Imaginary DrugsIDW, 2015[/caption]
Imaginary Drugs
Paperback: 208 pages
Publisher: IDW Publishing (January 21, 2015)
Cover Price: $24.99
Disclosure: This reviewer knows Imaginary Drugs editor and writer Michael McDermott through Facebook. He also pledged the Imaginary Drugs Kickstarter campaign.
In 1984, Eclipse Comics published three issues of the cult anthology Strange Days, which featured the post-apocalyptic feature Freakwave, future detective Johnny Nemo, and the hapless superhero Paradax. The worlds of these stories were jagged, rough: sex, harsh words, no happy endings. I hated them. I hated them all. I was a thirteen year-old who wanted She-Hulk in a prom dress, not punk rock.
Across America, in New Jersey, another boy read Strange Days. He loved it. Thirty-one years later, Imaginary Drugs is his return to those stories which intoxicated him. As a reader, you can enjoy Imaginary Drugs without the knowledge of its long germination, but if you've read Strange Days or eighties Heavy Metal, Imaginary Drugs has a deeper resonance.
Imaginary Drugs is an anthology of thirty-six illustrated stories written by McDermott and a cohort of fellow writers. These stories are all moored in the futuristic or fantastic. Many of McDermott's stories are tantalizing first chapters to serials, a nod to his influences. Others by his collaborators are staccato bursts of narrative, joined with no transition or title page, energy from one bleeding to the next.
The book opens with Saint in the City, a handsomely-told story of urban magic by McDermott, artist Brandon Sawyer, and colorist K. Michael Russell. Star Captain Apollo, by illustrator Brandon Sawyer and writer Nic Shaw, is about child-like aliens who understand stories only as literal truth. When their spaceship crashes and they're enslaved in a labor camp, a prisoner who resembles fictional hero Star Captain Apollo is the only one who can rescue them. Cryptobiosis, by writer Jeff McClelland and illustrator Larsen, is also a story of innocence, but no star captain saves the day. Little Red by writer Nic Shaw and illustrator Louis Joyce is a fun homage to Japanese revenge comics and movies.
Arranging stories in an anthology is an art, like making mix tapes in the 1980s, or creating playlists on YouTube now. There's a flow of emotion and meaning, a subtext to the stories the editor strings together. In comics, visual narratives should meld, or pleasingly contrast across stories. Call it editorial vision. A good anthology is greater than the sum of its parts. I sensed that fullness when finishing Dr. Warhola’s 3VOLUT//ON, a meta-commentary on imagination and storytelling by writer Eric Esquivel and illustrator Tony Gregori.
Imaginary Drugs is a revival, a contemporary return to the raw, charged science fiction stories imported from Europe in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I gave up on She-Hulk in a prom dress in 1990, so...is there room on that star-cycle for me, too?
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