A comiXologist Recommends:
Harris Smith recommends Rumble #1
Genre is a valuable thing. Genres give artists a framework on which to graft their ideas, and readers the framework through which to receive them. Genre can be used to make difficult ideas palatable, as seen in the post-WW2 existential malaise expressed through the crime stories of the 1940s and 50s that have come to known as film noir, or the anxieties about feminism and the sexual revolution bubbling under the surface of the horror films of the late 1970s and early 80s. Genre provides familiarity and comfortable conventions which make audiences more receptive to the more challenging aspirations of artists and, on a far more basic level, genre provides a shorthand for audiences to be able to identify the things they like.
The power of genre is such that we, as audiences (in this case, readers), are forced to take pause when we encounter something that isn’t immediately classifiable in a familiar genre, or that draws on elements from multiple genres in a way that we don’t necessarily recognize right away. This is valuable, too. If layering difficult ideas within the familiar conventions of a genre is a way to make hard concepts more palatable, defying the conventions of genre has the opposite effect, jarring the reader into consciousness and acute awareness, forcing them to engage the material on its own terms.
John Arcudi, James Harren (the-bog) and Dave Stewart’s new comic Rumble, from Image, is a work that combines and defies genres. In the first issue, we’re witness to elements of horror, comedy, action, supernatural fantasy and the basic drama of everyday life, all in collision with one another. Comedy and horror are two genres that don’t always mesh together. Though the primal roots don’t come from entirely different places, their end results are typically in conflict. Arcudi and Harren have found an appropriate blending point, playing their humor very low-key and relatable, in contrast with horror elements that are larger-than-life and shocking. The result is both funny and scary and winningly unpredictable. Set in world that’s like our but just a bit off center, and replete with murderous demons, loveable losers, corpse-toting crocodiles and potentially possessed pet cats, Rumble is a comic that demands, and deserves, your attention.
[Read Rumble #1 on comiXology]
HARRIS SMITH is a Brooklyn-based comics and media professional. In addition to his role as a Senior Production Coordinator at comiXology, he edits several comics anthologies, including Jeans and Felony Comics, under the banner of Negative Pleasure Publications. He’s also the host of the weekly radio show Negative Pleasure on Newtown Radio.