If you aren't already familiar with the incredibly ambitious underground-crossover comix phenomenon that is Benjamin Mara, I can think of no better place to start learning about his work than via this collection, which shows off the impressive range of styles that Mara has deployed for the books put out on his Traditional Comics imprint.
Before you ask, yes, the entire book is reproduced in mimeograph style purple ink, as in the above example. You get used to it, trust me.
From the hilariously over-the-top (some might say "problematic") blaxploitation satires "Gangsta Rap Posse" and "Lincoln Washington" (the latter about a freed slave wreaking furiously violent revenge on some racist crackers in the Restoration era), to the more refined and visually sleek "Adventures of Maureen Dowd", which casts the New York Times' resident redheaded Op Ed cutie as a Bond Girl type taking on Karl Rove and Dick Cheney with both words and weapons, to the ugly-in-every-conceivable-way "Ripper and Friends", a series of scatological and hyperviolent 'funny animal' strips, before finally finishing off with a trio of certifiably insane High Fantasy strips--"Zorion: The Sword Lord", "The Naked Heroes", and "Blades & Lazers"--that somehow manage to work both as over-the-top parodies, and exemplary specimens, of the genres Mara is ostensibly satirizing.
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| It's purple in the collection version |
The deeper you consider his deceptively simple drawings, the more you're able to detect echoes of Kirby, Ditko, Buscema, Moebius, Steranko and more. And yet, there is nothing about Mara's work that is derivative. Also, besides being a unique and prolific creator in his own right, he's also doing yeoman's work of bringing some attention to unjustly ignored comics industry veterans and re-invigorating their careers. So he's a mensch, too!
Fantagraphics' promo page does a good job of explaining Mara's primal appeal:
Born from the crucible of 1980s trash culture and exploitation entertainment and focused like a laser through the prism of Marra’s brain comes this nasty brew of revenge, power, and passion. It is a reflection of the things that America celebrates and for which it is scorned, and often blurs the lines between the two.
A true original, Benjamin Mara is one of the most important new artists working in comics today. Pick up this beautiful, reasonably priced collection to find out why.
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