The Deadpan Pulp Surrealism of “Masters of the Nefarious”
When it aired thirty-odd years ago, the television series Fishing With John was like nothing that had come before it. Each episode nominally followed John Lurie and one of his friends as they took a fishing expedition somewhere in the world. If Tom Waits stuffing a fish in his pants or Jim Jarmusch attempting a revolver-and-sandwich method of shark fishing didn’t clue viewers in that this was not, strictly speaking, a documentary series, the ending of the fourth episode did. That’s when the voiceover narration informed viewers that Lurie and Willem Dafoe had both died while ice fishing in Maine.
The fifth episode opens with what seems like ten minutes of Dennis Hopper preparing for a solo trip to Thailand. Finally, he reached the airport — and lo, John Lurie is there to greet him. “I’ve made a mistake!” the show’s narrator declares. “John Lurie is still alive!” As payoffs for absurdist comedy, it’s an all-time great one. And if that setup and punchline sound remotely amusing to you, you’ll probably find Pierre La Police’s Masters of the Nefarious: Mollusk Rampage to be a deadpan delight. I certainly did.
My interest in this book climbed after publishing Evan Allgood’s interview with translator Luke Burns at Vol.1 Brooklyn. There were plenty of interesting comments in there about the peculiar challenges of translating this particular book, including Burns’s description of “finding the right level of awkwardness in moments that are intentionally awkward in terms of the pacing or phrasing.” That along may give you an idea of what to expect. There’s a strange blend of formalism and the grotesque here; Michael Kupperman is a good point of comparison, both in terms of the style and the sensibility.
The titular Masters of the Nefarious are three men summoned to deal with the occult creatures that have invaded a series of islands in the Pacific. Twins Chris and Montgomery have an impressive list of skills and superpowers; when the book opens, Chris discovers that he has the ability to teleport, as long as he’s teleporting to Uganda. (Echoes of Dom Toretto’s “You can have any beer you want, as long as it’s a Corona” from The Fast and the Furious.) The third member of the group is Fongor, who wears robes and travels around via wheeled staircase. We’re firmly in the realm of the absurd here, it’s safe to say.
Masters of the Nefarious: Mollusk Rampage’s story is told in page-sized panels, each with a caption below it. La Police is very fond of making the story pivot on a dime. On one page, Chris and Montgomery vow to stop an eldritch invasion. “They absolutely must solve this mystery,” the caption reads. On the next page, they’re preparing for revelry. The caption suggests they’ve changed their minds: “Or not.” And soon enough, they’re roasting a deer for dinner instead.
On the surface, Mollusk Rampage tells a story that could easily appear in a superhero shared universe, about a group of paranormal investigators with extraordinary abilities responding to the invasion of bizarre beings from another time and place. In practice, though, we’re light years from Challengers of the Unknown or X-Factor. Montgomery dies and comes back to life multiple times; Fongor pauses at one point so that he can watch something called the Couscous World Cup. As for Chris, at one point he drinks Schnapps and changes into “sort of a yellow Hulk.” Cue the inevitable rampage, which does indeed eventually include mollusks.
As Allgood shared in his introduction to the interview, Mollusk Rampage is the first in three collections of Masters of the Nefarious. Hopefully, this won’t be the last we see of it in English translation. Deadpan surrealist humor like this isn’t to everyone’s taste, but if you do find this kind of humor compelling — and I definitely do — you’ll find plenty to savor here.
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As always, I'm Tobias Carroll, and this has been Postcards From Komiksoj.
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