Why Haven't You Heard of MetaCops? by Mike Mosher
Three praiseworthy issues of "MetaCops!" were brought out by Fantagraphics's Monster
Comics in 1991. Their scripts by Link Yaco were smart and sassy, their John Heebink
artwork solid and inspired, so the title must have roared out of the gate to acclaim
and success. Yeah, right. The fact that it didn't, that it sank saleswise and
promptly disappeared, and that the skillful Michigan-based duo that produced it
now only appear in comics sporadically and around the fringes of the industry,
says something about the trade's cruel economics--at least that surrounding independent,
intelligent titles, the only kind that we like to think really counts.
At first PostModernism seemed like a Reagan-era art marketing ploy, a way
to add flamboyant figuration for paintings sold to millionaire Eurotrash.
Yet its historical quotations (or simultaneity of history),
multiculturalism and decenteredness can make for a fresh breeze in comics.
Where bug-eyed monsters from the moon make deals with Lyndon Johnson to
shift the Vietnam War's advantage to the U.S. by supplying female
Legionnaires on ancient moas to fight werewolf Roman Centurions at the
medieval battle of Constantinople--are you following all this?--you know
we're in a fast and loose university-brat comics universe. This is the
beat of the MetaCops.
I have an aversion to cop shows, any story in which the people who own the
world keep it all at the end of the episode. Yet the convention of a
crime-fighting team did give a purpose to Link and 'Bink's can of mixed
nuts. This "Ripping Time-Travelling Adventure" featured the dialect humor
of Leonardo Da Vinci squabbling with Albert Einstein, Delmore Schwartz
drinking and mumbling, and a pneumatic Jayne Mansfield barking orders to
keep them all together. Soon Jayne, in a more revealing top celebrating
Heebink's mastery of good-girl art, teams up with the Queen of Sheba, Jimi
Hendrix and Nicola Tesla, inventor of the History Engine upon which their
mission depends. Their nemesis is the Druid warrior Queen Boadicea
(probable source of the superlative "bodacious") who at one point gets
deputized as a MetaCop herself. By the third issue Hannibal, Lady Ada
Lovelace, Dr. Siggy Freud and Amelia Earhart (whose thought balloons
contain radio silence) move in and out of the organization, the fractured
historical pageant.
Chinese warriors ride bison into battle versus Italo-Aztecs in World War
One tanks. Intergalactic weasels conspire to keep mathematics from
reaching Europe. Mcguffins are continually yanked out of the encyclopedia
or out of comics lore to jerry-rig the plot, which is improbably propelled
along at a good clip by Yaco's knowing, wisecracking text--Stan Lee crossed
with Dennis Miller. It was believably architected and staged by Heebink in
a classic Wood-inspired art style, which somehow also mercifully lacked the
dark melancholy which finally consumed St. Wally.
Yaco and Heebink team were for one brief and shining moment in early 1991
the golden boys of Fantagraphics, producing a lusty "Candide Revealed" for
its Eros line. Link also shaped Gray Morrow's art intended for DC's
"Zatanna" (by removing women's tops) into "The Cosmic Kliti" for Eros. A
caveat: I even worked a few weeks penciling "The Minx of Doom" Link was
developing for Eros from the hot memoirs of a woman he knew.
None of these projects seemed to have legs in the marketplace (and our
"Minx" got nipped in the bud). As store orders failed to show, "MetaCops"
was dropped by Monster after three of the planned four issues. Damned if
he'd let the story hang in space and time, Yaco engineered a final issue
that was published by Caliber's Gauntlet line in 1993. Relying on
volunteer help not measuring up to Heebink's professionalism, its
production standards were considerably lower, its smeary off-register cover
particularly irksome.
John Heebink has kept optimistic about the comics industry, creating the
hulking Wrathbone and buffed Bitchula for Michael (presumably not the
Jamaican Prime Minister) Manley's publishing company Action Planet in
1995--another title's promising kickoff nobody saw--and relocated from
Michigan to California. Having left Michigan for New York City, Link Yaco
published an insightful appreciation of Wally Wood in the February 1997
Comic Book Marketplace, meanwhile hustling one or more MetaCops screenplays
and stage plays between writing ad copy for adventure CD-ROMs. Link and
'Bink resurfaced together this winter with "Space Chicks vs. the
Businessman" for Hustler Comics. Maybe the good don't die young...they're
just forced by economic realities to drop in and out of comics.
(c) Mike Mosher 1997
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