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Heeb Issue #13 : In the BeginningPope Impious
Comic Art Manifesto PulpHope
PulpHope (AdHouse Books, 2007), modern mythmaker and comic-art giant Paul Pope’s new 250-page graphic monograph is part autobiography, part retrospective and part pornographic sketchbook. The oversized volume covers work ranging from Pope’s influential indie comics—like One Trick Rip Off or his recent “sci-fi Philip K. Dick/Blade Runner” trilogy (Heavy Liquid, 100%, Batman Year 100) from DC/Vertigo—to original album art to fashion installations he created for Diesel. Essays by the artist accompany each section on topics like erotica, traditional Japanese Ukiyo-E printmaking and Pope’s own childhood drawings.
Throughout its richly colored pages, PulpHope juxtaposes earnest ponderings like, “I think it is rather more telling to find out when a person is from. When are you from? I am from that Ohio in the 1970s. It is a place which doesn’t exist anymore,” with psychedelicious imagery, such as an exquisite 12-color silkscreen created for Diesel don Renzo Rosso’s 51st birthday. The company asked Pope to design a poster as a surprise birthday present for Rosso, and create a store installation for last year’s fall Fashion Week campaign. Diesel said Pope could do whatever he wanted for both projects, “so long as it was sexy and rock ’n’ roll—something kind of trashy-glam with a science-fiction atmosphere,” says Pope. In other words, as long as it was just like his comics.
In Pope’s work, he is an effortless straddler—between writer and artist, mainstream and alternative, Western and Eastern. He’s created an oeuvre by destroying distinctions and creating worlds out of overlap. Along the way, he earned himself throngs of adoring fans and imitators.
But Pope always infuses his comics with heart-smashing love stories. 100%, his masterpiece-to-date, is a sci-fi romance graphic novel, interweaving the stories of six people in a near-future downtown Manhattan. Summing up Pope’s gestalt, John, the novel’s protagonist, says, “I don’t want to die. But if I gotta die, first I’m gonna live. I gonna peel life like fruit and use it up.”
And so PulpHope is just as much futrospective as retro, including a generous helping of never-printed preview goodies. Says Pope, “I see PulpHope as a mental pause between my large body of work in mainstream U.S. comics and a future body for First Second Books (Battling Boy) and French publisher Dargaud (La Bionica).” Battling Boy will be a two-book, 400-page fairy tale revolving around a young hero who faces off against demons in the city of Monstropolis. La Bionica is pure sci-fi in the vein of Heavy Liquid or 100%, but with more action, robots and hard sci-fi concepts.
“My hope is that in the way Alan Moore and Warren Ellis used old Victorian characters for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Planetary,” he says, “I can do something similar with the clichéd ’60s sci-fi characters from cheesy Euro cinema and pulp fiction—outrageous and sinister stuff with a bit of a sexy satire, too.” Living up to the legends is quite an undertaking, but after PulpHope, Pope’s seat in the comics pantheon is secure.
Throughout its richly colored pages, PulpHope juxtaposes earnest ponderings like, “I think it is rather more telling to find out when a person is from. When are you from? I am from that Ohio in the 1970s. It is a place which doesn’t exist anymore,” with psychedelicious imagery, such as an exquisite 12-color silkscreen created for Diesel don Renzo Rosso’s 51st birthday. The company asked Pope to design a poster as a surprise birthday present for Rosso, and create a store installation for last year’s fall Fashion Week campaign. Diesel said Pope could do whatever he wanted for both projects, “so long as it was sexy and rock ’n’ roll—something kind of trashy-glam with a science-fiction atmosphere,” says Pope. In other words, as long as it was just like his comics.
In Pope’s work, he is an effortless straddler—between writer and artist, mainstream and alternative, Western and Eastern. He’s created an oeuvre by destroying distinctions and creating worlds out of overlap. Along the way, he earned himself throngs of adoring fans and imitators.
But Pope always infuses his comics with heart-smashing love stories. 100%, his masterpiece-to-date, is a sci-fi romance graphic novel, interweaving the stories of six people in a near-future downtown Manhattan. Summing up Pope’s gestalt, John, the novel’s protagonist, says, “I don’t want to die. But if I gotta die, first I’m gonna live. I gonna peel life like fruit and use it up.”
And so PulpHope is just as much futrospective as retro, including a generous helping of never-printed preview goodies. Says Pope, “I see PulpHope as a mental pause between my large body of work in mainstream U.S. comics and a future body for First Second Books (Battling Boy) and French publisher Dargaud (La Bionica).” Battling Boy will be a two-book, 400-page fairy tale revolving around a young hero who faces off against demons in the city of Monstropolis. La Bionica is pure sci-fi in the vein of Heavy Liquid or 100%, but with more action, robots and hard sci-fi concepts.
“My hope is that in the way Alan Moore and Warren Ellis used old Victorian characters for League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Planetary,” he says, “I can do something similar with the clichéd ’60s sci-fi characters from cheesy Euro cinema and pulp fiction—outrageous and sinister stuff with a bit of a sexy satire, too.” Living up to the legends is quite an undertaking, but after PulpHope, Pope’s seat in the comics pantheon is secure.
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