Ratfist - Doug Tennapel

I bought Ratfist back in the spring, and I've debated whether to review it since then. I was rereading it this week (to decide whether it's going to find a more permanent spot in the collection), and here we are.

Tennapel did Ratfist originally as an online comic, updated daily or weekly. It stars Ricky, who works as sort of mid-level computer tech for a highly successful company run by a crotchety Mr. Black. Ricky is also the costumed hero known as Ratfist, working to uncover the secret behind his employers' success. Then he gets bitten by a rat, develops rat powers, meets a Space Tiki being held captive by his boss, they escape by stepping out of reality, only Ricky winds up in a ruined future. Ruined by him and his friends' beliefs that the government should take control of businesses to make certain they are "fair". This naturally causes businesses to fail horribly, because governments are incompetent, as the people in charge are too busy enjoying the benefits to accomplish anything. So Ratfist has to try and see if he can fix what his apparently foolhardy naivete brought about.

Most of Ratfist feels like Tennapel taking shots at pretty much everything he doesn't like. People who want government to take control of private businesses, obviously. People who argue things should be more "fair". People who assume some moral superiority for not believing in God. Grown-ups who are too into Earthworm Jim (that one hurt).

Religion plays a large role in Tennapel's work, and I guess is important to his personal life as well. I'm not religious myself, but I normally don't have any problem with it in his work. It's usually a positive portrayal of people drawing strength from their faith, or using it to guide them to help others. Black Cherry had the Church trying their best to teach an alien scout the value of God, so he'd convince his people not to conquer Earth. He highlights the positives of his beliefs. The difference is, this feels more like showing why everyone else is wrong, or hypocritical, or just full of shit. Which sure, a lot of people portray Religion (and Big Business) as bad guys in fiction, in overly-simplified ways. They're both responsible for some awful things, but both concepts have their good sides, so maybe he just wanted to redress the balance. Except this feels less like demonstrating why those are good things to have, and more why the things he places in opposition to them (atheism and government) are stupid and bad. Question is, do I dislike it because I disagree with his opinions, or because I think it creates a really unpleasant tone for the entire book? I'm not sure, probably both, but I feel like he creates such ludicrous strawmen to represent the things he doesn't like, they don't have any weight. There's no strength to the critique, which reduces it to a string of weak jokes. Tennapel can be very funny, but the mean-spirited edge to everything here works against the humor. It makes me tired, angry, on the lookout for who he's going to take shots at next, with continually fraying patience.

I know by the point where he established that cancer was the creation of the Space Tiki, trying to bring about a particular turn of events, I was pretty well done giving him any slack, and that finished the process. He'd already established there was a Heaven and Hell in this fictional universe, and thus presumably a God and Devil (though Tennapel himself appears in the book, as Ratfist's "creator", so perhaps he's both). It seemed rather convenient to make certain there was a Christian theology in the universe, but then dump the blame for cancer off on a being who looks like a figure out of a Polynesian religion. Frankly, if Tennapel is "the creator", then the creation of cancer in that universe is his fault, not Space Tiki's, because he created said fictional universe, including Space Tiki and the events that put him on his path. Yet Space Tiki's the one taken into custody by angels and going to be tossed into the pits of Hell.

When Ratfist loses his rat powers a few pages later, and can no longer speak to his little buddy Milt (the rat), Milt promptly runs off, leaving Ricky to cry out, 'My best friend never even existed!' Now I'm in such a bad mood over the "cancer is the fault of the non-Christian deity" thing, I read that as a shot at those who prefer pets to people (which you could possibly label my father as), and I'm even more irritated. Now that reaction is me taking stuff personally, but Tennapel's the one who has spent the entire book attacking people, and unless the reader goes along with his perspective, that might put said reader in a defensive mindset. So Tennapel did it to himself. Act like an ass, people are going to respond accordingly, and eventually it may become the default response. The ending is supposed to be uplifting, a man rising above his petty desires and jealousies, his childish thoughts, and doing something truly selfless. Touching that decent core that hopefully exists in all of us, even if we rarely heed it. Sounds lovely, doesn't it. But as I read it, I'm in such a foul mood from everything that precedes it that the ending does nothing. Intellectually, I can see what he's going for. Emotionally, I don't care, it doesn't work. And now I'm not sure I'm interested in picking up his future work, because it might be another book like this.

It did look very good, though. I hated his writing on this book (obviously), but I still enjoy how well he draws everything. The art is the only thing making me consider keeping the book at all.