Squalor #1-4
Published by: Next Publishing – 1989
Written by: Stefan Petrucha
Illustrated by: Tom Sutton
Squalor is a forgotten gem that may never have been known in the first place. A four-issue 1989 Next Publishing miniseries—written by Stefan Petrucha and drawn by Tom Sutton—Squalor follows a former genius and apparent schizophrenic—with two PhDs and a job at a library—named Harry Keller, nicknamed “Squalor,” as he tries to save the world and his own life from someone mucking about in “A-time.” In a nutshell, A-Time is our world bereft of linear time, where past, present, and future coincide—a realm glimpsed only in passing by the crazy and drugged, a place which, until being discovered by Squalor, was only theoretical or dismissed as the musings of the insane or drug addled.
Squalor is based on the cliché of the brilliant psychotic—that genius and madness are separated by but a thin line—as well as a newer premise on the verge of becoming a trope in modern science fiction: the apparently insane person whom is actually perfectly sane and is in fact responding to the supernatural—making him appear mentally infirm. This idea constitutes a portion of the premise behind the very good recent FX television series Legion, but Squalor did it first—though Squalor was almost undoubtedly not the first to do it.
The story begins with Squalor trying to save a man whose suicide would inadvertently result in the deaths of millions—which Squalor knows because he saw it in A-time—and ends with him trying to avert a world war—a war which would be the end result of a series of tiny coincidences crafted in A-time beginning with the delivery of a slippery banana peel to the right spot at the right time—and, between those bookends, Squalor must prove his sanity to doctors and the female friend whom takes care of him—whom would each like to see him hospitalized—all the while propping-up the falling dominos that foreshadow his own doom.
Stefan Petrucha’s writing in Squalor is a treat. There are frequent pearls dropped in passing, such as a doctor summarizing bad news by saying the patient shouldn’t “start any long books.” Likewise, instead of getting AIDS from a dirty needle a character gets a brain tumor from “a dirty thought.” These witticisms are peppered liberally around the dialogue and narration, enlivening scenes which would otherwise be focused on plot, background, or concepts, and adding dimension and intelligence to the characters.
The writing occasionally incorporates elements of “stream-of-consciousness”—to depict the flow of thoughts or of information gleaned outside of linear time—which can be aptly disorienting, and sometimes extends its metaphors visually—such as recurring scenes of dominos falling to indicate successive successes in the plans and machinations of the shadowy figure whose ambitions Squalor becomes intent on derailing.
Tom Sutton’s art is not mind-blowing, but it—especially with the addition of Paul Mounts’ coloring—is surreal enough to competently convey the unreality of A-Time and helps to grab and sustain the reader’s interest; it is what first drew me to the title—what distinguished it from all the other titles in the fifty-cent bin that day—and convinced me, after a cursory look, to lay down my two hard-earned quarters.
It is, in fact, crucial that the concept of A-Time be depicted visually because it would be difficult to convey using only words. As an abstract concept, it is easily imaginable, but when trying to envision that concept as a physical realm where the characters can walk around, enter the past and future, and physically alter events in time without necessarily taking part in those events in “real” time—physically suturing past to future like veins of time, for example—it can be hard to concretize in one’s imagination. For that reason, this is a story best told in a visual medium.
Squalor is mostly appropriate for a general audience. There is no nudity or profanity or violence to speak of. There are references to drug use, but they are vague and general.
Recommendations:
If you like Squalor, there’s a good chance you’ll also like Doom Patrol written by Grant Morrison and Shade the Changing Man written by Peter Milligan, and if you like Doom Patrol you’ll also like Morrison’s run on Animal Man. All three are reboots and revamps of existing DC Comics properties.
Morrison’s forty-five issue run on Doom Patrol—from issue nineteen to issue sixty-three—is a modern classic about a group of misfit superheroes battling surreal threats that are too strange or absurd for mainstream heroes like the JLA. Milligan’s Shade the Changing Man—running from issue one to issue seventy—is similarly surreal, but, rather than focusing on superheroics, follows the eponymous “Shade” and his friends as they go on adventures aided, and complicated, by a mysterious reality-warping force known as “The Madness.”
You should, however, be warned that both Morrison and Milligan have written series that are substantially darker and creepier than those recommended here, which—to say nothing of quality—might turn off certain readers, so it is not safe to assume that fans of one work by either of these writers will automatically like another.
Petrucha also wrote the Epic Comics miniseries Lance Barnes, Post Nuke Dick—a post-apocalyptic farce that would be at home in the pages of 2000 A.D.
It should also be noted that anyone short on cash or short on comic-book-purchasing venues interested in reading Squalor can find it on Kindle for about a dollar per issue.
Brian Bigelow
April 20, 2017
