline nor even much of a theme. It was an opportunity for Keil to pull out every joke and idea he could as rapidly as possible, moving on to the next punchline before you even fully reacted to the last, the Laugh-In of comic books. So I was very interested to see what Keil would offer when tasked with an actual narrative.
The premise is not exactly typical, but it does fall into your “Futuristic Vision” category. In an era where most of mankind’s medical ills have been done away with and people who see their bicentennials are commonplace, there is only one thing which continues to plague the human spirit: “Boredom.” In his choice of evil, Keil moves away from the usual sci-fi dystopias towards something less overtly disturbing, yet still grim in its own fashion.
Despite the unfazed, even lighthearted way the characters treat it, the story ultimately revolves around death. Our protagonist is Dominic Green, rising-star salesman at PeakLife, a company specializing in give people the death of their choice: “Why settle for plain old organ failure when you could go out winning an Olympic marathon, or battling an army of ninjas, or defending the planet from an alien invasion?” These scenarios are amusing in the abstract, but they hint at tragedy for the clients. Even with more time on Earth to do with as they please, they choose to experience the death of their dreams, implying long lives unfulfilled.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone, then, that Dominic’s clients wind up as ghosts, or at least mental figments which haunt his waking, pill-driven world. As someone who’s closed more accounts at PeakLife than the entire sales force combined, ol’ Dom is technically and technologically responsible for the deaths of dozens, from the looks of things. He doesn’t seem quite conscious of that fact; he’s too fixated on the big promotion.
It’s possible that whatever he doesn’t suffer spiritually from his work instead takes its toll on his physical health. His doctor (mostly idle since science has “cured everything”—“Believe me, it wasn’t my decision,” he says wryly) is amazed anyone in this age can be so rundown at just 47, and even Dominic’s delusions are concerned (“Dear God. The voices in my head are staging an intervention.”). It’s unclear where Keil plans to take Dom from this point, on the edge of both rock bottom and the top. We don’t know if there’s a spiritual awakening or grave quest in store, but at this stage, Keil has succeeded in establishing a solid foundation for both.
Keil employed a wide variety of styles on Tales to Suffice, but here he’s obliged to stick with the one. If this turns out to be his natural, default art, I can live with it, provided that he employs it on material with a sense of humor. His caricaturized figures do have moments of sobriety (Dom trying to comfort the impossibly thirsty ghost of Mr. Johnson, for example), but they do tend to look comical by nature. Where Keil can really make some big improvements is to punch up the energy of the series with color. Black and white can be effective for an artist with a heavy, ultra-detailed line, but Keil’s simpler, more rudimentary style leaves a lot of distracting negative space that makes it hard to look at any page for too long.
Conclusion: It has much of Keil’s trademark humor, but focused in a more pointed fashion to tell a worthwhile story.
Grade: B
– Minhquan Nguyen
Some Musings: * Personally, my dream is to die napping in a hammock on a screened front porch with rain falling on its tin roof while listening to Ella Fitzgerald.
– As tiresome as I find the whole downtrodden assistant archetype, I do find Bixby the moistest of drips. Seeing that he and his boss are wearing the exact same jacket, he exclaims, “We’re twinkies, Mr. Green!”
– As expected, the future has grown both technologically superior and socially dumber. Dominic gets his news in flashes: “Tonight’s top trends: how a recent organ trafficking scandal might affect Mayor Kutcher’s bid for this year’s Grammy nominations…plus new details emerge about the tragic sex cruise that never came home…”
Grade
Conclusion