"If you take away the penises isn't this a Scott Snyder Batman comic?"

February 4, 2013 9:32 AM

For their Comic Books are Burning in Hell podcast Joe McCulloch, Tucker Stone, Matt Seneca and Chris Mautner take on Tim Vigil and Faust. Featuring extensive notes and artwork perhaps not suitable for viewing at work.

Tim Vigil you might call one of the genuine "superstars" of the mid-eighties black and white comics boom. Based on the success of Cerebus and especially Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, dozens and dozens of new and shitty independent comics publishers sprung up pushing out hundreds of mediocre titles, with the occasional hidden gem, all in an effort to become the new Turtles. Speculators and comics shops jumped on the bandwagon, print runs went sky high and of course it all ended with tears before bedtime, as actually, none of them would ever been the new Turtles.

Where Tim Vigil differed is that he did find his own niche and audience, first for a publisher called Silverwolf in a comic called Grips, starring a sort of Wolverine-esque hero with big claws. It was written by the publisher, Kris Silver, himself, who was not very good. Vigil had a falling out with him, largely due to money, got together with a comics fan and off-off broadway playwright David Quinn and created Faust, starring another anti-hero with big claws. This was an over the top horror superhero comic that at its zenith sold something like 50,000 copies an issue and one of the few titles to survive when the black and white comics boom burst.

posted by MartinWisse (8 comments total)

The framing of this FPP strikes me as a little odd, for some reason. I think that it might have hit the point a bit closer to describe Faust as a cross between the work of Todd McFarlane and Mike Diana, or that it reads like Rob Zombie's idea of a perfect comic. Or even (as I'm reading further into the first link) that it's a sort of bridge between the B&W boom (most of whose artists, IMO, were nowhere near as good as Vigil, as deficient as he is in many areas) and Avatar's popularizing of splatterpunk in comics, which of course continues unto this day. Not to mention that there was, heaven help us, a Faust movie, which features a scene that's so grotesque that I don't even want to link to it (the podcast mentions it). Eh, I probably should have done the FPP myself at some point.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:34 PM on February 4

Also of note: Vigil's own response to the podcast, in which it is not definitively established that he's mad tripping balls, but holy cow does he do a good impression if not.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:41 PM on February 4

I remember randomly finding and looking through this insane shit at the secondhand bookstore a few years ago. I was actually going to buy it but there were a couple of issues missing, I recall, and I was like "What are the chances of finding THIS anywhere else?"
posted by turgid dahlia 2 at 2:35 PM on February 4

TD2, there are a couple of links on the podcast page for the sites of some of the creators that have order forms for what seems to be the complete run. I think that your chances of finding a complete run is probably pretty good, unless some of the people that bought it are so embarrassed by it now that they were ashamed to try to sell it (or keep it in stock if they're a local comics shop owner).
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:55 PM on February 4

"She has grown a small extra lobe on her brain. We believe it provides telepathic communication with the Queen of the Spidernation and with the weblings she has birthed."

BRING THIS COMIC BOOK TO ME IMMEDIATELY.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:25 PM on February 4

Man, hang you're tortured comparisons, none of them will do Faust justice.
It's crazy and weird and fun and over the top in every way conceivable which makes it fantastic that it sold as well as it did. When my comic collection (containing the complete run of Faust) was destroyed in the late 90's I spent several years combing used comic book stores to recreate it. Took less time than you'd imagine, for, if you go into the corner where the pervs are, there ye shall always find at least one issue of Faust.
(shout out to Stories in RVA.)
posted by mikoroshi at 5:11 PM on February 4

Halloween Jack: "Not to mention that there was, heaven help us, a Faust movie, which features a scene that's so grotesque that I don't even want to link to it (the podcast mentions it)."

Holy shit, Brian Yuzna? Speaking of which, why is Yuzna making all his movies in Spain lately? Tax breaks? Might Brian Yuzna be the cause of the Spanish financial crisis?
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 6:30 PM on February 4

I hadn't heard of Faust until recently, when Comics Should Be Good started reviewing it.
Yeah.
That artwork is.... in your face.

The story does look insane.
posted by Mezentian at 6:58 PM on February 4