VURT YOUR ENTHUSIASM (7)
By:
July 24, 2024
One in a series of 25 enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of science fiction novels and comics from the Eighties (1984–1993, in our periodization schema). Series edited by Josh Glenn.
GARY PANTER | DAL TOKYO | 1983–ongoing
In 1983 (a cusp year, in HILOBROW’s periodization scheme, between the Seventies and Eighties), Gary Panter began contributing a long-running comic strip about Dal Tokyo — a Martian colony populated by punks, aliens, mutants, Sepaloids, Cubist girls, and adorable manga characters — to the L.A. Reader; it would later jump to the Japanese reggae magazine Riddim. Fantagraphics published an archival collection in 2012.
In the shadow of abandoned overpasses owned by the classic-car-cultist tycoon Mr. Gabble, rival advertising agencies engage in bloody combat. Freelance paparazzi snap pho-toms of rich smog monsters having sex, which they then sell to the scandal sheet Rich Smog Sex. Meanwhile, in the Martian desert, where the protoceratopses roam, ant-men excavate classic cars from the sand. Car-hating fiend Dareiter Pictox blows up Mr. Gabble; assisted by an unwitting key grip, the ant-man Helvolus, he records the spectacle for a Ballardian crash-porn magazine. Mohawked ambulance attendant Okupant X saves Gabble’s life; the ex-dinosaur Nurse Barbie nurses him back to health. Later on, we’ll meet Sybig Nabcig, a juvenile smog monster obsessed with radio-controlled robot fights.
Like the abandoned highways and buildings of Dal Tokyo, the strip’s four-panel format is a hollowed-out shell — to be repurposed, misused, and abused however the squatter-artist sees fit. Some weeks, Panter uses his four panels to tell a serialized, Flash Gordon-type adventure; other weeks, he spreads a single scene or image or explosion across the entire frame; and sometimes the chaotic action of the strip subverts the very idea of a linear, delimited format. Panter’s draughtsmanship is fluid and permeable, changing from installment to installment. People and architecture merge together in a Groszian nightmare; carefully rendered figures are doodled over and x-ed out; negative space triumphs via figure-ground reversal; cuteness is creepy, and creepiness cute.
There is a desultory plot to Dal Tokyo: one as meandering and bemused, and as liable to follow a minor character right out of the scene for a long spell, as a movie by Panter’s fellow Texan Richard Linklater. Barbie, we’ll discover, is at the center of a plot involving the university hospital and its evolution experiments; Sybig Nabcig is at the center of a plot involving Dal Tokyo’s skateboarders and robot battles; and Dareiter Pictox is at the center of a plot involving monsters, mutants, and mass media. The Gabble story, which at first seemed the central one, turns out to be epiphenomenonal.
In Dal-Tokyo, nothing new is created except graffiti. As of 2024, that recursive vision of the future has become our reality.
A version of this essay appeared in The Comics Journal in 2012.
VURT YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Mark Kingwell on SNOW CRASH | Mandy Keifetz on THE GENOCIDAL HEALER | Matthew De Abaitua on SWAMP THING | Carlo Rotella on THE PLAYER OF GAMES | Lynn Peril on GEEK LOVE | Stephanie Burt on THE CARPATHIANS | Josh Glenn on DAL TOKYO | Deb Chachra on THE HYPERION CANTOS | Adam McGovern on KID ETERNITY | Nikhil Singh on THE RIDDLING REAVER | Judith Zissman on RANDOM ACTS OF SENSELESS VIOLENCE | Ramona Lyons on PARABLE OF THE SOWER | Jessamyn West on the MARS TRILOGY | Flourish Klink on DOOMSDAY BOOK | Matthew Battles on THE INTEGRAL TREES | Tom Nealon on CLAY’S ARK | Sara Ryan on SARAH CANARY | Gordon Dahlquist on CONSIDER PHLEBAS | Alex Brook Lynn on VURT | Miranda Mellis on STARS IN MY POCKET LIKE GRAINS OF SAND | Nicholas Rombes on RADIO FREE ALBEMUTH | Adelina Vaca on NEUROMANCER | Marc Weidenbaum on AMERICAN FLAGG! | Peggy Nelson on VIRTUAL LIGHT | Michael Grasso on WILD PALMS.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!