Review: Freelance Blues issues 3 & 4
FREELANCE BLUES
by Ian Daffern and Mike Leone. Art by Vicki Tierney
Issue 3 – 26pg; Issue 4 – 26pg
Available at freelanceblues.com
You get up, you go to work. You expect little change, and if one or two interesting things happen, it makes your day exciting, or terrible, or perfect. For Lance, the monster-fighting everyman at the heart of Freelance Blues, fighting terrifying monsters is the routine, and having expectations shattered is somewhat the norm. For a book series that is rapidly approaching its conclusion, I began to wonder before cracking open Issue 3 how many more surprises Daffern and Leone had up their sleeves.
Where we last left Lance Bunkman he was on his way across the country to be with his grandfather and two sisters, whom he supports with a string of low-pay freelance jobs that invariably end with him fighting some giant insect, or yeti, or zombie, or army of bewitched garden gnomes, or… well, you get the idea. The character is a little tired, and hurt, but there’s a heart behind every conversation he makes to the girls back home and you never question what brings him to get back to work the next day. Lance is as likable as ever, and Daffern and Leone have hit their stride in writing his bizarre circumstances as though they were the most normal in the world.
What didn’t strike me in my first review and hits me broadly in the face now is just how much these two guys can get done in 26 pages. They’ve boiled the Freelance Blues story machine to such a degree of acceptable lunacy that they can get away with launching right in to stranger and stranger encounters almost immediately, and still have time to flesh out the personal relationships between Lance and his twin sisters.
I want to say that Issue 3 offers the least interesting monster encounter to date, but I can’t fault the guys for a seemingly bottomless reservoir of originality. As issues of FLB continue, I’m sure they’ll eventually hit some classic-horror cliche that maybe doesn’t please everyone, but each iteration is always presented within a hilarious and original enough framework that shows that these guys really know their way around a monster story. Issue 4 makes up for any lapse of interest for this reviewer by exploring the monstrous possibilities of a Kobe beef ranch that lets patrons “experience the life of a cow.” Yeah, just let that one take you.
Vicki Tierney’s art is on point as always, offering some of the most exciting multi-panel work I have ever seen in an independent comic. In these issues we get to see more of Lance’s family and his trademark sneer and jawline shows its lineage, giving me a sense that Vicki is no mere hired gun, and she cares enough about her panels to fine-tune every expression.
The shining moments of FLB3 &4 are the brief-but-beautiful interactions Lance has with his sisters in phone conversations cut short, or looking at maps of jobs they have plotted out for him all across the continental U.S.A., bringing the relationship to such genuine and sweet focus that I can’t help but think “what a nice thing for them to do.” A monologue mid-issue 4 that wedges all of Bunkman’s job-hate into an just-ill-fitting-enough-to-be-charming Hamlet homage reminds us that the guy is not just family-oriented, and has enough personal layers that the fact that he keeps on these job quests is a stronger testament to his character than any narrator could have offered.
My only moment of fatigue happened in between FLB3 & 4, when I realized that a pre-determined list of part time jobs could lead to a lot of episodic repetition. Lance’s sudden appearance on a cattle farm made me lose touch for only a moment, as I was hoping for more of the driving, more of the phone calls, the in-between stuff that really shines.
While it would be a crime for FLB to become a series of one-issue monster gags, the labels on the front page remind me constantly that Daffern and Leone know what they’re doing. Each of these is an issue of 6, and every step brings us a little closer to understanding what it is that forces Lance to always be employed by the forces of evil (a mystery the twins start exploring that really got me excited). While the tone of this review may seem a little middle-ground, you must remember that I can’t look at FLB as stand-alone books anymore, because it is definitely a book that will standout as a strong, complete work when it is finished, with each page keeping you feeling anything but routine.
Sunday Paper: Ode by Daniel Perry, part 4 of 4.
Molly
Well, what do you know? I thought. Martin is human.
When he started to cry I sat down on the bed, and immediately, he keeled over. His head landed in my lap.
“Oh my God. Oh, God. It’s my fault,” he moaned, tears on my jeans and his chest heaving. “I killed him!”
I took him by the shoulders.
“No, you didn’t.”
“Easy for you to say,” he sniffed. “Paul jumped because even his oldest friend walked out on him.”
How melodramatic. And wrong.
“Martin, you said you just wanted to remember being kids. Right?”
He sat up and put his hands to his eyes, correcting the aberration, this sudden show of emotion. He stretched his cheeks as he wiped them. He nodded.
“I think he decided to be a kid again,” I said.
Martin dried his nose on his sleeve. His two hundred-dollar sleeve.
“It was a mistake,” I said. “It wasn’t suicide.”
Martin clenched his fists.
“What’s it matter?” he snarled. “Everyone’s decided already.”
“Not everyone.”
I took the notebook from the desk.
“I remember jumping off the bridge,” I read, “with Martin. We’re not friends anymore, which I feel bad about, but–”
I looked at Martin. He held his breath.
“–now, with Dad gone, that’s all I want to keep. The rest of my youth has faded, been thrown under a blanket. I can’t make sense of it. Most of it, I can’t even remember. All I have now are summer afternoons, laying our towels on the banks, walking to the bridge and jumping. Freefalling.”
Martin reached for the notebook.
“Let me see that,” he said.
I pulled back and shielded it with my body.
“I can’t believe–”
“Run with what you have.”
“You think that’s best?” he asked.
I nodded.
“You’re talking about the good parts, when you were kids, and you never suggest that he killed himself.”
Martin stared off, through the poster on the wall. Reggie Lewis. Paul’s favourite NBA player. We were all kids when he died.
“I should have read the stories.”
“You already had your mind made up.”
He inhaled and gathered himself, looking first out the window.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
And then, ever the taskmaster, he stood up. He looked at the watch on the bed.
“Okay,” he said. “Your turn. What will you say tomorrow?”
I took my speech from the desk – three pages, typed the night before – and read aloud about the memories we had made. Undergrad, Teacher’s College, China, and even Currie, Ontario.
“I know that he didn’t want to die,” I said. “This is just a terrible twist of fate. Like Reggie, Paul would have said.”
A useful cliché. A relatable example. And now, to wow them. Just like the public speaking people teach:
“He knew that he could be really good. He had written so much, and finally, he was ready to put the work in. It was magical, and for once, he was excited.
“Awakening.
“That’s how I’ll remember Paul.”
I looked up from my papers. I hadn’t cried at all.
“It’s good,” Martin said.
We knew what to expect before we finished writing. People had lined up out the funeral home door for visitation, so Gail moved the service to the church. Today half the pews seat Paul’s extended family, and the teachers from Currie High School and most of his students. In the back are a lot of those small-town types, who met Paul maybe once, maybe when he was ten, but who still can’t imagine not being here.
“He was only twenty-eight,” they all whisper. “Such a shame.”
I sit onstage, behind the curtain, between an industrial-sized trash can and Martin’s empty chair, watching his mechanical song. He says his speech word for word and never looks down, even better than he did in the mirror yesterday.
When he steps away, each silent second tamps the crowd, and when he’s finally out of sight he exhales. It betrays the weight it carries.
The minister takes Martin’s place. He leans over the microphone, “And now, I’d like to call Paul’s girlfriend, Molly Davis.”
Martin flashes a miniature thumbs up as he passes. It’s corny but I know it’s sincere. I edge between him and a cage of red dodge-balls, but then I turn back, to the trash can. I drop my speech in. From my skirt pocket, I pull out the journal.
“Molly, no,” Martin whispers. “Paul didn’t know what to leave out.”
On the stage I rest the green book on the podium, and I turn to a story, The Jade Nightingale. I take a deep breath and I open my mouth. All that comes out is a sob. I drop my head into my arms on the wood.
Martin taps his watch backstage.
Nine minutes.
My throaty gasp echoes through the speakers. It rattles the walls.
By Daniel Perry.