Writing about Neonomicon and Alan Moore’s infernal worlds of words the other day brought to mind an earlier, far more controversial adventure in horror comics: 1989’s notorious Taboo 2, edited by Stephen R. Bissette and dogged by all manner of production difficulties chiefly related to finding people willing to physically assemble the finished volume. Two printers, two copy shops, nine binders, a typesetting house and a color separation outfit all declined to handle the material, and then portions of the print run were seized by Canadian and UK customs. Looking at it today, the anthology mostly seems distinctly catholic in its approach to horror, blending art by S. Clay Wilson, Eddie Campbell, Richard Sala, Michael Zulli, Rick Grimes and Bernie Mireault, to say nothing of the auspicious debut of the new Alan Moore-written horror serial From Hell.

But the entry that’s stayed with me — and provides a fascinating link to Moore’s later horror work with Avatar — is Sweet Nothings, a 16-page story from writer Tim Lucas, best known as a writer-on-movies-on-home-video and eventual editor/publisher of Video Watchdog, and Belgrade-born artist Simonida Perica-Uth, making her comics debut. Lucas had begun work on Throat Sprockets, a Mike Hoffman-drawn comics serial in the prior Taboo, but eventually reworked it into a 1994 prose novel; its plot saw a man developing a fixation on women’s throats after viewing a strange fetish movie, a disease-of-image scenario not unlike the Lovecraft language whispered to one Agent Sax in Neonomicon prelude The Courtyard, opening his senses to the true nature of existence in a world of allusion.

But Lucas’ comics, the handful that exist, were more taken with Cronenbergian body concerns, even as their art soared away from the panels-as-walls confinement of Jacen Burrows’ work with Moore. Sweet Nothings, in fact, brokers no narrative connection between words and pictures at all. Pasted down in typewritten form, as if an incursion on an otherwise peaceable display, Lucas’ text narrates the story of a woman who can’t conceive a child, and the husband who won’t talk to her during sex. Until, that is, he whispers to her at the moment of passion, creating children who embody those never-revealed terms, in the way children are always alien to a mother, having come from her yet sharing traits divined from another necessary actor.

Perica-Uth then assures that the collaborative birth of a comic can prove as startling, unaware that the journey of Taboo 2 to release would further highlight how many hands are necessary to get a book to market: the kind of thing you don’t realize until something goes wrong. And it seems wrong that the story and art in Sweet Nothings have little to do with one another, until you notice the rather blatantly sexual images marking Perica-Uth’s full-page collages of Egyptian-themed art. Sperm swim, passages open, and a discordantly lithe female figure dances atop a phallic monument against a portal at each successful whisper. While ostensibly omniscient in narrative tone, Lucas’ words then inevitably assume the position of his story’s impregnating male Word, while the art swirls in the eternity of maternal potential, birth and death, and all they explicitly have in common is sheer copulation, which is the very origin of individual life, and collaborative comics.

It’s a memorable, rather cerebral piece of deliberate word-picture disconnect, maybe the most out-there formal stuff Taboo ever printed, even as it served as the earliest venue for a symbol rich Victorian London or the union of fictions that was Lost Girls. To Sweet Nothings, horror isn’t in such accumulations, but implicit to the most basic means of producing life, which inevitably has to live apart from you.

But you, reader, can come closer to several new comics this very week:

Make Me a Woman: Yes, you read about this Vanessa Davis collection from Drawn and Quarterly just yesterday, and now it’s out and ready for your eyes. A 176-page selection of autobiographical materials, b&w and (water)color, formed in both sharp-paneled, heavily captioned style, and cascading panel-less pages of images. Gentle, funny comics of a conversational type. Samples; $24.95.

Footnotes in Gaza: Second Chances Dept. – if for some reason you missed last year’s enormous (432-page) Joe Sacco reportage on the lingering echos of 1956 killings in Gaza, publisher Macmillan (through its Metropolitan Books) has readied a new softcover edition; $20.00.

Everybody Is Stupid Except for Me and Other Astute Observations: But if it’s directly polemical issue comics you need to fill the ‘reissue of 2009 books by prominent alternative cartoonists of the last quarter century’-shaped hole in your soul, do enjoy this Fantagraphics collection of Peter Bagge essay comics from Reason Magazine, which appears to be getting re-released to comic book stores in the same 120-page softcover state as before. Archives; $16.99.

Dick Briefer’s Frankenstein: IDW reprint project #1 for the week – the 148-page start of a new series, the Library of Horror Comics’ Masters, edited by Craig Yoe. This one showcases both sides of Briefer’s take on the monster; $21.99.

Bloom County: The Complete Library Vol. 3 (of 5): And #2 – more from Berkeley Breathed’s series, July 1984 – Feb. 1986; $39.99.

Nola’s World Vol. 1: Changing Moon: Your unexpected new Eurocomic release for the week, beginning a Lerner Publishing Group English translation (via their Graphic Universe imprint) of Alta Donna, a very bright and candied-looking series about an imaginative girl and her fantastical exploits, started in 2008 by writer Mathieu Mariolle (whose Pixie series was released by Tokyopop last year) and artist Maïté “MiniKim” Lajic, working with colorist Mélanie “Pop” Buffière. Looks like lots of manga traits at work. Wordless preview (scroll down); $9.95.

Vampire Boy: Also unexpected and Euro, but not quite new; I believe this mid-’90s series by writer Carlos Trillo and artist Eduardo Risso was previously released in four volumes, 2003-04, by Strip Art Features. Now Dark Horse presents the entire story of a mature bloodsucker stuck in a young kid’s body in a 480-page b&w special; $24.99.

The Wednesday Conspiracy: I think the first album of this mid-’00s series crept out in English from SAF in 2006 as well, but Dark Horse now has all three in a 144-page edition. It’s a fantasy-horror thing about misfit members of a support group for the supernaturally powered coming together to face a big evil that’s menacing them. Written and drawn by Sergio Bleda, a handsome color illustrator type previously known for Vampire Dance, a b&w series collected in English by Dark Horse last year; $19.99.

Cross Game Vol. 1: Meanwhile, in actual manga, here’s something a little more old fashioned – the return of sports/romance manga specialist Mitsuru Adachi (of Touch) to North American shelves, about six years after vol. 2 of his Short Program series of small stories was released by Viz. This one’s a bit bigger, looking to condense 17 volumes of a 2005-10 blossoming romance/baseball manga into a set of omnibus volumes, starting off with a 576-page three-in-one brick, a la the publisher’s VizBig line of collections. If the solicitations are anything to go by, future installments will collect two Japanese volumes each, bringing the series to a presumed eight-book run. Adachi hasn’t changes his delicate, almost quintessentially ’80s style (of course built throughout a full 1970s of work), no doubt giving the package a unique appeal; $19.99.

Dawn Land: A 320-page book from First Second, in which artist Will Davis adapts a 1993 Joseph Bruchac prose novel concerning a post-Ice Age tribal youth confronting a presumed threat armed with the new technology of the bow. Preview; $19.99.

Digested #1: Being Diamond’s release of the first of three (so far) one man show-type comic books by Australian cartoonist Bobby.N, from Gestalt Publishing. I’m not familiar with the artist, but his visuals look like an attractive blend of wavy lines and background precision; multiple features are promised. Preview; $2.95.

Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne #5 (of 6): In which writer Grant Morrison’s increasingly tight-wound Bat-storylines return to publication with a delayed Ryan Sook-drawn issue of this time-travel miniseries. Preview; $3.99.

The Adventures of Unemployed Man: An 80-page Little, Brown and Company spoof on economic woes as seen through the prism of various old superhero comics, written by Erich Origen & Gan Golan of the 2008 children’s book parody Goodnight Bush. Noteworthy for art on assorted segments by Ramona Fradon, Rick Veitch, Michael Netzer, Thomas Yeates, Shawn Martinbrough and others. Official site; $14.99.

Strange Tales II #1 (of 3): And finally, a no-ads conflict-of-interest frenzy featuring this site’s own Frank Santoro and Dash Shaw set loose in the Marvel Universe, along with Kevin Huizenga, Kate Beaton, Rafael Grampá, Shannon Wheeler, Gene Luen Yang, Jillian Tamaki, Jeff Lemire, Jhonen Vasquez and Nick Gurewitch. Preview; $4.99.

Labels: Simonida Perica-Uth, Stephen R. Bissette, This Week in Comics, Tim Lucas