Obscure Comic of the Month was a column I wrote from 2015 to 2017, where I would take a look at a comic or series that wasn't really talked about. This covered independent comics, zines, weird spin-offs, webcomics and more. It's been away, but now it's back.
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Zegas by Michel Fiffe - 2017 Fantagraphics Books
Contains Mild Spoilers
Michel Fiffe is probably most well know for his super-mercenary series Copra, most commonly described as 'the greatest Suicide Squad comic ever made, and it's not even a Suicide Squad comic.' Fiffe as a creator has a vivid and recognisable thumbprint, merging both retro sensibilities with a surrealist conceptualisation that makes it a style all of his own.
But we're not here today to talk about Copra (we'll get there, oh believe me we'll get there,) but instead Fiffe's short run slice of life sci-fi Zegas. Unlike Copra, describing Zegas succinctly is a little more difficult. The story follows the Zegas siblings, Emily and Boston, as they go about living their lives on a somewhat barren alien world as they desperately fight through drama and lethargy in search of fulfilment.
As with Copra, Fiffe's intense visual style is on display right from the get go. Heavy use of ink on a washed out newsprint background with limited use of colour, occasionally punctuated with psychedelic neon. Fiffe is one of those artists where, even if the story wasn't any good, you'd be able to recommend the work on the strength of the artwork alone.
There really is nobody else like him in comics right now, and his visuals stand out all the more in a time where digital artwork is strictly becoming the norm. Fiffe's artwork feels like it comes from some kind of parallel universe where digital art was never developed and illustrators were left instead to push paper and ink to it's absolute limits.
So, of course, the art is good, but what of the writing? Well Zegas essentially takes us into a world where the fantastical is treated as banal. Where psionic power and reality warping technology are just normal parts of life. Early on the siblings encounter an ethereal alien life form and treat the encounter as no more unusual as being stuck at a faulty traffic stop. The main draw of Zegas is to propose that there is no strange circumstance that human life won't adapt to, and that at the end of the day, more mundane, pedestrian issues will still be of the greatest concern to the common man.
The book is made up of a collection of strips bouncing between Emily and Boston, mostly concerned with small scale conflicts fuelled by ego and disillusionment. Emily longs for something more out of life, while Boston contends with his own deadbeat compulsions. Sometimes an alien fruit comes along that swells up your head to a bundle of fist size tumours. C'est la vie.
While Fiffe's Copra is deliberately reminiscent of Suicide Squad by design, Zegas instead calls to mind a very different comic book series, Love and Rockets, and in many ways the decision to juxtapose soap opera drama with fantastical elements feels like a nod to Rocket's early strips that hewed towards pulp sci-fi.
If Zegas is to have one real flaw, however, it's that unlike Rockets, it's web of personal connections feels too small, too limited. For a story that is primarily about the connections and consequences that weave, unknowingly between us throughout life, too often it feels as though we're on a closed set, with the wider world the Zegas siblings sit in, painfully just out of focus.
I suppose it's hardly fair to judge a short lived comic against one of the all time greatest long runners, but what I guess I'm trying to say is that Fiffe has such a way of bringing worlds to life that it feels as though we've only barely scratched the surface by the time we get to the closing pages.
Copra is obviously Fiffe's main project at the moment, and you'll hear no complaints from me about that, but I can't deny there's a part of that that's eager to see more of the Zegas twin's world, to go beyond their own personal circle and see the domino effect of how their own choices resonate out over the starry horizon.
Unless that time comes, I guess I'll just have to make do with the strips as is, which at the end of the day, is still no bad thing.
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Jack Harvey 2022. Zegas (c) Michel Fiffe. Images used under Fair Use.
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