[Trade Winds] Tiki Joe Mysteries vol.1 : The High-Stakes Patsy

Posted by Graig on August 21, 2008

(SLG Publishing)

Using nostalgia in storytelling is tricky. Longing for an idealized past or place can be used and abused by storytellers to create an immediate connection with an audience, but it so many cases it rings hollow. The wistful oversimplification of a time or place can raise a viewer or reader’s hackles as often as it comforts them. The phrase “you can’t go home again” is overly simplistic, yes, but an accurate one, as recreating a time or place in a film or book can only happen to a certain extent, and negotiating the reality with the glorified fictionalization is the greatest challenge. Everything changes, and as years pass, what has occurred since will influence everything that results beyond. You can’t make a science fiction film exactly like Forbidden Planet today, or write hard-boiled pulp fiction like you could in the 1930’s, or make a TV show like Leave It To Beaver… and if you tried, the modern audience just won’t accept it, because it wouldn’t be authentic. You can however do it through a filter, like Quentin Tarantino, or Frank Miller or the creators of Mad Men, where you’re embracing aspects of a time or place but re-contextualizing for a modern audience.

But that’s not the path that writer/artist Mark Murphy has taken… there’s nothing filtered about the nostalgia in Tiki Joe Mysteries. The new book from SLG Publishing presents a pair of tales that are obviously influenced by the Rat Pack (even says so on the back cover) and their movies, but strives for nothing more than to earnestly emulate the post-War/pre-Kennedy Vegas swagger of Martin, Davis, Sinatra and Bishop. And somehow it works.

Murphy, in cobbling together his two stories, ignores modern influences, from dialogue to illustration techniques. The clean look of the book is a match with black and white newspaper strips of the 60’s, akin to Jim Holdaway on Modesty Blaise or John McClusky on James Bond, Murphy no doubt using film and photo references to capture setting, wardrobe and style of the time. The adventures Joe Halliday, war veteran and tiki-themed bar owner, finds himself in are equally steeped in the culture of the era. In the first, Joe finds himself put under the thumb of mob thugs seeking protection money, but, naturally, Joe and his army buddies aren’t about to just roll over. In the second, a quintet of beautiful stunt cyclists descend upon Vegas at the same time as the father of Joe’s main squeeze is exhibiting a precious diamond. As expected, the diamond disappears, and Joe and co. are on the case.

Both stories are unapologetically predictable, but it’s not about creating something different, and it’s not about homage or even really nostalgia. It’s a meticulous re-creation not just of a time or a place, but a specific type of story with a specific cast done in a specific style, with specific dialogue and mannerisms. It comes together as authentic, not approximation or parody. Murphy succeeds 100% at what he strives for, which is to make a comic book knock-off of the Rat Pack starring in serialized adventures. There’s no commenting on the politics of the Sixties, there’s nary a nod or wink to the audience about any retro cool pastiche, and there’s nothing to imply that there’s anything more to it than what’s presented. In fact, if I hadn’t been told otherwise, I could swear that the book was reprinting actual 1960’s material.

I don’t think you could do that as effectively anywhere else as in comics. It would be very difficult to write a whole book in the same prose as they were written in the 1960’s (dialogue yes, but otherwise the conventions of language have just changed so much). You couldn’t easily do an earnest movie replicating the Rat Pack, because you would be using stars who act in a modern way and speak in a modern way, and shooting the film would be done in a modern way with a modern crew and modern technology. Things evolve to the point that doing them the old way is not just impractical but sometimes impossible. But in comics, you can have Frank and Sammy live again through imagery and word balloons, you can recreate a setting truthfully, you can mimic dialogue with a well-attuned ear, and you can illustrate a book in much the same way they were done decades before. You can actually approach authenticity.

Yes, it’s stiff and predictable and a little hokey, just like Dean and Joey were, and that is the charm of Tiki Joe Mysteries. It’s an impressive work, not just because of Murphy’s ability to resurrect a style, a culture, and a time (or as it is represented in the entertainment of the era), but because he also makes it enthusiastically enjoyable. If you appreciate and enjoy watching post-war movies, from Alfred Hitchcock to Russ Meyer, then Tiki Joe is a welcoming read.

[Trade Winds] Tiki Joe Mysteries vol.1 : The High-Stakes Patsy

Filed Under: Trade Winds

Tags: 4/5, Crime-Noir, slave labor

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