Public Image LTD. Copra Comes to Image Comics
I got to write about my favorite monthly comic in the pages of the sacred text that is the Wizerd Zine, put out by the good folks at Cosmic Lion Productions. And since the zine is already sold out I thought I’d share my contribution here.
The artwork is like a cave painting only scrawled on a smashed spaceship with the fluorescent blood of whatever now dead angel was stupid enough to crawl from the crash to ask a local for directions.
Yes, I’m finally writing about Copra. Michel Fiffe’s masterclass in beautiful brutalism now being published in monthly lesson plans courtesy of Image Comics. The long running indie comic has returned with a new issue number 1, a new publisher and even a new sense of commitment from its creator. So what better time than now to introduce you to your new favorite comic book, that is if you’re one of the unacquainted.
Which is what one would suppose creator Fiffe is banking on by going to Image and restarting his comic (previously up to issue 31) back at number 1. Despite this I’m happy to report that the issue works fine as both an introduction to the overall story while also reading just like the next issue of Copra.
Yes, I have already freebased the Kool-Aid and been a fan of this cult comic for years so maybe it’s impossible for me to remain truly objective but honestly, this issue reminds me a lot of the actual (previous) first issue of Copra. There too we were dropped in the middle of a story already in progress but done so with the care and precision of a deliberate storyteller. Now with this new number 1 leftover cliffhangers from issues previous are finally landed (or plummeted) old plot threads further cat cradled and, in general, Fiffe nails the high wire seesaw act of keeping things accessible but also not slowing down his returning diehard loyalists who already know everybody at this party.
So, who is at this party?
The short answer bandied around a bunch in what’s already been written about Copra is that it exists as an extended example of Ostrander’s Suicide Squad fanfiction. But such a reductive summation does a huge disservice to both works. At least I imagine it does, comic reader confession time: I have never read any of Ostrander’s Suicide Squad and I still love the hell out of Copra.
Why?
Because a tribute band this is not. For sure, many of the characters and the general setup of superpowered and/or costumed mercs sent out on black ops missions - to often fatal results - does owe an obvious debt to the Suicide Squad comic as I understand it, but, like all the best works involving analogues and composite characters, Copra’s cast and story have stretched beyond the source material and metastasized into its own gloriously battle damaged strikingly unique shape.
Which means even if you have a Copra character like Boomer who is a clear analogue for Captain Boomerang, that’s only the starting point. It’s like when Led Zeppelin mutated a Willie Dixon’s blues song into their “Whole Lotta Love.” Yeah, the bones are the same but even they get broken and reset eventually and pretty soon you’ll have to squint to catch the resemblance.
Also, unlike Led Zep, Fiffe is on the up and up with giving credit to his inspirations. In fact the previous 31 issues of Copra have at times seemed like a tour through whatever current comics muse was treading over the creator’s brain. Meaning that you have your old school Doom Patrol issues of Copra, you have your Ditko Dr. Strange blacklight poster Copra. You have your JRJR/ Ann Nocenti Punisher and Daredevil tone poem issues. Halfway through the run you’re struck by the obvious now but somehow quite obfuscated up front idea that the Ochizon (the big, overarching, otherworldly menace storyline running through all these comics) is a lot like Kirby’s Fourth World stuff. And that team member Guthie, despite having green hair and a druthers for machine guns might just be Fiffe’s take on Big Barda.
The reason any of this works and still feels so damn authentic, original and personal is because Copra is told by a one of a kind storyteller in a one of kind way. I’m not just talking about the singular artwork here. The Tony Scott /Michael Mann sunset porn mixed with geometric honeycomb acid tab page layouts or the frantic, ugly smudges that festoon action scenes. I’m talking about the words in the balloons too. I’m talking about the heartbreak and the humor that is traded between the members of Copra while on a mission or that follows them back home while they’re practicing their own personal brands of self-destruction and moral sabotage during a little down time. These characters all feel like real people, hell, Gracie, the badass Copra member who is based on Grace Jones feels more like a flesh and blood real person to me than Grace Jones ever does! No disrespect to Grace Jones there either, it’s just that Ms. Jones is like a comic book character freed from the pages and set loose through our mundane world whereas Gracie of Copra is just a complicated wiseass with a killer bodysuit, substance abuse problems who’d way too easily bored.
Fiffe has found a way to conjure up that old monthly comic book magic of having very real, grounded characters exist in a heightened superhero environment yet never getting so navel gazing that the comic becomes some cold, Watchmen wannabe deconstruction or a mere nostalgia comfort food slog. This comic takes what was good from the old and sharpens its fangs to breathe new life into the past’s long buried bones. It’s like if that murderous Cro-Magnon Rembrandt from the painfully extended simile at the top of this article has now learned how to fix up and fly that smashed spaceship and taking the ramshackle vessel places neither him nor it have ever been.