Deadenders
Believe it or not, there was a time when Ed Brubaker wasn’t regarded as the creative and commercial powerhouse that he was today. It was back when he was working at DC. Yes, he wrote “Sleeper” during his tenure there, but even though it remains one of my all time favorites it sold pretty dismally in single issue form. He did have a decent run on various “Batman” titles, but the majority of his run on them remains uncollected to this day. (Though the entirety of his contribution to “Gotham Central” is finally available in hard and softcover editions.) Then you’ve got his Vertigo work when he first started out at the company. “Scene of the Crime” is a great “whytheydidit” mystery (as opposed to a “whodunit”) that is currently out of print, and his contribution to the “Sandman” mythos in the “Dead Boy Detectives” miniseries was a lot of fun. Then you have this, which should’ve been his creator-owned magnum opus much like Ennis and Dillon’s “Preacher,” Morrison’s “The Invisibles,” and Ellis and Robertson’s “Transmetropolitan.” Long story short, that didn’t happen and the title only lasted sixteen issues. They’re all collected here and in reading them now the biggest surprise is seeing how different it is from the writer’s later work.
“Deadenders” is the story of one Bartholomew Beezenbach, “Beezer” to his friends, and the trouble he gets into with and without their help. Whether it’s joyriding through the streets on scooters, scoring and selling drugs, or boosting cars there’s never a time when someone isn’t out to get him for one reason or another. That all changes one day when a scientist and some techs from the city come looking for him. You see, Beezer also has visions. Not your typical drug-induced kind, but visions of how the world looked before the “cataclysm” that ruined everything which are almost like real life. It’s not a very useful power, as it winds up indirectly causing the death of his best friend, but it shows him that he’s meant for bigger things in this world and possibly even putting it right too.
What separates this from Brubaker’s other work right off the bat is that it’s a sci-fi story. It’s not “hard” science fiction, as you’ll find no detailed worldbuilding or complicated explanations of how things work here. Everything just looks sharper and shinier in the cities, and more dilapidated and run-down in the outer sectors. The far out part, such as the artificial weather generators are few and far between and generally only show up to serve the story with the first arc dealing with Beezer’s attempts to get the generators to cover his sector and provide a sendoff for his friend. He actually uses the conventions of the genre pretty well, so long as you’re not looking for a radically different take on them.
Speaking of which, the other thing that differentiates this from the likes of “Sleeper,” “Criminal,” “Incognito,” and the writer’s superhero work is that the main cast is made up entirely of teenagers. The book is suffused with the spirit of youthful rebellion both in the way that everyone is at that age when they’re struggling against their boundaries and trying to find their way in life, and in the conflict between the powers that be for the fate of the world later on. Beezer and his friends are a bunch of young punks who drink too much, do too many drugs and raise a whole lot of hell, but they’re loyal to each other and try to do the right thing more often than not. You wouldn’t want to live next to any of these kids, but they prove to be vivid presences on the page.
Brubaker also does a good job with their voices and the dialogue in general, so they don’t sound too much like they’re being written by someone much older than they are. It’s also worth noting that the pacing of the book has a much different feel to it than most other books these days. Originally published from ‘00 to ‘01, there are only three multi-part stories here, the two that start off the title, and the one that closes it out. Everything in between is a series of single issues that tell fairly complete stories yet also move the main plot along. I doubt Brubaker was “writing for the trade” when he wrote this initially, but the story doesn’t suffer for it. Could it be that not every story has to be told in five-or-six-issue arcs? It wasn’t planned that way, but “Deadenders” winds up being a good argument against that kind of pacing.
Warren Pleece provides the art. You don’t see him around Vertigo these days, but he was a regular presence there before and after this was written. His style isn’t exactly eye-catching, but he’s a solid storyteller with an expressive style that conveys the emotions of the characters well. The essence of a good Vertigo artist, in my opinion. He’s also good at tweaking his style for the “Archie” homages that pop up twice in the collection. I had thought that those parts in “Criminal: Last of the Innocent” were the result of Brubaker going out on a lark, but apparently he’d been building up to it for some time.
The issues collected here are over ten years old, but they still feel fresh today. Much as I love Brubaker’s work, you may have noticed that I tend to bring up his “noir instincts” whenever I’m writing about something of his that I’ve read. There have been a lot of great things (and a few misses) that have resulted from him following those instincts and mining that vein, and while “Deadenders” has some of those traits, the emphasis is more on hope than seeing bad people do bad things and wind up in bad places. What’s here is something that I’d like to see more of from him. Someday.