Chapo Trap House: Year One
Writers: Chris Wade and Joel Sinensky
Artist: David Cousens
Colorist: JP Jordan
Letterer: Jodie Troutman
Bonus Pages: Travis Escarfullery
Publisher: Bad Egg
I have had a tangential awareness of Chapo Trap House for the past decade. Being in leftist circles means you’d have at least heard of them. As a part of what they call the “dirtbag left”, a group of people who believe that having leftist principles while being politically incorrect is best way achieve progressive political aims, Chapo Trap House is a podcast ran by four democratic socialist commentators: Will Menaker, Felix Biederman, Matt Christman, and Amber A’Lee Frost.
I don’t subscribe to being a dirtbag leftist. Primarily because my identities are often the butt of the joke in spaces like this. My very real concerns about harm as a black lesbian in America with an immigrant family is just “identity politics” and my own personal slogan of “Every should have access to brunch, no matter who they are, what they make and what they look like” will get me labelled as “unserious” by people who take Karl Marx’s Das Capital as gospel and completely misunderstood what their role would have been in Albert Camus’ The Plague.
Yes, I know that Chapo has their very dedicated fanbase, and they aren’t the sort of people I block on Bluesky, but I’m well prepared for the most insufferable, “bible-thumping” leftists to explain to me–a black lesbian who’s spent years skating on the poverty line–that my “liberal” take is wrong and why we ended up with the president we have.
However, when the opportunity to review this work came to me, I wanted to approach it with an open mind. The Jacobin’s review felt more like hagiography than a review by someone with storytelling and artist credentials, and I thought it would be nice to add that perspective to the review.
I want to start by saying that the anthology is solid work. My handful of critiques have more to do with a couple of the stories and how much emphasis is placed on which characters. The premises of three out of the five stories are stellar though and their first installments.
Starting with my personal favorite, No Pasaran is historical fiction about American soldiers going to Spain to fight Franco’s fascist regime. There are a number of characters from different backgrounds that ended up in Spain and it is a good piece of historical fiction. I personally adore historical fiction that takes place in times of history seldom discussed. Everyone is rendered beautifully and the horrors of war are displayed wonderfully.
Speaking of wonderful displays of violence, the next story–Clinton Hill Horror is a story about how violence is the cost of research as well. A doctor is conscripted to do unspeakable surgeries on people who have been fed to an eldritch abomination and what he discovers reminds me that there is a venn diagram between the miraculous and horrifying.
Clinton Hill Horror’s art style is reminiscent of those educational history comics you read as a kid, but the shading (whether intentional or not) gives a slimy quality that fits with the eldritch horror of its premise. The color palettes are grey and washed out but in the way that meat rots, and not necessarily old parchment which serves the story well.
The last story that is without critiques is Beat The Dang Devil. In this one, a coal miner who develops cancer ends up making a deal with the Devil to keep him in good health. When his family finds out, they try to get rid of the contract to some really fascinating results. The art style of this one reminds me of Scottie Young’s work Middlewest.
The next would be Loopjumper, which is where some of my critiques. I read it multiple times and could only glean that it was the opening chapter of a revenge story about a man who lost his work partner to drugs supplied by the government. It could go in a number of directions with that premise but the fridging of a character of color put me off immediately.
However, the last story Crew Expendable spent too much time establishing the antagonist than the protagonist. Jath’s motive is obvious–he’s an Elon Musk expy who wants to control others and be loved. The main characters–a team of scientists working on a Mars mission have pretty one note motivations which would be better served by giving the entire first part of this story to them. The only way this works is if the antagonist is the “protagonist” in the narrative and his character arc is the central one explored.
All in all, the anthology is a fine start but time will tell if each of the stories will make good on their initial premises.
Chapo Trap House: Year One is out now via Bad Egg!
Read more great reviews from The Beat!
Like this:
Loading…
