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Punk Mambo #0
Released by: Valiant Entertainment
Released on: November 19th, 2014.
Written by: Peter Milligan
Illustrated by: Robert Gill
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For whatever reason, putting 'punk' in a comics title is an instant turn off… unless that comic is written by Peter Milligan. The scribe who made a name for himself putting pen to paper to chronicle the exploits of John Constantine and who handled Vertigo's Shade: The Changing Man for Vertigo has got a solid enough track record that, even if the title of this new series from Valiant Entertainment and the mohawked heroin slathered all over its promo art looks to be silly and clichéd, it's worth giving this new #0 issue a shot.
So what's it all about? The comic starts in a Louisiana swamp where two young men trek through the muck to find a 'punk mambo' - a witch who lives out in the sticks and has no use for 'a nice condo in Lafayette.' As these guys get closer, we see that aforementioned gal with the mohawk sitting in a tree with a voodoo doll - she's not granting them the interview, they didn't bring her a gift.
Later that night in her shack she cooks up some food and - no wait, she's actually boiling a head. That's not quite the same thing. A few hours later, Sid Vicious appears to her as her own personal 'punk djab' She and Sid head into a gluey vision where she sees a sign that says 'Sex Pastilles' and figures it's close enough that she should take it as a sign. Sid? He doesn't know. Even in the afterlife he's a bit dim. From here, she catches a plane to London and instantly notices how much it's changed since she left in the late seventies. A flashback shows us how she used to be a girl named Victoria, suspended from her girls school for shaving her head into a mohawk only to find a sense of belonging in the King's Road punk scene that London was currently giving birth to. Hungry and with no money, she meets up with Noxo and Dexy who take her in and let her crash in their squat.
After a while they take her to meet the 'grandfather of the London punks,' a guy named Joe Mayhem who 'out-rottens Rotten, he's more scabies Scabies.' Noxo and Dexy leave her alone with Joey unusually early in the night and of course, he gets fresh. He also claims to be one hundred and eighty years old. He tells her she'll remain young but her flashback shows us how he used her and others for months on end and how, while others caved, she watched and learned until she got to the point where she knew enough to make her escape with some of his arcane knowledge tucked away up there in her brain. Years later, in a Louisiana pub, she decides its' time to catch up with Noxo, now going by his birth name of Kevin Murray, and then with Dexy, no going by Daphne and living with her partner, Janet. She's a fashion designer now and her 'guilt' over how she treated Victoria way back when manifests in an interesting way. And then, of course, it's time to deal with Joe Mayhem, now involved with a new band…
There's nothing specifically 'punk' about what happens here in that the events as portrayed could just as easily have taken place in any other subculture you'd care to name - early hip-hop/rap, rockabilly, metal, new wave - whatever, it doesn't really matter. Milligan probably chose punk because he likes it and has a familiarity with it and that's all well and good but at its core this issue is basically a story about a Voodoo priestess getting revenge for some of the nasty shit that she went through when she was young, naí¯ve and far too trusting of those around her. Most of this plays out through Victoria's internal narration but it works well enough and Milligan crafts a pretty decent character here. We don't learn everything about her in this issue, nor should we expect to, but there are enough hints at her past and how that past will affect her present to make for a good read.
Robert Gill's artwork is sketch enough to have a certain 'punk' aesthetic to it but polished enough to look good in whatever definition of good you'd care to apply to it. There's nice detail here and we see it not only in the facial expressions of the characters in the story but in the wardrobe and in the backgrounds of the locations where all of this plays out.
Ultimately, this is a nicely illustrated but not entirely engrossing origin story for a character that originally appeared in Valiant's Shadowman series. It's a one-shot and doesn't really look like it'll turn into a regular series at this point, though the potential is there - were Milligan given free rein to run with the character and give her a more stories with more depth Valiant might be onto something here. As it stands, that's not the case but this makes for a fine single issue story, just not much else.
