Art First

This Week's Comics

As much as I love Ghost Machine comics and the Unknown War series, I have to agree with the most common complaint against them: their production schedule is a mess, and it’s highly irregular. They had six months between volume 1 and volume 2 of Rook Exodus, during which I assumed they were getting all six issues of volume 2 ready for distribution…nope, the last issue was a few months ago and the next one just got delayed until April.

Yes, good art takes time, but they’ve been at this for years and I really wish they’d get that kink ironed out. That said, when the books arrive, they’re always worth the money. Absolute Batman always arrives on time but some of those have guest artists and the artwork is crap.

Great art, on time. Yes it is hard to do but that’s what they signed up for. (And that’s why I’m beating myself up to get FOSSIL FORCE 2 finished, but I digress.)

Anyway, this week’s comics came in and I only had two on my pull file: Geiger and Transformers. The artwork for Transformers has changed since the first writer wrapped up his run, and while those were good, I like the new style a lot better.

Geiger, though—Geiger has been consistently good, both in the writing and the art, and I especially loved what they did in this month’s issue.

Geiger is currently running around the wasteland of America with The Northerner, a time-traveler from a different chronology wherein the South won the American Civil War. Northerner already had a run-in with Redcoat and we learned about his backstory, and there were a few touches of “Oh no slavery bad, did you know that?” in those issues, as you might expect.

Well, now that Northerner is in the future, he’s implied to Geiger that the nukes that destroyed everything didn’t exist in his timeline: if the South wins, America doesn’t industrialize to the degree necessary for World War Two later on, and that’s key because it means no Manhattan Project, and thus no atomic bombs.

I was impressed by this in light of Christopher Rufo once again complaining that there are no “right-wingers making art” even though there are billions of patron dollars just sloshing around, looking to finance something, and that’s why all popular and mainstream art has a left-wing bent to it.

(I’ve hit back on this point with Rufo before, and I did it again this week.)

Anyway, I only mention that because my rule with art and politics is this: the values and views of the creator will invariably appear in the craft, but the craft needs to be the highest focus. Art first. Better yet, art exclusively. Sometimes that’ll even lead a creator to put something in his work that runs counter to his values, and whether or not you do that is up to you. I tend not to.

But this scene is indicative of why I keep reading Ghost Machine’s books—the creators are aware of the importance of Art First. I can glean a general sense of their principles from the stories they tell, but it doesn’t matter because they’re mainly concerned with telling good stories.

A left-wing creator wouldn’t tell a black time-traveler that he was the villain for helping the South lose the Civil War. It would be unconscionable. Especially through the voice of the main character in his own title (Geiger.)

But from the character’s perspective, it would be a completely reasonable reaction. He lost his family to the nukes and he’s been cursed with Ghost Rider Hulk powers that he can’t control without help. The world sucks and it’s all because of the nukes—and the nukes may exist because of what Northerner did to the timeline.

This is what happens when you lock in with your characters and you tell the story independent of your own concerns. This is great art. I keep spamming Ghost Machine to you guys and this is why.

Go pick up Junkyard Joe, Redcoat, and Geiger. Get to reading.