Writer/Artist: Jasen Lex
Price $13.95
Publisher: Aweful Books
ISBN: 0-9724757-0-2

"Are you sick and tired of superheroes yet?"

This is the question asked on the back cover of THE GYPSY LOUNGE, the first major print work by Pittsburgh creator Jasen Lex. It's a fair question. American comic books have too long been overrun with superhero stories, and many readers are sick and tired of it. I sure am.

It's not that I hate superheroes. Like most American comic fans, I came to the medium through superheroes, and still have a fondness for the genre. It's just that to be worth my while, a superhero story has to be not just good, but great. ASTRO CITY great. I don't care how clever Brian Michael Bendis is, there's only so much you can do with SPIDER-MAN or anything derivative thereof.

THE GYPSY LOUNGE seeks to present itself as an antidote for those who are bored of superheroes, and while it can't be counted among the ranks of the greats, there are certainly some elements of greatness in it, and it can't be faulted for its ambition.

What makes THE GYPSY LOUNGE so interesting - if ultimately a little disappointing - is Lex's artwork. Lex uses hand drawn characters set against photographs, which are sometimes digitally manipulated, and he incorporates elements of collage and other innovative techniques. Instead of standard stylised sound effects like BAMM or SKRASCH, for example, Lex uses parenthetical text, like: "(a very loud, deafening explosion and the sound of metal being torn apart)."

It makes for unconventional reading. The strength of the book is that it has a style that's very much its own. It looks like something completely new. It is no exaggeration to say that almost every single panel in nearly 200 pages would make a breathtaking, conversation-starting wall poster, or an impressive computer backdrop.

Particularly striking is the page in which Gina Brecko, Lex's heroine on the lam, looks at an artist's rendering of herself in a newspaper. How does an artist render a line-drawn character who lives in a photorealistic world? The depiction, in close up, looks to be computer generated. It is not quite photorealistic, but more "true to life" than the line drawing, while still being a recognisable representation of the character. Contrasted next to the line drawn "photograph" of her father in the otherwise photorealistic newspaper, the image is nothing less than fascinating.

However, at times, the artwork seems like a succession of still frames taken from an animated film, and this hinders rather than helps the plot, as the panels don't always add up to make a whole narrative, and at times it's difficult to tell what's going on. This is also a reflection on the writing; Lex has fearsome chops when it comes to illustration, photography, and graphic design, but as a writer, he's still finding his way.

Though the story isn't easy to follow, the rough outline goes something like this: Gina Brecko is the slacker daughter of her failed superhero/supervillain father. Like her father, Gina can breathe fire, though it's never explained why. (The world of THE GYPSY LOUNGE is lousy with superheroes, but their existence and function remains obscure. There are almost no mundane characters to speak of.)

Tired of being poor, Gina decides to pull a heist and ends up double-crossing the wrong people. She ends up kidnapping an alien creature that belongs to the book's villain, Dr Perplexity, and must run for her life. Beyond that, it does get a little hazy. I'm not even sure whether the story takes place in the month of October, a city called October, or both. And I couldn't honestly tell you why it's called THE GYPSY LOUNGE.

The photographs that make up book's background are taken from all over the United States, an interesting conceit, which means that no specific sense of place is evoked. Most of the images are of anonymous fixtures found in every populated place in the country: garages, street signs, diners, train tracks, buses, telephone poles.

The players are also fairly generic. THE GYPSY LOUNGE is full of the kind of jaded and disaffected characters who express their disaffection through chain smoking. Gina smokes; the drug-addicted superhero 'the Dandy-lion' smokes; a laboratory chimp smokes; and the alien creature smokes through two separate orifices. Lex's heroine rarely changes her expressions from a detached smirk, and since her dialogue is rendered in the exact same anonymous computer font as all of the other characters, it's hard to believe that even she cares about what she's saying.

The characters, like the book itself, seem to be adrift, searching for meaning. Perhaps that's what the title is intended to reflect, for certainly, THE GYPSY LOUNGE doesn't offer a clear direction.

Ultimately, it's an intriguing first work that doesn't quite satisfy, but that gives plenty of hints of where Lex is going as an artist and creator, and those hints are more than enough to demonstrate that he's a talent worth following. With a stronger script, he could produce something truly fascinating.

Kevin Dole is a freelance writer who lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

This article is Ideological Freeware. The author grants permission for its reproduction and redistribution by private individuals on condition that the author and source of the article are clearly shown, no charge is made, and the whole article is reproduced intact, including this notice.