2 out of 5

I picked up most of my Deadenders issues out of dollar bins when I was on a full-on Brubaker hunt – somewhere around when Catwoman was going on – and then promptly bagged and boarded them, unread.  Oh, I tried, but I would get through issue 2 and then tell myself to wait until I had the full run to keep reading them.  But eventually I got the full run, and still, the issues remained unread.  Why?

Well, I sat down and went through them.  And okay, truth be told, I’m missing a couple right at the end of the series still, but I know my reading habits – missing issues hasn’t stopped me in the past, so that should’ve been an indication of something being up with the books, maybe along with the fact that the series normally isn’t mentioned when people are dropping Brubaker references.  Getting through the 16 issues, the hinks are pretty blaring from issue 1: no clear concept, no likeable characters.  Why would you keep reading?

Brubaker, though the go-to crime guy now, started out with some nasally indie stuff, “introspective” studies of slacker culture.  It’s not bad, and he ended up spinning the formula into something rewarding via his DHP series “An Accidental Death,” which used the template as a vehicle to tell a story, which in turn enriched the characters and underlined the wandering/wasted youth themes present in these earlier works, but otherwise, when Ed gets the whimsy to talk about his youth, it results in light, pointless drama like Prez, or like some of the character musings in the indulgent parts of “Criminal”.  Or “Deadenders,” about drug-dealer “Beezer” and his group of miscreants in a future world where a “cataclysm” occurred at some point in the past, blanketing parts of the land in permanent gloom.  Richer or higher-class folk can afford to live in walled-off sectors where weather machines pump out sunshine, but Beezer and his ilk are stuck to the lower class sectors, where crime is ignored and rights are stepped on.

Although the first issue starts with a car chase, a lot of comics make a similar mistake of thinking in movie terms.  In a film, you can blast the audience with some noise to keep them awake – so a chase scene can be an effective opener (…can.. be), but in comics, we need more then some bold lines to make us turn the page, and Brubaker doesn’t make much of an effort to actually introduce us to any characters this first issue beyond telling us their names and have them spit teenage problems in the panels.  I understand that this is appealing to Ed, as he automatically connects with the material, but I don’t give a shit about these kids, and the sprinkled sci-fi elements, at this point of the story, add no sense of drama.  As the series wanes on, Deadenders is limited with Ed’s worst narrative crutches – flipping perspectives, telling instead of showing – techniques that he’s ironed out during his career but still pop up now and then, when he’s more involved in his brain than with involving a reader.

There are some moments in Deadenders that work – Beezer and girlfriend run into a book-dealer in one a sector when they’re on the run and Brubaker switches to the book-dealers perspective.  For an issue or two, it’s not as indulgent feeling, as the man – Daniel – gets to act as a voice looking back on a scene (looking back on youth) instead of Ed talking through the minds of his teenage characters and trying to capture the stupidity and bravado of it all.  You can show us that, getting inside their brains isn’t adding anything to the story or concept.  But moments like this in the story are fleeting, and get jumbled as Ed switches back and forth between wanting to write another autobiographical “Lowlife” book and trying to write an action sci-fi thing.  I don’t mean to be so picky – all of this is readable, and drawn competently by Warren Pleece (Richard Case’s inks better capture the sketchiness, though – when Cameron Stewart takes over mid-series for inking, the figures take on a solidity that takes some of the bitter bite out of their characterizations).  It’s obvious Ed totally knows these characters, so they feel written accurately.  And furthermore, I accept that there are a whole range of readers who love this kind of masturbatory shit, letting them know that it’s okay to be a self-obsessed dumbass when you’re a teenager or young adult.  But this isn’t the reason Deadenders ultimately doesn’t work – it’s because it’s a genre mish-mash that isn’t mished or mashed in proper quantities, not getting its point across as other cultural observer or social commentator.  If you like the bits in “Criminal” (and I’m thinking of my least favorite arc from the series when I say this – “The Last of the Innocent”) where Ed sections off part of the story via a caption box saying something like “Years Ago” and then we get a vaguely-ties-to-the-story-but-doesn’t-really-reveal-any-pressing-information flashback, and you’re not so keen on all the backstabbing and bitter crime but you like a dash of thrill, then with all of those exceptions in tow, you’d probably like “Deadenders.”  Otherwise, skip further back to the more focused “Lowlife” if you want to see Ed’s other writing side in full form.