If I'm going to hell, I'm taking Mike Sterling with me!
You only have until the end of today to have a chance to win The Coffin trade paperback! The winner will be revealed tomorrow morning!
So, I decided to give Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin some well-deserved love today. If you don't read it, you should - he works Ralph's Comic Corner in California and apparently has nothing better to do then post excellent stuff about comics all day. Get to work, Mike!
Anyway, the reason he gets some publicity (not that he needs any) and the reason he might be going to hell is because
recently, he sent me a comic book. Not just any comic book, mind you, but one that might send me to hell. This is a comic book I have been seeking for some time, but could never find, so I asked Mike if his store had it, and lo and behold, they did. That's a fine store, Mr. Sterling, a fine store indeed.
So what did he send me? Ladies and gentlegeeks, I give you:
Faust Act 12: Love of the Damned by David Quinn and Tim Vigil!
I have a strangely disturbing love for this comic. In 15 years, 13 issues have appeared. And we call Bryan Hitch slow! Issue #13 came out earlier this year, and I actually found it locally, so I had to go back and find #12, which showed up in 2001. Quinn and Vigil actually did some Faust side-products for Avatar back in the late '90s, but they're pretty bad. The main title is still creepily brilliant.
Why am I going to hell for buying this? This is a horrific comic. It's one of the bloodiest, goriest, Satanic, and pornographic book you'll ever want to flip through. Omaha the Cat Dancer is the Pope's bedtime reading compared to this!¹ It's also a gripping story of redemption, and it features some of the most stunning artwork you'll ever see in a comic book. That cover is fine, but here's a shot of the interior:
That's one of the few pages I can show you that isn't in some way offensive, although if you look hard enough, you can see something nasty in the first panel (or at least its shadow). Vigil isn't afraid to show what happens when you slash someone with Wolverine's claws (the "hero" sports gloves with two long knives on them, in an obvious parody) and he isn't afraid to allow his characters - both male and female - to wander around naked for pages at a time. It's disturbing reading an issue of Faust, but it's also a ickily thrilling experience. These are totally visceral comics, and there's nothing really wrong with that.
I don't really recommend tracking these down, unless you're into lots of blood and sex and Satanic rituals and cursing. You can find them in trade paperback online in places, and the 13th issue is probably floating around out there. The series was originally supposed to go only 13 issues (a good Satanic number, you understand), but I haven't read #13, so I don't know if Quinn and Vigil have finished their bizarre masterpiece. I really just wanted to let all you closet Faust fans out there that you are not alone. I too am one of you! Rise up!
¹ Omaha the Cat Dancer may, in fact, be the Pope's bedtime reading. Can you say it's not?
So, I decided to give Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin some well-deserved love today. If you don't read it, you should - he works Ralph's Comic Corner in California and apparently has nothing better to do then post excellent stuff about comics all day. Get to work, Mike!
Anyway, the reason he gets some publicity (not that he needs any) and the reason he might be going to hell is because
recently, he sent me a comic book. Not just any comic book, mind you, but one that might send me to hell. This is a comic book I have been seeking for some time, but could never find, so I asked Mike if his store had it, and lo and behold, they did. That's a fine store, Mr. Sterling, a fine store indeed.
So what did he send me? Ladies and gentlegeeks, I give you:
Faust Act 12: Love of the Damned by David Quinn and Tim Vigil!
I have a strangely disturbing love for this comic. In 15 years, 13 issues have appeared. And we call Bryan Hitch slow! Issue #13 came out earlier this year, and I actually found it locally, so I had to go back and find #12, which showed up in 2001. Quinn and Vigil actually did some Faust side-products for Avatar back in the late '90s, but they're pretty bad. The main title is still creepily brilliant.
Why am I going to hell for buying this? This is a horrific comic. It's one of the bloodiest, goriest, Satanic, and pornographic book you'll ever want to flip through. Omaha the Cat Dancer is the Pope's bedtime reading compared to this!¹ It's also a gripping story of redemption, and it features some of the most stunning artwork you'll ever see in a comic book. That cover is fine, but here's a shot of the interior:
That's one of the few pages I can show you that isn't in some way offensive, although if you look hard enough, you can see something nasty in the first panel (or at least its shadow). Vigil isn't afraid to show what happens when you slash someone with Wolverine's claws (the "hero" sports gloves with two long knives on them, in an obvious parody) and he isn't afraid to allow his characters - both male and female - to wander around naked for pages at a time. It's disturbing reading an issue of Faust, but it's also a ickily thrilling experience. These are totally visceral comics, and there's nothing really wrong with that.
I don't really recommend tracking these down, unless you're into lots of blood and sex and Satanic rituals and cursing. You can find them in trade paperback online in places, and the 13th issue is probably floating around out there. The series was originally supposed to go only 13 issues (a good Satanic number, you understand), but I haven't read #13, so I don't know if Quinn and Vigil have finished their bizarre masterpiece. I really just wanted to let all you closet Faust fans out there that you are not alone. I too am one of you! Rise up!
¹ Omaha the Cat Dancer may, in fact, be the Pope's bedtime reading. Can you say it's not?
posted by Greg at 12/20/2005 04:18:00 PM
10 Comments:
Eerily enough, Brian Yuzna made a movie of Faust in 2001. And while you may or may not get sent to Hell for reading the book, it is illegal to import into Britain, as I recall. The film, however, was not, which was a weird situation.
I forgot about the movie. I watched about 5 minutes of it on Sci-Fi not long ago and tried to blot it from my memory.
One of my best friends in the entire world was a huge fan of FAUST and waited for years for issue #13 to come out. One Sunday we went to a comic show together and stopped by Oxford Comics in Atlanta where he found the book. I still vividly remember him swearing long and loudly in the back seat as he read it and swore to God and everyone that he was going to track David Quinn down and punch him in the face.
As for the movie, well my only reaction to it besides boredom was that it was one of the best comic book films to come out of 1989, it was just too bad that it was 2002 when I saw it. I did win the movie poster from a contest, though, and if anyone wants it they can have it.
Yeah, I was talking to a friend of mine tonight who has also read #13 (I still haven't read it). He asked himself if the book has always been as incomprehensible as that issue. I don't care - I stare at the art for long minutes and accept that the story is going to be completely unintelligible.
You are not going to hell for reading that comic. You are going to hell, however, for making me look in the shadows of panel 1.
Just as an historical aside, I'm pretty sure that Faust is the only book out there that The Comics Journal said, essentially, "Yes, we know that we're all about free speech and the First Amendment, but this thing is so awful that it really shouldn't be sold. It's just plain nasty." Now, I'm paraphrasing, and it's been like a decade so I might be misremembering, but it stuck in my head because I remember thinking at the time wow, this Faust thing must be something really, REALLY offensive for a Journal reviewer to say that. It probably actually sold a few books for the guy: I might have bought one if I'd seen it around, just to find out what was so horrid.
"If I'm going to hell, I'm taking Mike Sterling with me!"
I think I have a new quote for my webpage!
And I swear, I've only posted from work about a half-dozen times over the last couple of years, tops. Honest!
Ja'i mal aux dents, ja'i mal aux pieds aussi!
It is indeed illiegal to get Faust in this country (UK).
That said I am desperate for issues 12 and the now discovered 13!
Sucks to be in UK some times.
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