The One Trick Rip-Off and Deep Cuts

 

The One Trick Rip-Off and Deep Cuts is a group of stories based in a world of crime.  In The One Trick Rip-Off, we run into the heist genre where we are kind of forced to wonder, “is it really a good idea to steal from a thief?”  This where encounter a couple who have decided that they are going to pull one over on The One Tricks (a gang that puts other gangs to shame) and run away together, unfortunately they encounter some serious problems keeping them from getting their pay-off.  Deep cuts is a series of short comics based off of Paul Pope’s experimenting with the play between imagery and words, it varies in each comic.  The common bond between the short comics is that there is some form of a strong bond between the characters in each comic, overpowering love/attraction being the most common, but they are definitely not just sappy love stories.  What’s so great about this collection is that the author/illustrator, Paul Pope, forces you to pay attention to every word and every line drawn, because it will come into play later in the storyline.

            The One Trick Rip-Off, tells the story of Tubby and Vim and their grand plan to escape the city together.  Tubby, our “hero”, is a young guy living in a completely downtrodden, Los Angeles completely overrun by gangs and his girlfriend Vim.  Tubby is a low level member of The One Tricks, one of the most hardcore gangs out there.  Vim says it best when she says that the notorious gangs get its name because “they only know one trick”, but we don’t get the chance to find out what exactly that trick is until we’re a third of the way through the storyline. Vim, Tubby’s girlfriend, works at an Indian restaurant where she does deliveries on occasion.  The comic opens up in Tubby and Vim’s bedroom where Tubby is quizzing Vim on the territory lines of the major gangs in the city and this is where we get to see the lovebirds’ plan unfold.  At Tubby’s request, Vim recounts the plan to dope the One Tricks with Indian food doused in morphine, so that Tubby and Vim can run off with the thousands of dollars locked in a safe at the One Tricks’ hangout.  Vim is clearly unsure of the plan but Tubby reassures her and runs out to do a job with some of his fellow One Tricks.  This is where the trouble starts.  The job was supposed to be simple, picking up loaned money from another gang.  The other gang, the Moolah Muthas, light up the One Tricks like a Christmas tree.  Amidst all the gunfire, we get to see what exactly the “one trick” is that the One Tricks take pride in, mind control.  Tubby’s pals get shot to death and Tubby narrowly escapes, but with a ton of money, plus interest.  Tubby runs to the getaway car only to find out that he had been set-up by another one of his gang members.  He gets knocked out and left in the desert by another One Trick, appropriately named Tricky.  Tricky had found out about the plan and wanted to execute it himself.  Luckily for Tubby, he had his new found riches with him and hailed a cab back to the city to continue his plan.  When he shows up to the One Tricks’ hangout, it is nothing but bloodshed.  We meet the head honcho, Jesse, who has decided that he is going kill off everyone and run with his money.  Tubby, Tricky and Vim show up and a battle and chase ensue.  Tricky catches Jesse, kills him, and tries to run off with the money but Tubby is not going to let that happen.  After a serious rough and tumble and one hell of a fall through the roof of a condemned building, Tricky dies and Tubby and Vim realize that this plan was utter insanity.  The story comes to a close with the two wrapped in each others arms knowing that the one trick rip-off is over.

           

Deep Cuts is a group of short comics that Paul Pope wrote over a span of time in his travels.  In my opinion, I feel each story is open for its own interpretation.  The Triumph of Hunger reads like a poem.  In my opinion, it can be read as a commentary on how we feed on the earth.  We eat all of its greenery, leaving the land bare.  We destroy the earth drilling into it, socking up all of its resources, and in destroying the earth, we will inevitably destroy ourselves.  The Zhuk, The Armadillo, and The Island are visual interpretations of poems by Modest Mussorgsky and Francis Richardson.  I especially enjoyed the reference to Gauguin’s The Spirit of the Dead is Watching in the fourth panel.  Portrait of a Girl with an Unpronounceable Name and Yes are stories of love.  Portrait of a Girl shows Pope bumping into and old acquaintance and we basically see a flashback of how this man, named Yes, tells Pope of how he lost the love of his life in death.  Yes is a story told only in images.  A young man riding his bike in a crowd happens to look upon a young woman on her bike riding in the opposite direction.  It is clear he is smitten as soon as he looks at her but when he turns around to chase after her, she has vanished into the crowd and he is left standing there like saddened statue in a sea of motion and life.  There are several other stories, but I’ll leave you with one last Visual story.  In The Scarf, we see a young bar-back catching site of a beautiful young woman across the bar.  She leaves and he realizes she has left her scarf. Like the young man in Yes, he chases after her, this time through the subway.  He hops on a train and manages to find her, but to his dismay, she is on a different train line going in the opposite direction.  He hops on and off trains trying to find her and finally does in the end!  His only problem is that he can’t seem to find anything to say to her, so, looking disappointed she takes her scarf and walks away up the stairs into the city air.  He is left standing there clearly feeling foolish for not having said anything.

 

Paul Pope is a well established cartoonist in today’s world.  All of his work in The One Trick Rip-Off and Deep Cuts is original except for The Armadillo, The Island and Antigone.  The words are of others but the illustration is all his own interpretation.  Though the poems are deeply moving, the imagery enhances the meaning of each piece.  For example, in his rendition of Antigone, the story goes on as a play on stage but we start to interact with some members of the audience as well.  The actress playing Antigone seems to lose her words as she looks out into the audience at one man.  She seems to traipse over her line “where I must have no love…” as the next panel shoots to this man looking up at her.  We don’t know their relationship, but the panels make us feel as though her own life might follow some of Antigone’s trials and tribulations.  As for Paul Pope’s work, he is commonly recognized for his Batman: Year 100, putting a science fiction twist on good ole’ Batman.  His version is so popular that it has been translated into numerous languages and it has won several awards including Two Eisner awards for Best Writer/Artist and Best Limited Series.  His most recent work is on Battling Boy, a “book length epic” about a young boy, Haggard West, who would become a superhero in this alternative version of earth with a dystopian feel to it.

As I mentioned earlier, this compilation really plays around with words and imagery.  Some storylines have no words at all and in my own opinion, I felt they were some of the strongest.  The clarity is absolutely there in each panel, even without any text.  The clarity is really there in the imagery alone, but the wording helps to pull together any loose ends, of which there are few.  In The One Trick Rip-Off, the imagery and the text could be read on their own, but together they give us a truly interesting story.  After all, we would not understand that the One Tricks’ special trick is mind control without the commands being shouted in each word bubble.  As for the technical drawing in each of the comics, I feel like it is in the middle of the spectrum, leaning slightly more towards realistic drawing.  The scenery is definitely towards the realistic side of the spectrum.  I have no preference as to imagery, I love realism and I love cartooning, but I think that the semi-realistic drawing plays up the drama in a more intense way than a cartoon-like image would.  These story-lines become even more serious than they already are with the realistic drawing.

So, is the graphic novel successful? In its entirety, I would say yes.  As I first read through the novel, I was a bit confused because I thought that all of the comics would be part of one larger story.  In the end, I figured out that wasn’t the case but it really didn’t bother me that much.  Each story gives a clear form of closure before moving on to the next comic.  The only piece I was unsatisfied with was The Scythe.  Yes, I know it is a one panel comic so there isn’t supposed to be too much text involved, but I didn’t understand it.  We see two children in a field in front of a lone, dark and eerie tree.  The young boy, holding a scythe, says “we can go out in the fields and things with it the way pop cuts things with it.”  The drawing is fantastic, but I don’t get the storyline.  Is something bad about to happen?  Am I supposed to sit here wondering what is going on?  I don’t know if I’m missing something.  That was literally the only thing I had an issue with throughout the comics.  Pope is great at displaying emotions capturing characters in motion and I think that absolutely helps to sell the story lines.  His design in each background really gives us a proper setting, making us feel like we are there in the condemned building or wandering through the desert.  You can tell that he really knows what these settings look like through his special awareness and attention to detail.  I also noticed that he tends to use solid blacks for his shading, which in my opinion, gives the scenes a darker, more mysterious feel to go along with the text and warm colors.  Ultimately, I think it was very successful.

This compilation of comics is actually relatively new, being that it was published in 2013.  The Deep Cuts comics hold several story-lines that were never published at all/ in the US.  The One Trick Rip-Off was originally published from 1995-96 and was republished for this edition in full-on color.  The comics hit several different genres, so I am not too sure as to where I could place them in the Comic Future.  I hope it will get more artists to experiment the way that Pope did because I would love to read something like this again.