Writer: Peter B. Gillis
Artist: Tom Sutton
Publisher: 1FirstComics
Release Date: 22nd March 2017 (Originally released in 1983)
‘The Black Flame’ exists as a time capsule from a very different age, and opening it now is a strange, telling, and rewarding experience. The story is very much of it's time. It could have only existed in the early 1980's and it does things that you just don't do today. Read on and I'll explain what I mean by that.
The narrative is centered on a young girl, called Susie Ingalls, who is kidnapped from her parent’s house by a strange man on a motorcycle, and taken away to a creepy looking ‘safe-house’ where a ‘poet’ gives her a drugged drink of hot chocolate and puts her to bed. The man on the motorcycle (the ‘Black Flame’ of the title) is a hero by the way, and the poet (Michael Robartes) is a good-guy as well. Yes, the two strange men responsible for the kidnapping of a young girl from her family home are the heroes of the tale.
The narrative in this weird comic book world drifts between two very different realms. There is everyday, motorcycle kidnapping reality, and a nightmarish realm of fearsome creatures that lurk in the closets of little girls who can’t get to sleep without having the light turned on. This nightmarish land of closet monsters, evil (scantily clad) ladies and monstrous beasts, is the world of H.P Lovecraft, a man who was a big deal in the 1980’s, in television, movies, books and the comic book genre. Lovecraft’s world is a world where madness, dreams and reality merge, and that is the realm that you are entering when you read this comic book.
‘Rescuing’ a little girl from the monsters of her dreams, putting her on the back of your motorcycle, and taking her to live with your poet mate in his creepy old house, is certainly not normal, but this is Lovecraftian territory.
It’s all very weird, and you are not going to find anything like it being written today. You couldn’t do it, you really couldn’t. If you did somehow manage to find a publisher who was okay with you writing a story where the child-kidnappers are the heroes then there would be so much controversy kicked up that issue #2 would never be released.
What needs to be taken (heavily) into account when reading ‘The Black Flame’ in 2017 is that it was first released in 1983, a time period very different to the one that we live in today. There are, of course, many technological differences between the time periods, but even bigger than that are the cultural differences.
In 1983 men were still, largely, the patriarchs of the western family unit. This was a time before the feminisation of western culture, the enlargement of the welfare state, the rise in single mother households, and the increase in paranoia that comes when females are more dependent upon state power than the security that comes with a husband provider/protector. It was a book released when men were still valued, and admired, when women preferred good men over the easy access to resources that comes from running into the controlling embrace of the all powerful welfare state.
When you read ‘The Black Flame’ you are getting a window into the world that existed before the present matriarchal society that we live in today. The culture in western democratic societies of 2017 is a feminised culture of fear, paranoia and anxiety, where everything is a threat, everybody is a potential predator, keep your kids indoors, never let them play unsupervised, danger is everywhere, always watch, always control. This feminised world of fear did not exist in the early 1980’s because men had yet to be marginalised by government, media (comic books included) and academia, and children were still allowed to roam their neighbourhoods and do what children are supposed to do. Men were seen as providers and protectors, not as threats, and so when you have masculine strangers protecting a young girl in a comic book it was not as unusual as it seems today.
‘Black Flame’ then is an anachronistic book of a bygone age, and for that reason alone it is extremely interesting and worth reading. It is also very enjoyable to read, as it is fast paced, camp, a bit silly, a bit scary, a bit serious here and there, and very, very 1980’s old school cool. In this one issue you get FIVE chapters of the original story, and that means that you get some awesome cliffhangers and a story that is as fast paced as the Black Flame’s motorcycle itself. The art is 1980s style, totally awesome and with beautifully updated, bright as you like colouring. It's very cheesy, gloriously old fashioned, and bottom line, fun, fun, fun.
The challenge in 2017 will be to read through the narrative with your cynical (every ‘strange’ man is a potential pervert) radar turned off. If you can break through the oestrogen induced fear-fog of our times you’ll get a huge amount of enjoyment from the book. Please take into account that it was written during very different times. Those times have gone forever, and can never be reclaimed, but you can revisit them through the pages of this wonderfully weird and thoroughly enjoyable old school comic book. I personally recommend that you take the trip, because what you will find within the dark and murky corners of the very near past is authentically odd, malevolently masculine, and most assuredly not for those of delicate, modern, feminised, paranoiac sensibilities.
Rating: 9/10 (Worth purchasing for the weird factor alone)
* Pics on this review are from the original comic book. The 2017 version of the comic book has much superior, brighter colouring. BUY IT NOW.
No comments:
Post a Comment