Bigfoot #1

Bigfoot (1 of 4)
written by Steve Niles and Rob Zombie
art by Richard Corben

If a late-70s monster B-movie, complete with splatter gore and gratuitous sex, were re-imagined as a comic book mini-series, Bigfoot would be the inevitable result.  No doubt, its reception would be as polarized as its cultural pulp predecessors.

Like so many horror B-sides, Bigfoot begins with childhood trauma, and the first issue works primarily as the opening act to its re-emergence in the life of its young survivor.  It's a nightmare flashback to the summer of 1973, when the radio still played the Partridge Family and the Manson Family convictions were barely two years old, and Niles and Zombie don't shy away from allusions to either of these extremely disparate cultural touchstones.  Bigfoot's storytelling is equally as cinematic as its pop heritage would suggest.  It hits most of the horror tropes:  partial unveiling of the creature as it brutally slaughters a deer, the seemingly idyllic arrival of its human victims to an ominous-looking cabin, the touching family scene to establish character credibility and sympathy, an obligatory sex scene inevitably interrupted by the monster, a cover-up by ambiguously motivated local law enforcement, and a weirdly sexualized nightmare sequence embedded further in the flashback.  Bigfoot is, in other words, exactly what it seems to be.

Rough, weird, and slightly malformed, Corben's artwork hits just the right register for this off-beat horror comic, perfectly suited to its grotesque sensationalism and its nostalgia for its B-movie forerunners.  After making his career as one of the most imminent practitioners in underground comics, Corben's occasional forays into more mainstream comics bring with them his underground aesthetic and counter-culture sensibilities.  The humans are fleshy, bulbous caricatures, all feet and hands (and once, of course, boobs); the creature is all eyes, teeth, and black fur.  Whatever else it is, Corben's artwork is engaging, a kind of fascinating horror that keeps you looking and makes you wonder why.

[February 2005, digital]