We’ve spent a good portion of the last week or so batting around ideas about comics reprints. Taking a sideways glace at the theme, I offer Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca’s Afrodisiac, an expertly conceived and executed hardcover that presents an anthology of, well,  comics ephemera related to the titular blaxploitation character. Rugg and Maruca smartly present not complete stories, but rather snippets, splash pages, covers, and even the “final” Afrodisiac story, all rendered in a variety of styles that emulate the look and feel (right down to the paper tone and off-register coloring) of 1970s and ’80s Marvel comics.

Comics making as comics history is not new, of course. Dan Clowes did it wonderfully in his The Death Ray and Alan Moore, et al, did it in 1963, not to mention Image’s recent The Next Issue Project. But what I like here is that Rugg and Maruca don’t try to create an overarching narrative – they’re less interested in the stories themselves than in the junky world they inhabit. Each story excerpt contains about as much of that sequence as I’d want to read, and then it’s onto the next cover or fake piece of original art, or Christmas card or whatever. Also, whereas Clowes and Moore focused on the now-canonical 1960s approach to superheroics, something that, while I understand it, has more to do with their youths than my own, Afrodisiac comes directly out of the comics I saw as a kid – the world of Herb Trimpe rather than Steve Ditko. It’s a lesser world, admittedly, but one rich for exploring. As in those anything-goes-we’re-making product days of the ’70s and ’80s, the stories go from monsters to vampires to Greek mythology – all matter of fact and to the point. No cosmic posturing here – just convoluted logic and fun inconsistencies in service to a superhero. In that sense, Afrodisiac reminds me more of something like Simon and Kirby’s Fighting American: It’s aware of and embraces its own silliness. Finally, and this probably goes without saying, but Jim Rugg is such a wonderful cartoonist. His range of expressions, effects, and just the zip of his energetic line always makes for compelling reading. All together it’s a tremendously fun book that deserves and rewards attention.

It’s also the second book published by AdHouse Books in recent months that digs into comic-making as a subject unto itself. The first, Josh Cotter’s Driven by Lemons, was equally inventive, though to entirely different ends. Both books are self contained worlds — great one-off objects to keep and return to. I’m fond of these gems and hope to see more along these lines.

Labels: AdHouse, Afrodisiac, Brian Maruca, Herb Trimpe, Jim Rugg, Joshua Cotter