Reviewed Apr. 11, 07

MERCY SEAT #1 (Vicious Ambitious), written by Gord Cummings, with art by Gord Cummings, Steve Gervais, Nick Johnson, Drew Garemiah, cognoman, and the Mighty Joseph Grimonte.

I'm not sure who said it, but the cliché that an autobiographical comic is only going to be as interesting as the person whose life it's chronicling always struck me as inherently truthful and the first hurdle that a creator must get over when attempting that kind of work. It's a rare person whose life is going to be more interesting than a fictional character's, and life doesn't always unfold in a fashion that makes for a satisfying narrative. And, being a shallow guy who looks to comics first for entertainment, that has often been a problem for me when I'm put in a position where I've got to read such material.

Knowing all that, I went into Gord Cummings' autobiographical comic MERCY SEAT with some reluctance--a reluctance that was proven unfounded by the end of quite a satisfying read.

The comic opens with Cummings addressing the audience directly, as a character on the page speaking to readers directly through the fourth wall. He returns to this device frequently throughout the book, generally to good effect, though its use in the opening sequence most impressed me. Rather than launch immediately into a tale of his life, he instead asks his audience a few rhetorical questions about autobiographical comics, and answers them, outlining a rationale--almost a personal manifesto of what he's looking to accomplish and why.

With this introduction (which does eventually turn into an autobiographical tale that informs his "mission statement") having explained an intellectual, even a spiritual reasoning for this public self-examination, the writer proceeds to what is probably the most entertaining and light-hearted of the issue's stories, "Pee". Illustrated by Nick Johnson, the story's a cartoony style effectively captures a sense of childish simplicity-and I mean that in the best way possible. About a young Gord dealing (or failing to deal) with a number of school-related fears, the story manages to maintain a humourous slant while eliciting sympathy for its main character's desperate circumstances. Good stuff.

From "Pee" Gord moves to "My Secret Identity", which I'm guessing was drawn by Drew Geramiah (it isn't specifically credited in-story, as the first couple were). One of the risks inherent in this kind of comic anthology is inconsistency between various artists' representations of recurring characters--and it certainly could have potentially been a problem here, as this artist's version of Gord-the-comic-character is unrecognizable as the same person in the intro.

I may be reading too much into Cumming's artist selection process, but if he deliberately chose to return to directly addressing readers as a character on a page, it was a great move, as it works to visually reinforce the thrust of the first several pages of the piece. Those pages detail Cummings' strategy for dealing with people he's met before but whose name he can't remember. As someone who can barely remember his own name, I was really engaged by this segment, as well as entertained by Comic Gord's method of avoiding embarrassment.

Cummings could have stopped "Secret Identity" there and had an entertaining piece, but he admirably chooses to push things a bit farther, making some interesting observations about depersonalized identity in an increasingly technological age along the way.

He could have stopped there, too, and had an entertaining, thought-provoking piece, but instead he goes still further, capping things off with a definitive personal statement regarding this aspect of modern society. Artistically and conceptually, "Secret Identity" is the high point of MERCY SEAT #1, though that is by no means a knock on the other pieces.

"Edible Culture" is described in the subtitle as a "Rant", but, while it abandons any pretense of narrative in favour of directly addressing issues of nationalism and culture, its presentation lacks the manic energy I, at least, associate with the term rant. "Dissertation" would be more accurate.

Written and illustrated by Gord, this piece stumbles over its own feet somewhat, with an unconventional lettering presentation distracting from the actual drawings and, to a degree, the point. I'm not opposed expermentation with lettering, mind you-in fact, it's something I'd like to see more of in this age of digital rather than physical comics creation. But if one's going to move as far from standard captions as Cummings does in this piece, it behooves one to have a rationale for doing so. To me, this presentation feels like stylistic experimentation taking precedence over substance, to the detriment of the piece.

Speaking of aesthetic considerations (or possibly lack of consideration) working to the detriment of a piece-there's a single page following what I believe to be the end of the "Edible Culture" (said perception based on the more traditional captioning style on the page.) Unfortunately, the stylistic shift artistically isn't so great from the end of "Edible" to this one-pager that I can be 100% certain it isn't in fact an additional page of the previous piece or a stand-alone. It has a jarring effect on the reader (well, this reader, anyway), especially compared to the radical difference in style between the other pieces in the book. I can't help but think this piece (if it is indeed its own entity) would have been better-served being placed...almost anywhere else in the book, but preferably between two stories with artwork sufficiently different to distinguish it. A title of some sort would also do the job. I'm assuming this piece is also drawn by Cummings, but at this point I'm already at about four assumptions more than a reader should have to make.

An untitled, uncredited four-pager has Gord reflecting on the nature of love and commitment, leading to a final-page conversation with a friend who sets him straight about the concept of marriage. The writing on this one has much to recommend it, but the art (not sure who did it) is cartoony to the point of crude and seems an odd fit for the piece it's been applied to. This isn't helped by the typeset lettering (that sort of lettering style rarely helps anything drawn in a remotely organic fashion, and while I haven't mentioned it yet, it is a weakness in all the stories, of which there are more than one, it appears in). Overall, this is a case of a decent idea being undermined by an insufficiently polished visual presentation.

The next one-pager, with Nick Johnson returning for art, doesn't suffer from the same jarring effect of the previous one-at least not at the beginning. The end of the piece is not indicated with a "fini" (as the story page opposite it was), and the meandering nature of the conversation between lovers about the value of music also doesn't give the piece of sufficiently pointed ending for a reader to understand they've actually reached the ending…until they turn the page and find there's a wholly different story there. A one-word caption would have a substantial and positive effect on this one.

MERCY SEAT #1 ends on a whimsical tale of ambition, told through a series of vertical panels illustrated by cognoman. Of all the art in the book, cog's is by far the most idiosyncratic-from strictly a pleasure standpoint, it's my favourite work, but it's not going to be for everyone. Unlike previous pieces, "An Internal Struggle" eschews any semblance of reality, visually representing abstract concepts like ambition with wings and antlers. It's a strange addition to the rest of the book, seeming out of place in many ways.

It reads an awful lot like a children's story (though the visual of the sole character in the story might too closely resemble a condom for some parents to be comfortable with it.) The relative simplicity of the message and quirkiness of the art doesn't make for a weak piece-I just question its place among more mature-oriented fare.

GET TO THE POINT, FOLEY: From a writing and more often than not, an artistic, perspective, MERCY SEAT #1 is solid--a comic that's less a group of narrative vignettes than it is a series of philosophical statements, expanded, supported and sometimes undermined on with personal anecdotes from Cummings' life. It's a quiet book compared to more mainstream fare, and therefore will certainly not be for everyone. But if you're looking for more from your comics than spectacle, you could do a lot worse than this. In the beginning of the book, Comic Gord mentions AMERICAN SPLENDOR as an inspiration for his work here. For what it's worth, I personally feel I got more out of MERCY SEAT than I have from what I've read of Harvey Pekar's work. But then, I don't usually like autobiographical comics.

Which is something to bear in mind when I say I actually did like this one.

You should buy it.