As I mentioned on Monday’s post, this past weekend I attended HeroesCon in Charlotte, North Carolina.  Last year at HeroesCon 2008, one of my personal highlights was meeting artist Jim Rugg.  (Unfortunately, Rugg was not on the 2009 roster of attendees.)  Jim Rugg is a talented illustrator, gifted cartoonist, and all-around nice guy.  His main claim to fame is Street Angel, a comic series published by Slave Labor Graphics about a skateboarding, samurai sword-wielding, kung-fu fightin’ street urchin who dispenses justice to the odd assortment of meglomaniacal, rogue geologists; luchador mask-wearing Incan gods; basketball-playing ninjas; and time-displaced pirates who terrorize her city of Wilkesborough.  However, the series also introduced an ally for Street Angel whom Rugg and his writing collaborator, Brian Maruca, have subsequently spun off on his own:  Afrodisiac.

Set during the 1970s, the Afrodisiac stories feature Alan Diesler, aka Afrodisiac, a Black pimp who not only runs a stable of Wilkesborough’s finest prostitutes, but who also acts as the city’s last line of defense against some of its more bizarre menaces.  His nemeses include a softball-playing Count Dracula, who siphons the blood of Afrodisiac’s hookers in order to increase his rec league stats; a mind-controlling computer named Megapute; and the advance scout for an all-female army of Venusian invaders (an adventure which brings Afrodisiac into direct confrontation with his old tag-team wrestling partner, President Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon).

If this all sounds like some sort of pop culture fever dream, then welcome to the world of Afrodisiac!  Rugg and Maruca intentionally create a convoluted, and conflicting, backstory for Afrodisiac, and that, combined with the grab-bag of absurd scenarios, would appear to work against Afrodisiac’s favor to make the stories impenetrable and far too cute for their own good.  However, the short stories are dense, fun, action-packed reads that don’t require any prior knowledge of Afrodisiac’s exploits.

Also to their credit, Rugg and Maruca don’t mock the Blaxploitation genre.  Given Afrodisiac’s occupation as a pimp, his double-entendre name, massive ‘fro, and the bizarre, over-the-top situations Rugg and Maruca place him in, one might expect yet another jokey, one-note Blaxploitation parody.  While the creators do have fun with the concept, they always play the character and the events absolutely straight.  Afrodisiac is a man facing impossible situations with steely resolve and righteous fury.  The overall look and style of the Afrodisiac short stories successfully evoke the feel of a Blaxploitation film and the creators’ ear for authentic sounding dialogue is pitch perfect. If some mad scientist spliced together the brains of  Jack Hill and Jack Kirby, the result would be Afrodisiac.  When I spoke to Jim Rugg at HeroesCon in 2008, his depth of knowledge and genuine appreciation of Blaxploitation was immediately apparent.  He effortlessly riffed on the little-seen film, Candy-Tangerine Man, and hipped me to author Chester Himes, whose novel “Cotton Comes To Harlem” was adapted into the proto-Blaxploitation film of the same name in 1970.

To date,  Afrodisiac’s longest story was his debut in Street Angel, which showed the reader Afrodisiac’s ultimate fate in the present as a old man who still has a way with the ladies.  However, the longest story featuring the character in his prime was an 18-page, limited edition, black & white ashcan that Rugg sold (and sold out of) at HeroesCon 2008.  I was lucky enough to snag one of those editions from the artist himself.  I was impressed by the craft, wit and style that was present within those pages.  I was gobsmacked by the book’s fidelity to the genre and the wild, anything-goes adventure that seamlessly moved from smoky, backroom craps games to James Bondian, sci-fi death traps  It was a real inspiration to me, and helped me realize what I wanted WORLD OF HURT to be.  Besides those issues, Afrodisiac has only appeared in a handful of short, full-color stories , each between five to eight pages in length. (Cleverly, the full-color strips are colored like ’70s era comics.  And, yes, I will steal Rugg’s coloring style if I ever do WORLD OF HURT in color.)  Afrodisiac’s next appearance seems to be an homage to the giant monster movies of the 1950s.  Rugg also has a fairly extensive gallery of illustrations and mock covers featuring Afrodisiac which can be found on his website.  The Afrodisiac tales definitely need to be compiled into a single edition.  It would be essential reading for any fan of Blaxploitation or comic book storytelling, in general.

AFRODISIAC LINKS:

Jim Rugg’s Website

Afrodisiac Vs. Dracula

Afrodisiac Vs. The Venusian Invasion Vs. Richard M. Nixon

- JEP

Several years ago, I was leading an art critique.  As the students placed their work on the board, we went through each one, and I invited the other students to weigh in with their opinions.  One student’s statement immediately struck me for its simplicity, clarity, and truth.  In appraising another’s work, he said: “It makes me want to draw.”   When I really enjoy someone’s art, it inspires me to pick up a pencil and create.  It’s like someone captured your muse on a page.  Until this week, I carried that statement with me as the highest praise an artist can make about another artist’s work.  Then I saw this image by cartoonist, Evan “Doc” Shaner, on his blog:

Whatever Evan Shaner saw in my strip, it moved him enough to not only draw, but he drew one of my characters!   No one’s ever done that for me before, mostly because I never really created anything for the public before.  It just absolutely floored me, because Shaner not only drew it, but he drew the HELL out of it.  I love Pastor’s expression, the brilliant composition, the use of the single, flat yellow that is synonymous with the site, and the small, white accents to pop the objects that had a shine to them.  As is evident in the image above, Shaner is an avid student of classic illustrators like Alex Toth, Jack Cole, and their spiritual descendants like Darwyn Cooke and Jeff Parker**, so for him to find merit in my work really meant a lot.

- JEP

**Jeff Parker’s not just a great writer.  Parker illustrated his self-published graphic novel, Interman, which had one of the best surprise endings I’ve read in years.