Close to the edge

Most of us come close to the edge lots of times. How do I define reality’s brink, rim, border or, well, edge? Let me count the ways:

The edge is waiting for a cab on Avenida corner Recto, and a woman as old as Tutankhamen approaches you, offering sex for a hundred pesos. The edge is thinking for a moment that the woman is the most beautiful thing in that ugly, pungent universe. The edge is waiting for someone in a café and the other customers are all talking about grand pyramid schemes. The edge is getting so drunk on ale and getting lost in the London tube – and confusing the Circle Line with the Central Line and reaching a cold and clammy void, instead of a cold and clammy hotel. The edge is listening to a drunken cowherd talk about his crazy sorrows, realizing he does make sense and that you blew time and money listening to academics talk shit. The edge is watching a woman do wonders with a specific part of her anatomy in a bar on a glittery Thai road: she lights up a cigarette and you swear that thing blows smoke rings and dragons. The edge is recording a song with a friend about finding Jesus in a phone booth and Beelzebub does backup vocals. The edge is listening to a bunch of scientists speak about their crazy inventions as they spew spittle on you. The edge is those moments you wished that one of them invented a force field against saliva or a reverse-polarity gadget for drool. The edge is going into a bookstore and a mysterious comic-book title pops itself into view: Edge.

Edge (a.k.a. Tales from the Edge) is filled with strange tales from creators who have that unshakeable tag of "cutting edge" dogging their names. The Sandman storyteller, The Sandman cover-artist, a Time magazine illustrator, Marilyn Manson’s poster-maker, The Mosquito Coast author, a Smithsonian Institute artist, and other visionaries come together to celebrate the 10th year of Vanguard’s flagship anthology.

This experimental art magazine/far-out comic-book anthology carries the tagline: "New-style weird stuff meets old-style weird stuff." It is a thematic brother to DC Comics’ Vertigo titles (The Sandman, 100 Bullets, Hellblazer, The Swamp Thing, The Invisibles, Heavy Liquid, etc.) You won’t find old superheroes wearing briefs over leotards in Edge comics. (If I were a villain hell-bent on world-domination I would just laugh at somebody wearing blue tights with a matching red cape…until I get my neck wrung by hands of steel.) You also won’t find conventional comic-book panels and traditional dialogue balloons. All you’ll see are twisted blue tales from tangled blue minds. All you’ll see are edgy images and words.

My only caveat is that Edge is in black and white (grayscale is more like it). Maybe the creators deemed that readers don’t need their nightmares in technicolor. Sometimes the absence of color works for a specific story (especially for the punkish tales), sometimes it doesn’t.

One of my favorites is Time illustrator Barron Storey’s "Beyond The Clash," a tribute to badass composers John Cage, Frank Zappa and, of course, the seminal punk band led by the late-great Joe Strummer. Storey’s piece is an amalgam of stream of consciousness meditations, strange captions, weird montages and esoteric quotations: In 1951, Cage experienced an anechoic chamber at Harvard University… Inside the chamber, Cage heard only the sounds of his own blood circulating and of his nervous system firing millions of bioelectric signals. He realized that…there is no such thing as absolute silence, but only relative degrees of noiselessness… Or "When I complained about my insecurity concerning the value of my music, Frank said: Shut up and play yer guitar."

Sandman cover-art guru Dave McKean is interviewed about his cutting-edge film titled N[eon].

Mitch O’ Connell has created illustrations for National Lampoon and Playboy – and almost every publication in between. His piece, "Police Log," is a list of quirky, funny and cryptic entries in a, uh, police log: "9:20 a.m., Allagash Drive resident reported suspicious vehicle left an unknown object in his driveway. Called back to say it was a newspaper," "10:45 a.m., a woman reported a man claiming to be from a lung charity called and asked her to breathe into the telephone," "1:10 p.m., a resident reported a mysterious footprint on the carpet in her residence. Checked and believed it to be her own," "4:06 a.m., noises reported outside Newhall Street apartments, possibly sounds of a fight. Police found it was not a fight, but something different," and so on.

"Heartsprings and Watchstops" is Neil Gaiman’s old collaboration with McKean on an old Mister X anthology. Apocalyptic party, Mister X, stolen quotes from Oscar Wilde and the Velvet Underground, an infinite clock, McKean illustrates a Gaiman story – what more is there to say?

"The Endangered Species Cookbook" is Paul Theroux’s contribution to Edge. This is a cookbook prepared by a chef from the Twilight Zone with mouth-watering dishes such as Potogee Turtle Soup and the Mochi Indian Marinated Bear Steak. Food fit for graduates of the Hannibal Lecter School of Poaching and Culinary Arts.

Greg Spalenka’s piece, "Miracle City," has a simple plot. A panhandler gets 25 cents from a passerby. He throws it away. A dog steals his dentures. The man chases after it. The dog brings the teeth to a peddler. The peddler sells the dentures for 25 cents. The panhandler picks up the discarded 25 cents. And they all lived happily ever after.

Space Cowboy creator David Spurlock gives tribute to fallen crazy diamonds like Steve Marriot of Humble Pie, Syd Barret and Jimi Hendrix via "Stone Cold Fever."

Other tales also grab readers by the metaphysical balls. David Mack tells a fable about art, identity and the kabuki ("Self-Portrait"); Steranko presented many images to be viewed as a single kinetic block ("Frogs"); Justin Hampton, responsible for some hip White Stripes posters, and Brain McDonald, responsible for the one-shot Hellboy spin-off Abe Sapien: Drums of the Dead, work together on a story that brings together boobs and bullets ("Sex on the Brain"). The great thing is, comic titles like Edge can be a threshold for kids to go into other literary realms: the worlds spawned in works like William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow, Jorge Luis Borges’ Labyrinths, Neil Gaiman’s Sandman graphic novels, Kurt Vonnegut’s Welcome to the Monkey House, Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics, among other insane tomes.

Edgy literature rules, but fact is infinitely more screwed up than fantasy. What could be edgier than living in the Philippines with politicians who outlaw typhoons, repeal the law of supply and demand, or threaten to stop globalization? What could be edgier than living in the Philippines where citizens tend to elect these politicians because of their stupid, phantasmagoric campaign promises?

We are living on the edge without even knowing it.

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For comments, suggestions, curses and invocations iganja@hotmail.com.