Archive for April, 2005
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Goldenboy
April 11
So, granted, I’m not the utmost authority on comics. I read ‘em a lot when I was a kid and I still like to read them from time to time. Most of what I read now, as far as graphic novels and the like go, are manga, but sometimes a good American comic/graphic novel catches my eye and I have to read ‘em. The Sin City books were that way. Same for The Crow. Recently, it was the same for Goldenboy, by my friend Max Riffner.
I know I already sound biased. Believe me, I’m not, though. If something sucks, I tell whoever did it what I think, friend or not. Same for if something is great. I read the prologue to Goldenboy several months ago and thought it would be a great story, so I read it as soon as I could to do this review of it. Max has the honor of being the first review on this site (some honor).
Anyway, the story’s the important part. Goldenboy is the story of an aging boxer in Max’s hometown of Omaha, Nebraska. He once had the chance of making it really big. He lost touch with his family in his quest for a life in the ring and it really knocked the wind out of him. Years later his eyes open again and he sees what he’s become. He decides to get back in touch with his daughter and open his own gym. He even wants to get another fight lined up, strap on his gloves and give it a last shot.
Goldenboy, real name Cole Parker, seems to be blessed. The gym is starting to be a success, his daughter and he have made up, and he’s ready and retrained for his coming fight. Everything is lining up in his favor. He just doesn’t know of all the evil in the neighborhood.
A young thug named “Spider” is out to make trouble for himself and ends up on the wrong side of Cole’s temper. In the end, Cole has only one option for cleaning up the city and life he’s known and it ends up costing him dearly. The neighborhood is grateful, though. Repeatedly characters remark on how Cole Parker saved this neighborhood, how he cleaned it up.
On just pure story, this book is well worth buying. Max has a great style of writing for this media. He just uses a few words, a very sparse commentary and little dialog that helps you feel like you’re discovering the story on your own. His artwork is very comfortable, too, so you feel at home in the images. I did, at least.
The limited color palette is a nice touch, too, keeping the whole thing tied really well together, with obvious transitions between subjects. Shots of the city or of buildings are black-and-white photographs, showing how they’re not really characters in the story, they’re just the backdrop.
The real characters, Cole and Spider and the rest of the neighbors are more fleshed out, more warm and vibrant than the scenery around them (which is quite often just white or a solid color, creating a great sense of space), forcing you to focus on them.
The whole piece has a very cinematic feel to it, which I really like in anything I read, comic or novel. If I can’t picture it, see how it’s all coming together, I don’t really care to read it.
There were a few places where I had trouble following who a character was in a scene, but nothing too distressing (sometimes it seemed like the two main characters, Spider and Cole, were drawn to similarly) or too distracting so you couldn’t follow the story. After a second reading, everyone fell into place.
So, my official opinion is to go pick it up. Max is offering his first graphic novel in two formats. You can pick it all up as four PDFs through ebookopolis or you can read it online as a webcomic through bitpass.
The Rat
April 9
I’ve been here for about ten years. I came in in 1953 and it’s the spring of 1963 now. I’m in Alcatraz, the Rock. No, I wasn’t part of the riots. I’ve been a good prisoner. I’m part of a new company now. One that involves bars and doors that lock from one side only.
This is the fourth or fifth time I’ve tried to write this all down. Before I’d start and someone would take my papers away, or I’d just get all frustrated with trying to write it all down. I managed to secret it all away this time, though.
The papers are hidden in a Bible I keep in my cell. It’s one of the few things they let me keep without going through it every five or six days. I write a little bit each night between dinner and lights out. I think I’ve written down everything that’s been important to my life.
I don’t know why or if anyone will ever read this. I doubt it. Not until after I die, that is. I got life in prison, not that it’s much of a life. I guess it’s better than having a date with Old Sparky, but not by much. Who knows? There’s talk that the prison might shut down in a few years. That we’d all be moved off to other jails, some of us set out on parole, if we’ve been good and all. I’ve been good. I’m a company man. I don’t cause trouble.
I’m still a company man for the Mob, too. I get word every once in awhile, when someone else gets caught. Ray is still in the midst of it all, keeping New York under a tight control. He’s almost eighty now, but some how he keeps going. I hope I’m that active when I’m eight. Actually, I just hope I make it to eighty.
The new guys that come in tell me how everything’s changed. They say it’s not like I remember. It’s more about drugs now than anything. The hookers and pimps work for themselves. The guns are still big, but gambling isn’t worth the time it takes to make sure the casino brings in enough to skim off of. And there hasn’t really been anything like bootlegging since the Prohibition was repealed. The Mob as I knew it is dying out.
They tell me how young all of the new recruits are. Kids fourteen and fifteen years old selling drugs at their schools. They say that a quarter of Los Angeles is overseen by a twenty-one-year-old hood that got his start in San Diego, running cocaine. I can hardly believe it. When I was out there, he would have still been running messages and pouring drinks.
Things don’t change much in here, though. From the first day in, I’ve been called by my number. Prisoner number 235505 at your service. Most of the inmates call me “Old Man” or “Kid,” depending on how they know of me. Guess it’s not too bad to be somewhat anonymous.
The Mob doesn’t really like people writing down histories of it. They’d rather keep their secrets to themselves and not have any records of what goes on. My conscience just wouldn’t let me sleep with all of this in my head, though. I kept having the dreams and screaming myself awake. The writing helps. I don’t have the dream any longer, not as often at least. I think the last time I had it was when I started writing all of this down, a year and a half ago.
Like I said, the Mob doesn’t really like people writing down their stories, telling what went on. I can’t help it, though. I guess I’m just a rat.
Once I was thoroughly awake enough to drive, I decided not to bother with a room in Modesto. It was only a coupe of hours west until I came to San Francisco and I could drive that before getting a room. So I got back on the highway and drove for two hours, coming at last to that city of hills.
I found a small motel just inside the city limits that didn’t look like it had too good of a memory. I paid the clerk for a couple of nights, and threw in an extra day’s pay to make sure he’d forget. He looked at me and nodded and marked room twenty-five as being rented out to a Mr. John Doe. I thanked him and took the room key.
I went to my room, stashed the rifle under the bed and lay down to take a nap. I hadn’t had a real rest in a couple of days, sleeping in the car didn’t count and with the two nightmares I had had, I wasn’t feeling all the fond of closing my eyes. I did, though, and was asleep in just a few minutes.
I was back in the dream again. Scrambling, trying to hide. The door opens and it’s not Max this time. No, first it’s Simon’s face, then Lucca’s. Then the face morphs into Manny’s, then Ray’s. Finally it turns into Sonny and the Mooch. Each of them are bleeding from their eyes and ears. They all ask me “Why?” and then switch to the next face. After the Mooch, the face draws in on itself and turns into my own. That’s when I heard a click and opened my eyes.
When I opened my eyes, I was peering up the barrel of the hunting rifle I had just bought the day before. At the other end of it was the desk clerk. I thought for an insane second about trying to take the gun from him, then decided it wasn’t worth the risk. If I got caught, I got caught. No one was going to help me, but I didn’t have to make it easier on them.
“Why you got a gun under the bed?” he asked. He wasn’t from California. He had too much of a hillbilly twang to his voice. Maybe he was an Okie. There were still a lot of them around at that time.
“Uh. It’s for protection,” I answered. I knew he’d never believe me, but it was the truth. I wasn’t wrong. The gun didn’t waver. He didn’t put it down. Instead he turned his head toward the door a bit and called to the girl standing outside.
“Mabel, get your ass in here.” Mabel came in, a sweet, if stupid, looking girl of maybe sixteen. “Check his wallet.” She nodded and went to rummage in my pants, which were hanging on the dresser. She pulled out my wallet and thumbed through it, pulling out what was left of the two thousand dollars I hadn’t spent on the car. She probably pull out about fifteen hundred dollars.
“Money, Chris,” she said.
Chris looked at her and said, “No shit, Mabel. Get his keys, check the car for anything valuable.” When he said “valuable” it came out more like “valable.” Definitely some backwoods hick.
I just lay on the bed as she took the keys from the top of the dresser and left out the room door. Chris never wavered with the gun. He held it on me until she came back carrying the ammunition and the pistol. She didn’t bring anything else as there wasn’t anything else to bring in. She told Chris that and he nodded.
“Alright, you. Why you have two guns? You in trouble with the law or something?” His “something” was a “sumpin.”
“I just like guns,” I said. “And they’re good protection. I carry a lot of money. I mean, you see what your girlfriend pulled out of my wallet. I keep a gun so I don’t get robbed.”
He laughed at this. “Did you a bum fuck of a lot of good, huh?” Mabel cringed when he said “fuck,” but he didn’t notice. “Get your ass out of bed and put on your pants.” He motioned toward the pants with the barrel of the rifle slightly.
I slid over to the far edge of the bed and put my feet on the floor. I half expected him to shoot me as soon as I stood up, but he didn’t. I took the three steps over to the dresser and pulled my pants down off of it. I put in the first leg, then the second, then pulled them up. After I had buttoned and zipped them, and fixed the belt, Chris said, “Alright, bucko. Now, you’re going to tell me why I shouldn’t just shoot you here and now. I could just say you pulled a gun on my Mabel here when she was cleaning your room. Or you flashed your pecker at her. I’d be alright in shooting you then, wouldn’t I? Yeah, wouldn’t nobody mind me offin’ some pervert who goes around springing his willy on innocent girls.”
He seemed like he was halfway considering doing just that, regardless of what I told him. I told him I was a salesman, though. That I had all that money because I had just come to San Francisco to attend a meeting, a sales meeting, a national sales meeting, and needed the money to smooze some of the other salesmen. I wanted them to buy from me. Some such bullshit. He didn’t buy it.
“Alright, alright,” I said, frustrated. “Just shoot me. Or call the cops. Or whatever. I don’t care anymore.” I sat down on the bed and I heard him leave the room and lock the door behind him. Mabel had left before I had answered with my salesman story. Turns out she had gone to call the cops on me. When they got there, they saw the guns, the money, the car. They managed to put two and two together most of the way, and I finally confessed the whole to them about Max. I never went into any details on how or why, just that I had done it and had a good reason. I checked into prison a week later, no trial necessary.
I drove slow to Modesto, too. A normally five hour trip ended up taking me seven hours and I didn’t get into town until relatively late. The car I was in had an AM radio, so I listened to the news and weather from Vegas.
It hadn’t taken long for the police to find the two dead men in the desert. A passing driver had noticed them and called the police as soon as she got home. The police had no idea how they had died or why they were out there in the desert, but they had the first thug’s gun and some tire prints. They had every confidence they’d be able to solve the murder before the end of the month.
They had also found Max’s body. His casino had been expecting him to come in to work around nine-thirty that night and he had never shown. Around midnight they sent someone over to see where had gotten himself off to and they found his body. They called the police and, of course, they had everything under control. No mention of Mob ties or any suspicion of the two crimes being related. I drove on, feeling a lot better about everything.
I reached Modesto around three in the morning, having stopped for lunch and dinner and to pick up the gun and ammunition. I didn’t even think about trying to find a motel, so I just pulled over into a parking lot for a supermarket and lay down in the back seat.
I had the dream again. I was scrambling for a hiding spot in my closet, but this time when the door opened, it wasn’t a gun that looked in at me. This time it was Max that looked in. He looked at me and then blood started to pour out of his nose and eyes and ears. He opened his mouth and screamed “Why? Why were you always better!?” at me and blood streamed out of his mouth, too. I screamed at him in the dream, screamed that it wasn’t my fault, and must have screamed myself awake. I sat up, the sunlight just beginning to peak over the eastern horizon. I sat there for a few more minutes to make sure my head was clear, then I drove into town to see about a motel.
Like I said before, there’s about 275 miles between Vegas and L.A. and most of that is scrub desert. It’s only about four hours if you can get up a good run, but I didn’t want to call too much attention to myself. I drove forty-five the whole way and it took me six hours. I had passed through Barstow while the whole city slept and just pulled into Los Angeles proper around four in the morning. I pulled into a Super Eight motel and got a room for the rest of the night. I paid the attendant for three nights, but I knew I’d probably only use the one.
He gave me the room key and I drove the car around to my designated parking space. I went into the room, locked the door behind me, sank to the floor and cried.
I don’t know what I was really crying about. I wasn’t sad that Max was dead. I think it was just anger and frustration coming out of me. And the fact that my only family, the Mob, had turned it’s back to me. They couldn’t - wouldn’t - help me and there was nothing I could do about it. I had broken their rules and so I was left to fend for myself.
My sobs died after a few minutes, maybe ten, and I stood up again. I was hungry, but I didn’t feel like going out again. Instead I stripped down and took a shower, then washed my clothes as well as I could in the sink. I didn’t have a lot of blood on me, just a few spots on the arm of my shirt from stabbing the first goon in the eye. Most of that came off but I decided to get rid of it. I used my room key to rip a hole in the arms of the shirt, then used my teeth and fingers to rip the sleeves off below the middle of the upper arm. They almost looked like short sleeves, except they weren’t hemmed or even. Oh well, I wasn’t trying to win any fashion awards.
I hung the clothes up on the shower curtain rod to dry and I lay down in the bed and went to sleep.
When I woke up, the maid was knocking on the door. I yelled at her to go away and she did. I laid down and went back to sleep again, but it was a fitful sleep.
I dreamed I was back in Vegas, back in the Flamingo. This time it was Max who was hunting me. I was trying to hide in my room. I was trying to force myself into the cubby hole behind the floor safe in my closet. I was sweating and scrambling at the heavy safe, trying to move it, but it wouldn’t budge. I could hear his footsteps outside the closet door, see his shadow under the edge of the door. The door starts to slide back and the closet is filled with a bright light. I squint against it, trying to get a good look at Max before he kills, but all I can see if the barrel of his gun, pointing down at me. He pulls the trigger.
I sat up in bed. I was covered in sweat and had thrown all of the sheets off of the bed. I had thrown a pillow to the other side of the room, too. Obviously I had been thrashing around in my sleep, fighting against dream safes and trying to hide from dead enemies. I didn’t even try to go back to sleep again.
Instead, I got up and took another shower to rinse off the horror sweat. My clothes were dry, so I dressed again and dropped the key off at the office. The day clerk, a much older man than the one that had been there the night before, asked me if I wanted my third day’s deposit back. I told him to keep it and see if he could forget I had been there. He gave me a funny look, then nodded and said he’d see what he could do.
I jumped in the car and left again, driving around Los Angeles looking for a safe spot.
I didn’t find any hideaways in Los Angeles. I know that with all the news about how crime-ridden of a town it is you won’t believe me, but I didn’t. The town just didn’t feel safe, so I moved on. I picked up another gun first, though. A Remington hunting rifle. And a few hundred rounds of ammunition for both guns. I wouldn’t need them, though. I decided to continue my journey through California. I started driving north towards Modesto. Ultimately I had aims on making it to Seattle or Canada. Try and get away from all of this mess in the desert.
Sonny didn’t have a car I could borrow. He didn’t want me in the casino any longer either. He gave me five thousand, told me to send it back to him through the Mob when I could and kicked me out. I didn’t have my clothes or anything. The Mooch handed me a pistol, though. A snub-nosed like I loved so much.
It was just now getting to be ten o’clock at night and I found a car dealer that was still open. I threw three thousand dollars at him and took the keys to a 1948 Ford Anglia from him. It was a bright canary yellow, but beggars can’t really be choosers. Neither can murderers on the run.
I took the car, gassed it up, and started driving for L.A.