What I Am Reading: The Bulletproof Coffin

Warren Ellis' Planetary.
Grant Morrison's Animal Man.
Alan Moore's...majority of his work...

I like comics that play around with a meta narrative and I've made no secret about it. Subversion of reality, historical metaphors, character analogues--these are things that I love to read in comics and The Bulletproof Coffin delivers all of that in full.


Writer David Hine and artist Shaky Kane bring us this delightful comic about a man waking from his boring life and entering the world of sexy action he finds in his favorite comic books.

Steve Newman works for the city. When somebody dies and doesn't bequeath any of their belongings, Steve has to haul the valueless possessions to the dump. As a pop culture junkie, he enjoys his job because he gets to scavenge anything he wants to keep. One day, he finds a comic that shouldn't exist as well as the costume of his favorite old superhero, Coffin Fly.

Steve begins to take on the identity of Coffin Fly and follows clues hidden in mysterious old comics in an effort to save all of humanity. He travels through portals to a post apocalyptic future, meets all of his favorite comic book characters, fights Shadow Men, dinosaurs, a platoon of zombie soldiers from Viet Nam, and even falls in love.

The high concept of this series is that all the old comics that Steve finds are pastiche's of classic pulp comics and Hine and Kane have inserted themselves into the story as the creators of these comics. In the fictional history of this book, these comics, published by Golden Nugget comics, were bought out by another company aptly named Big 2 Comics who promptly fired the creators and killed the characters. The comics Steve finds are all published and numbered after they were canceled, meaning they don't officially exist, yet inside each of them lies clues to the fate of mankind.

These comics, with titles like Red Wraith, The Shield of Justice, The Unforgiving Eye, and Ramona: Queen of the Stone Age, are all wonderfully represented. In each issue of The Bulletproof Coffin, the narrative jumps back and forth between Steve's story and the old Golden Nugget comics and, eventually, the two begin to collide.


"--Am I a man, dreaming I'm a Coffin Fly--or am I a Coffin Fly, dreaming--"

The play between the comic book pastiche and story narrative is reminiscent of Alan Moore's acclaimed work on Supreme, which is easily one of my favorite works of Moore.

I was wonderfully surprised by the quality of this book because I'm completely unfamiliar with both of the creators. UK comic readers are probably familiar with the art of Shaky Kane, who has worked regularly in UK comics magazines like 2000 A.D. I've never read any of his work before but I really loved what I saw in The Bulletproof Coffin. Some of his line work can be kind of dirty and there's some loose anatomy but there's a real pop flare to his compositions and character work that is very reminiscent of Jack Kirby. He also utilizes a beautiful coloring style full off bright, primary colors. It's the kind of coloring you don't see regularly these days except for in work by Mike Allred.

I'm only familiar with writer David Hine from seeing his name on some scattered low profile Marvel books that I have no interest in reading. There's a lot of imagination in this story and although the narrative is purposefully fractured and jumbled, it's very easy to follow. Most importantly, The Bulletproof Coffin delivers a perfect ending. It's an ending that sums up the intent of the book, the history of comics, and the story plot very succinctly in a way that is both obviously simple and thought provoking.

I really loved this book. It's the kind of book that I wish I would have written, but now have no need to because it could never compare to The Bulletproof Coffin.