Limbo starts as a private eye noir story, albeit one in an unusual, even seedier version of New Orleans where fishmen come wandering in from the swamp for a drink or fight. Clay, an amnesiac p.i., is hired by the beautiful singer at a nightclub to protect her from her employer, evil crime boss The Thumb. This, of course, turns out to be more complicated than Clay expects, even allowing for The Thumb being a masked wrestler. The Thumb has powerful forces on call, and not in the typical '80s movie style of thick-necked vaguely Soviet looking goons. And surprise, the beautiful singer is more than she seems, too.
And so the story shifts a bit. Clay's case, his amnesia, his very state of being in this strange city are all variables in a maze, or a test. Clay's really caught between two deities doing what deities do best: Fucking around with mortals to settle arguments.
Why can't they just scream and throw household items at each other like unhappy married couples do? I guess the better way to think of it would be scientists getting monkeys hooked on cigarettes. Or the experiment my ornithology professor told us about from the '50s. Where the biologists, have determined a turkey's crop can indeed break down walnuts, decided to see if it could break down razor blades. Science!
Compared to that, putting a man in a position to possibly be eaten by a giant alligator is fairly tame.
That there do end up being more forces that get involved than expected is rather a nice touch. And those forces do so for their own reasons, although those reasons probably boil down to "protecting my turf". But they define that in different ways, and they take different approaches. Manipulation and illumination.
On the first read, I wasn't too impressed. I wasn't sure what it was going to be going in, and I'm rarely a huge fan of stories about people getting jerked around by immense, sentient forces. Maybe if you give me the story where the person jerked around decides to hunt that deity down and make their existence hell. The second time through, just taking the story for what it was, I liked it better.
Dan Watters (writer) and Caspar Wjingaard (artist), who are credited as co-creators, lean into a particular '80s aesthetic that I sort of remember, but don't have any particular affection for. The kind of Miami Vice jackets and color schemes. Clay is usually, when he's in the city, anyway, colored a sort of soft neon blue with white hair. His landlord/caretaker Sandy is a bright green from head-to-toe. His client a deep red, The Thumb mostly purple. Other, ordinary, people are colored more normally. I do enjoy the color work, though. Clay makes his way into the club for the big confrontation, fighting his way through the henchmen. All the panels are drawn from the same perspective: behind him, head hidden under a hooded jacket, and the surroundings get steadily darker, mirroring his descent.
Clay's battle with the teleshaman takes him through a world of TV I recognize, but that's probably as much from when I watched VH1's "I Love the Eighties" as my own memories. Like, I remember daytime talk show stuff like Donahue and Geraldo, but it doesn't mean anything to me. I'm to this day not sure what Max Headroom was supposed to be about. Or hiding a listening device in a He-Man toy. I had He-Man toys when I was a kid - got a lot of mileage out of that Castle Greyskull with my Spider-Man and Ninja Turtles figures - but it's not something I have nostalgia for, you know? So at times it's an experience of, "Oh, I think that's a reference. . .OK," and move on. So if the particular era Wjingard and Watters chose is meant for some greater spiritual meaning in the story, I'm whiffing on it.
5 comments:
I read this a few weeks ago on someone's recommendation. Usually that's you, but maybe not in this case. Anyway.
I'm not sure what to make of it. I hate the thing they do at the end, although it does fit with one of the major themes of the book, so I can see why they do it. I also don't like how predictably noirish it is, like it's ticking boxes off of a Top 10 Noir Topoi checklist, but then that's also sort of deliberate.
So yeah, it's doing all sorts of things I don't like, but it's doing them for good reasons, and I don't know what to make of it all.
I do very much like the art though. And I like the setting, even if I don't like this particular exploration of it.
Yeah, it couldn't have been me. Other than mentioning it a couple of times in my solicitations posts as something I might get, I'd never discussed it.
That's an interesting question, how to assess a story that does stuff you're not interested in or don't like, but does it well and to a distinct purpose. I don't think I've ever been very good at separating whether I like something or not from whether it's used well or not.
The noir tropes don't bother me much, but I've watched so many of those movies with my dad I might just be inured to them. The ending? Yeah, I don't love that kind of ending either. I do like the implication his friend made it happen to maintain her existence. In theory, if the story was continued, they could do something focused on her trying to hamper Clay so he can't succeed, but also can't fail too badly. Basically keep either deity from being able to declare decisive victory. Or I'm just fond of characters pulling something on manipulative deities.
I wouldn't mind seeing more stories in this setting, as I think there's room to explore more of the odd stuff going on. I'm not sure I'd want to see more of Clay's story, if there is in fact any more of his story.
I think with Clay stuck in repeated attempts to see whether he can transcend his old ways, you just have him as a supporting or even background character. Just passing through, or a pawn in his friend's attempt to maintain her own existence.
His story really wouldn't matter, since it's all just a made-up test, it would be how others try to use it or avoid getting sucked in, or whatever.
Yeah, that could work!
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