Pah

Numminal Unna Stik

The sales figures for Seaguy read like the dropping Genoshan population:

#1—21,512
#2—18,581
#3—16,601
#4—12,739

After #3, five years ago, I signed a petition for more Seaguy, one of 610 to do so, or 3.7% of the final audience. As a consumer I demanded that I be allowed to buy. As a fan I demanded a special identity. The petition failed. Time Warner let Morrison and Stewart do more Seaguy because Morrison sells a lot of comics featuring Batman and Superman. So I am allowed to buy. Did I get what I asked for? Did I know what I was asking?

I worry that I will never get my collection containing all nine issues. Praise Shitsu Tonka.

What have other people been writing about Seaguy? The dull say “bat-shit crazy”. The bright mostly jog and klock. Is that you blogosphere? Is this me?

But there’s always hope.

Teatime Brutality (great name) writes about interpretation:

One of the things that makes Seaguy a challenge to navigate through is that it’s a mix of the symbolic and the “Just ‘cos.” The skeleton of Claudette on the first page obviously stands for the skeleton of a different fish altogether, but take something like… I dunno, the smoking Moai from the last mini. I don’t think we’re ‘meant’ to wiki Polynesian religious practises and apply the weight of the reference to the text, and I don’t think we’d get much out of it if we did.

It’s a little like what I was talking about with regard to Lynch films the other day - the unease they create by not letting the viewer know which absurd elements they should be trying to interpret as Clooos, and which they should just be going with as visual music.

I mention this here because in Slaves of Mickey Eye the art has picked up a similar uncertainty of interpretability.

(Though isn’t it significant that Seaguy gives the Easter Island heads cigarettes? By the time of Night at the Museum they’re chewing gum…)

Teatime goes on to name an important touchstone in understanding Seaguy (and a brilliant story to boot):

The perfect Doctor Who co-text to this issue is The Happiness Patrol. There’s so much in that story that would fit perfectly into Seaguy’s world. Fifi, Trevor Sigma, the Kandyman, Priscilla P and the rest of them are practically part of Seaguy’s world already. It’s got such a similar narrative logic and, for this middle mini, a similar theme.

(For “Seaguy’s world” read “Seaguy’s story”.)

The Challengers of the Unexpected made an interesting connection:

Julian: But I don’t think its ever referred to as XOO in this issue. It’s 1/2 an Animal on a Stick now.

T: […] Of course, it’s also the bubble gum the professor refers to as one half of what Mickey Eye created the world out of (the other element being Flame).

Julian: Oh definitely. “Am-Dek-Gum. GIDT”.

(Maybe. Maybe not. Let’s think about it.)

While in the comments of the Mindless Ones, Jonathan Burns makes an important discovery beneath the deepest gum layers:

I always love it when Grant extrapolates some fringe mythology into ripping drama. This time, the mythology is Intelligent Design. If you come upon a working pocket-watch in the middle of nowhere, oh very well, you might conclude that it had just now been puked up by a peacock, but for that to be any less arbitrary than that somebody designed and built it, you have to postulate a chain of causation back to the original mechanical dippy-duck, with V8 raptors roaming the plasticine plains, and isn’t that all a little harder to swallow? Sort of thing. It doesn’t really matter who’s right or wrong, what matters is to get Seaguy to have some thought of his own about it, even if it’s just, “I thought it was all science and history”.

(Seaguy? Who he? Maybe you?)

I’m still waiting for Davids Allison and Fiore to share their thoughts.

Keep reading everyone.