Meta 4 #5

by Ted McKeever

As much as I love Ted McKeever's work (Metropol has long been a favourite comic of mine), I often don't understand it.  In fact, he's better than Grant Morrison at making me feel stupid or like I've missed the point, yet I always go back to his work for more.

Meta 4 is a perfect example of a Ted McKeever comic that is either too subtle for me to fully grasp, or is simply a pretentious piece of fluff that I can't recognize as such.  I'm pretty sure it's the former though, and not the later, as McKeever's built a good body of work that falls into that category.

What I do know is that even when I don't fully grasp it, his work is visually stunning and always interesting.  This issue has our unnamed astronaut recover his memory in ways that he at least understands (while exposing the entire moon landing program as a hoax), and more or less resolves the police story we've been eavesdropping on through bullets that have been transmitting radio signals.

The best part of this book is the art, and once again, McKeever doesn't disappoint with some tripped out, interesting images.  McKeever is a completely unique individual in the comics world, and it's nice to see him work on something that is so non-commercial and challenging.  I think I need to read this again in a single sitting to grasp it better.  I'm sure it will work better in trade format than as a mini-series plagued with delays.

Meta 4 #4

by Ted McKeever

Things get a lot less weird with this issue, as the amnesiac astronaut begins to recover some of his memory after a long train trip to Nevada.  We also learn who Gasolina really is (although not her name), and our heroes wander their way onto a government test site.

There are still plenty of mysteries left to ponder though, such as who Bzoma is, and why every bullet in this comic seems to be transmitting police radio.  For that matter, what's going to happen in the weird hostage situation that the police are dealing with?  I don't expect all of these questions to be answered though.

What makes this comic great while still being almost entirely impenetrable is that Ted McKeever is such a gifted artist and storyteller that everything makes some sort of sense as you read it.  It is only after finishing the comic that you realize that a) you have no idea what just happened, and b) you don't really care.

McKeever's writing has come a long ways since he got his start ("With no memory other than the most recent of events, and the slowly creeping fragments of my childhood that seep back into my head like shoving an eggplant into the finger-hole of a bowling ball,..." is a terrific image).  I look forward to seeing how much we really learn in the end.

Meta 4 #3

by Ted McKeever

I'd have thought that, as McKeever's latest series moved past the half-way mark, that I'd start to understand what was going on a little better.

Instead, I found this issue more confusing than the first two, as the Astronaut guy talks to the kid was saw in the first issue, and finds a bullet that is broadcasting the police radio signals we've been reading.
Upon returning to Gasolina's tattoo shop, he finds she's burned it to the ground, and the two of them hop a freight car together.

I know that there is a message in all of this (the metaphor in Meta 4), but I have no clue what it might be.  So, why stick with a comic that I don't understand in the slightest?  Mostly because I love Ted McKeever's art, and find that even when I don't get the book, I enjoy his work.

If someone has a theory they want to share, or can lead me to a website written by someone more intelligent than myself, please let me know in the comments.  Maybe if I read the whole thing from the beginning again...

Meta 4 #2

by Ted McKeever

I'm still not really understanding a single thing with this, but that's not stopping me from enjoying it a lot.  I think that my standards and expectations are so different with a Ted McKeever book, that things that I usually see as important, like a coherent plot, count for very little, as I prefer to ride the waves of weirdness, and just enjoy his wacked-out figures, and bizarre aesthetic.

What we know in this issue is that the amnesiac astronaut guy is now hanging out with the woman who was wearing the Santa Claus suit, who only speaks in symbols.  Astronaut-dude is trying to figure out who he is, while the woman (named Gasolina in solicitation text, but not yet named in the comic) tattoos a recognizable symbol on some woman's ass.

Also, the police whose radio conversation transcripts we are reading are calling in SWAT.  And some woman shoots a bird.  I think that's about it.

And, as odd as it all sounds, like I said, I'm really enjoying it.  This is supposed to be an 'allegorical series', and the title is a pretty obvious (although I somehow didn't notice it at first) play on the idea of metaphoric comics.  I just don't know what things are allegories or metaphors for.  I still have three more issues to figure that out, right?

Meta 4 #1

by Ted McKeever

I love Ted McKeever's comics.  I don't always understand them, especially on the first read through, but I admire his ability to construct atmosphere and dissonance in a comic without being too pretentious.  This new series, which is set to run for five issues, is a good example of his style, except for the fact that it lacks the urbanity of his earlier work, of which my favourite has always been Metropol.

This comic opens with an astronaut lying on his face in a sandy landscape.  He's in his space suit, and he's having a confused conversation with himself.  He does not know where he is (the moon in the sky being an early hint that he's on Earth) or what his name is.  It is slowly revealed that he's near a Coney Island-style boardwalk, but there are hints that it might be in Nevada.  There is a large man in a Santa Claus suit who seems to only speak in symbols, like a rebus puzzle.  There's a mens' room with a beaten woman in it, and a big beefy guy with a baseball bat and a communications disorder.

All of this is intercut with police dispatch radio traffic describing a shooting taking place somewhere.

It's way too early to understand this book, assuming that understanding is ever going to come.  McKeever describes this story on the cover as "A 5-issue Allegorical Series", and it would seem to be way too early to figure out what it's an allegory for.

None of this matters to me yet though, because McKeever's art is very pretty in that hideously ugly way that he draws.  His people are freakish (think Ben Templesmith vampires, if you have no other frame of reference) but his backgrounds and establishing shots are carefully constructed.  He has a way of drafting post-urban environments that are fraught with wasted potential.  His prose is sharper than its ever been.

I don't know if this is a book I could recommend to many people, but I'm definitely looking forward to the next issue and figuring a few things out.