Underground, #3 (Dark Horse, 1994)

This comic book, published by Dark Horse Comics in 1994, is visually very interesting, because it's actually a mix of comic book and pulp fiction writing; half the book is comic panels, the other half is written out as a story. The cover is a full color painting of a bald muscular guy with a dragon tattoo on his chest; he's got  no legs, and he moves himself in his electric wheelchair though an underground tunnel or sewer.  He looks at us, the viewer, as be passes us, driving his electric cart (which has the word "leftovers" scrawled on the side)  Right away, I can sense that there's something amateurish about this book, even though it's got top-notch production values: the drawing is all out of proportion, and the cover layout is pretty dull (a picture of a poorly drawn guy in  wheelchair? C'mon...!) I'm encouraged, however, when I open the book and find that there's so much more going on than what the cover suggests.  UNDERGROUND is actually and art and literary magazine. It's half comic book, half pulp novel. It's a compilation of work

At first glance, I like how it seems experimental in nature, how it tries to tell a story using four different creators. Two of the stories are comic book in style, the other two are written as straight text. The text stories also have illustrations added to them. The result is rather disjointed. The basic story is laid out on the first page, where there's come vague narration about there a group of people and creatures who live a subterranean existence in some tunnels. You're never sure really what's going on.

The first story, by Jason Lutes, is interesting from an artistic standpoint: he ties together a long string of panels with a long continuous sound effect that overlaps the panels. But each contribution here, whether it be the comics portion or the literary portion, they all attempt to tell a piece of the story, without telling the whole story. It's strange to see pages and pages of text in a comic book. The history of using pages and pages of text in comics was to get around a rule that the post office had; it was a way to save some money. But here, it's like a forced combination of comic book and pulp novel. The comics are hard to follow, and the written stories will probably go unread. As a comic book reader, I look for the comic book portion of the book; why would I open up a comic book to read a short story?

There are also some problems with the artwork: it comes off as amateurish, like "fan art". Same with the lettering. There is a creative sequence of panels towards the end of the book, however, where there is an alternation of art styles between panels, as if different artists took turns drawing each panel.

This book lacks a cohesive feeling. I would suggest literally cutting and pasting the comic into the text portion, so that this book has the same feel throughout. That is, have three panels of the comic book (as a comic strip), followed by a page of text from the short story. Just repeat this pattern over and over until you've exhausted the comic strip panels and the paragraphs of text. Then this book would hold together; it would be more cohesive.  It feels like an interesting experiment from some fan boys.

The editors, in their introduction to this book, attempt to set up the story...in four paragraphs. They should reduce it to one or two sentences. Even after reading four paragraphs, it's not clear what's actually going on in this story. Their introduction would be better used for explaining how to read this book (with its combination of comic chapters, and text chapters), and an explanation of why they're creating this book using this format.  I admire how the creators of UNDERGROUND #3 want to make comics and text work together, but this version is just too raw. It feels like a rough draft.