Posted in: Comics, Look! It Moves! by Adi Tantimedh | Tagged: Comics, manga

A Comic That Blew My Mind Last Week – Look! It Moves! by Adi Tantimedh

Published Mon, 05 Mar 2012 12:30:41 -0600

I wish more comics made the effort to blow readers' minds on a regular basis. I like to think that's often the main reason we like to read comics, as well as read novels, watch TV and movies, other than the usual desire for escapism and mental comfort food. There comes a point where you want to be surprised and see something you haven't seen before rather than be reassured that things are all right and status quo.

I can't say Marvel or DC Comics blow my mind anymore, since too much of it is about fan service involving established characters doing things meant to be surprising but are really just maintaining a status quo in order for their books to keep going and maintain the trademark for the parent movie studios to make blockbuster movie versions out of them. Can't knock them for that, since that's what corporations with large overheads are supposed to do. I'm probably too jaded, having read DC and Marvel for too long to find them terribly surprising anymore.

I did read a chapter of a comic last week, 20-odd pages of an ongoing series, that did blow my mind.

The scene is Germany, the 1920s, when Albert Einstein's fame was on the rise, and a young comic artist approaches him and asks him if time travel was possible.

"It is, isn't it?" Says the artist. "The bat told me."

At which point, Einstein froze and hustled the artist to a private corner and tells him not to listen to the bat.

"But the bat talks to me all the time," says the artist. "Is this him?"

And he shows Einstein a drawing of a cute Mickey Mouse-style bat.

"Stop listening to the bat," says Einstein. "if you ignore him long enough, eventually he'll go away."

"But why should I ignore him? He's telling me things that come true."

"Listen to me," says Einstein. "Drop this. It is very dangerous to pursue this line of enquiry. I'm begging you right now."

"And what are you going to do if I don't?" asks the cocky artist.

"I will go back in time and murder your parents before they conceive you."

Yup, there's my mind blown.

Call me a cheap mark for this kind of thing, but it's not everyday you read a story about Einstein threatening to retroactively abort someone in order to prevent the end of the world.

The person here that Einstein sees as a threat to the whole Space-Time Continuum is a comic artist.

And it doesn't end there.

The artist, slightly shaken but undaunted, tells Einstein that he's read not only Einstein's work but Schrodinger's and Heisenberg, and talks to Einstein about the theory of multiple parallel universes, the possibility that there's an infinite versions of the world and everyone in it who have all taken every other alternate decision and path in their lives.

"So even if you do kill me, I can still be content that there's at least another one of me out there." Says the artist.

"That's not completely true," says Einstein, who proceeds to explain that he's done further calculations about Quantum realities and has come to another conclusion.

"Yes, it is true that infinite versions of us all exist, but they only exist on the cusp of a path being taken. Once a decision is made and a path is chosen, every other version and path ceases to exist. Therefore there is only one of you, one of me, and one Earth in the end."

Okay, that's my mind blown the second time in this comic, and still not the last.

That scene in the 1920s is actually a flashback told in the 1960s where the comic artist, now very old, is about to be murdered by an American agent for people who want their version of the cartoon bat to be the only version people know about, the bat is now a popular Mickey Mouse manqué with comics, a TV show and a whole themed amusement park a la Disneyland in America. He is there to destroy the artist and all the artwork of the version of the bat that existed before the American version became well-known.

"You think you can scare me with that story about Einstein?" scoffs the American.

"I told you that story because Time Travel is real!" cries the artist. "And my master may be dead for a while now, but he has told me that when my life is threatened, he will save me."

"And how's he gong to do that?"

"He's gone back in time and he's homing in your parents RIGHT NOW!"

And that's the cliffhanger ending of this comic and my mind blown a third time.

In case you were wondering, this was the 71^st chapter of BILLY BAT, the current manga series by Naoki Urasawa, who previously wrote and drew MONSTER, the Ultimate-style retelling of a classic Astro Boy story PLUTO, and the award-winning 20^TH CENTURY BOYS.

I'm starting to think Urasawa might be the closest the Japanese have to an Alan Moore. Like Moore, his current and most notable work involves the Pynchon-esque deconstruction of pop culture and its impact on an entire society's imagination and how it might change the world. That held true with 20TH CENTURY BOYS and is taken even further with BILLY BAT, which posits the idea that a cartoon funny animal might be an entity that has influenced history for thousands of years, all the way to the Crucifixion of Christ to the formation of whole empires, to World War II and after, all the way to the Kennedy Assassination and beyond. In Japan, BILLY BAT is now at volume 12 or so, and not even half-way through its story, but like the best of Alan Moore's work, has weaved a history-spanning tale to encompass almost all of pop culture. Urasawa has clearly thought long and hard about comics, cartoons, politics and pop culture to write this story, and the fact that he has clearly read outside of comics is what enables him to insert ideas like Quantum Physics and political conspiracies and create a complete new take on them. It's something I wish US comics writers would do more of rather than repeat and regurgitate old ideas. I see a lot of new genre comics published by publishers like Image and other indies grappling with trying to do fresh takes on genre themes but they never go quite far enough to be genuinely surprising because they seem trapped in the old conventions to feel truly fresh. It takes someone like Urasawa to shed new light on genre and pop, I guess. It takes a bit more thinking out of the box. He shows that comics is still the last bastion for trying out new and crazy ideas using old tools and objects. He owns them rather than letting them own him, and uses them to make the reader think about the world in a new way. I think that's what every writer and artist should strive for. He even has Ninjas.

BILLY BAT is not currently officially translated into English, but Vix Media might start doing so once their publication of Urasawa's 20^th CENTURY BOYS is complete. That may not be for at least another year. I read the Chinese editions that I found in Chinatown.

Killing my alternate selves at lookitmoves@gmail.com

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