Writer: Richard Starkings
Cover Artist: Moritat
Publisher: Image
Publication Date: August 2007
Format: Hardcover
While billed by the author as “pulpy” entertainment, this graphic novel proves to be far more pithy than appearances indicate.
Sometimes, it pays to read the forwards to certain books. It can give the reader an idea of the tone of the book and possibly offer insight to the creative process of the author. Other times, it lowers the expectations for the piece, but that might not necessarily be a terrible thing, as in the case of “Elephantment: Wounded Animals.” Richard Starkings’ forward lists an array of influences which are campy cult classics that are vastly entertaining, but often not entirely substantial. He claims that his intent in the creation of the Elephantmen series was to make a sort of homage to the pulp sci-fi and mystery books and magazines of his youth. In a sense, he’s achieved exactly that, but in another, he’s failed horribly.
The basic premise of the Elephantmen series is that a mad doctor operating in Africa, which has now become nothing more than a wasteland of battlefields, created a race of supersoldiers by splicing together the DNA of humans and animals. The resultant creatures are known as Elephantmen, despite the fact that some of them are clearly alligators, hippopautomi, rhinoceri, and warthogs. A movement formed that liberated the Elephantmen and complicated their lives immeasurably by forcing them to try to live in mainstream society. All of the Elephantmen are much taller and heavier than their human counterparts and they are treated very poorly by most of the humans in their world.
The graphic novel collects the first few issues of “Elephantmen” and provides the reader with an excellent introduction to the universe created by Starkings and Moritat. The stories contained within the book range from a gritty detective story to a horrifying war memoir to a thoroughly captivating fairy tale about a pirate and a Truth Fairy. I would not venture to call this a “something for everyone” book because it realy isn’t, but I’ll get into that a bit later. Starkings is the main creator of the series but there are other writers involved in the stories. They are remarkably consistent about details throughout the book and the stories do have a cohesive feel overall, though the stories do carry the marks of their indivdual authors. The stories are all interconnected, some more loosely than others, but the inclusion of each in the volume does make good sense. It offers very good variety without being jarring.
So why isn’t it the sort of thing that I’m going to be running out and recommending to everyone? It’s violent and very bloody. Most assuredly, were “Elephantmen” a movie it would be slapped immediately with an R rating. This isn’t the kind of graphic novel (or comic book series) a person would want to pick up in order to be cheered up by any stretch of the imagination. The tales contained within are gritty and carry the air of both disillusionment and disheartment. There is almost no hope in the modern world where the Elephantmen dwell. Their freedoms are thoroughly restricted, they are all almost constantly monitored, and they’re nearly universally reviled.
The color palette is very fitting, offering muted earth and twilight tones, with only the blood and fire in most scenes standing out in bright contrast to the characters themselves and everything around them. It’s a mood and setting worthy of the darkest horror movies and carries the reader into the emotional turmoil of the characters far better than some of the dialog.
The artwork itself is detailed and textural, though hardly beautiful. “Elephantmen”, above all else, gives the sense that it isn’t supposed to be beautiful. The Elephantmen themselves are not a lovely race and their world is dirty and narrowed by circumstances they have almost no control over.
While the science involved in “Elephantmen” is abosultely cult pulp science at its very best, the overall feel of the book gives the impression that going into depth about the science of the Elephantmen’s creation would ruin the story, much the way the “scientific” explanation in “Star Wars” ruined the Force for a generation of young fans. The graphic novel falls short of being pure pulpy entertainment by virtue of the fact that it can’t help creating pathos for the characters it contains. On the surface, “Elephantmen” is a great adventure/action graphic novel that’s fast-paced and very much in the vein of film noir and dystopian science fiction, but one doesn’t have to do any scratching at all on that surface to find far deeper content in this book. There is a great deal of socio-political commentary contained in these glossy pages as readers will both understand the mistrust of the general human population and hate that characters as compelling as Hip Flask and Ebony are treated so horrifically because of their outward appearances.
“Wounded Animals” isn’t preachy in the slightest and it doesn’t feel like the author set out to tell this great tale of alienation to try to foster greater understanding for our own species. Instead, the situations these characters are placed into are, more than anything, the logical outgrowth of their forceful relocation. One can take this series and make any number of parallels within current events and recorded history that apply horrifically to the foibles of the human species. Even if the reader isn’t directly thinking of such things, after finishing this graphic novel, it’s difficult not to make those comparisons or think about how humans treat each other on a daily basis. It’s difficult to contemplate how you, as a person, would act if faced with something as startling as an elephant who walked upright, spoke perfectly good English (maybe even better than you do), and was every bit as intelligent (if not more so) than you. Perhaps that’s why “Wounded Animals” is so successful as a book, it doesn’t try too hard to be anything other than the stories of these characters, so, it is what it is and leaves the reader to draw their own conclusions.
The biggest fault I have with the book is simply that it does feel slightly choppy at the beginning. The stories seem to start out as a series of “quick cuts” which then start to become much more of a plot as the reader gets further into the book. Personally, I think that the comic book series would lose some of that incredible impact as individual issues because of that. As a graphic novel, however, the reader gets to digest the story as a whole rather than individual bites.
This is a book that I would definitely recommend to someone who didn’t mind violence and gore, but loved action and a story that moves quickly. Fans of Tarantino or the X-files or even Halo would probably enjoy this series very much, along with those who enjoy hard-boiled PIs and movies like “Blade Runner” and “Running Man.” It inspires thought, without demanding it.
