Jon's Comic Book: Phil Hester, Mike Huddleson and Gary Peterson, The Coffin

I purchased The Coffin at the UNC Ram's Head Bookstore for two dollars on the passing resemblance it has to an Exray Factory project which is under development. I read it the day I bought it, probably as a way of avoiding one or another of the unpleasant tasks associated with writing my Master's Thesis.



The Coffin is a peculiar bird. In it, Dr Ashtar Ahmed constructs a kind of robotic suit of armor which is able to contain a man's soul and prevent it from leaving the mortal coil, even after the body dies. As you might expect, Ashtar's funding comes from a crooked old billionaire who has already extended his life by decades using organ transplants of questionable legality and who is looking for a more permanent solution. Just as Ashtar is zeroing in on the solution to the problem, he experiences, if I remember correctly, a crisis of conscience and the forces of evil, in this case his boss, attempt to take the suit by force. The inevitable logic of the comic book comes into play here, and the end result is that a dying Dr Ahmed manages to crawl his way into the suit, forestalling his spiritual death and giving him a chance to seek revenge. This is all after, of course, he has a near death experience in which the devil appears and mocks his scientific world view and his selfish ways.

The comic book's strangeness is matched only by its vagueness. Is this the God of Christianity Dr Ahmed meets? Is he damned because he is a Muslim, or are we supposed to assume that since he is named Ashtar, that the comic is aiming a jibe at more obscure spirituality? That portions of the comic resemble Chic Tracks is undeniable, but we are never sure what we are trying to be scared into. Further complicating matters is the presence of Dr Ahmed's gay friend, who the comic seems ambivalent about in the "Girl, interrupted" sense of the word. The ending of the comic, which I will not reveal, obviously, is itself a bit ambiguous.

These minor philosophical critiques aside, The Coffin's character design shines. The usual convention in which villains follow a variation on the theme of the hero is followed with some spectacular results, and even minor variations on the suit are pulled of with panache. The writing, at the level of character, is also very well executed for such a short one-shot, and the characters are all fairly interesting and memorable, although they do read something like those found in a television pilot.

In short, it was worth two bucks and an hour.

Rating: 5/10
Shall I Keep It?: Stephen should borrow it.

Jon_, JonComicBook_