“My man Chippy Z is the opposite of Jeff Lemire:
I LOVE Lemire’s creator-owned stuff, and his big property stuff is okay.
I LOVE Chippy’s big property stuff, and his creator-owned stuff is okay.
I do really like Chip’s artwork in Public Domain. I mean, I like it in everything, I have some ON MY WALL, IN MY HOME. It’s a portrait of “Bat-Hero” who looks a little like Batman but with more bodacious thighs.
And the story here is good, too, I think the thing I don’t LOVE about it is that it feels pretty decompressed.
The story of a comics creator getting screwed out of a bajillion dollars isn’t a new one, especially to comics fans, especially of the type that’d pick up a book like Public Domain, so the speed with which this plays out is a little bit less Wally West, a little bit more…Walter Gripp? (Walter Gripp is this guy from The Martian Chronicles who was left on Mars alone. He’s just a regular-ass guy who also is named Walter. I couldn’t think of another Walter right off. Walt Flanagan? Disney? I guess ANY Walter other than West will do here).
This first volume ends where I would’ve liked to have been about halfway through.
That said, I DO like the characterizations in here, and there are some unique twists to the classic comics creator story. I won’t ruin it here, the negotiations (and reasons behind them) are kind of different, and they bring something unexpected and very human to the story. It makes me wish a kind of person existed that I’m not sure does, but that’s okay, that’s what comics do, right? Some people wish a Mister America existed who threw a big plate at people, and I wish there were comics creators who loved and found joy in their characters the way some of the folks in Public Domain did (also, they could get paid, that’d be fine).”