The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Sightings Of Wallace Sendek

by Sean Azzopardi and Douglas Noble

Self Published

Two stalwarts of small press, self publishing come together here: Douglas Noble makes complicated, dark, thoughful masterpieces (Strip For Me, Complex and Live Static), and Sean Azzopardi makes equally great comics on a wide variety of subjects, including the autobiog Twelve Hour Shift and his collaboration with Daniel Merlin Goodbrey – the wild, genre twisting horror thriller of Necessary Monsters.

Sadly the proposed collection of Necessary Monsters, that involved putting aside many projects, including Wallace Sendek (now three years in the completing), has been delayed, perhaps indefinitely due to publisher recession hell. But Azzopardi has pledged to soldier on, and this collection of Wallace Sendek is the first post Monsters work he’s completed.

I can’t really say enough good things about Wallace Sendek. It’s quite brilliant. I’m a huge fan of Noble’s work anyway and I’ve always liked Azzopardi’s artwork. But in Sendek we see Noble on his vaguest, strangest, darkest form and Azzopardi drawing his arm off to keep up with the strange, surreal storyline, matching each new voice on the page with some new, different styling. I’m hopeful we’ll see the gents working together again. But maybe less than three years to wait next time eh lads?

(The final gig, the final night of Wallace Sendek’s old life. From Sightings Of Wallace Sendek by Douglas Noble and Sean Azzopardi)

Sightings Of Wallace Sendek concerns itself with a famous rock star’s disappearance, it’s implications on those whose lives he touched and the mysterious and unnerving series of sightings of the singer many, many years after he vanished.

Like every other work of Noble’s writing, there’s no simple reading of Wallace Sendek, no easy conclusion to be reached, no obvious end, no solid plot. It’s all deliberately vague, a mystery done properly, teased out, clues amongst the sightings and the reports, a page for each – a woman waiting for his return, his manager wondering how long before he can be legally declared dead, the coroner asked to declare a body as Sendek’s but knowing it’s not. Even his cat is brought into it…

(The disappearance impacts many, large and small, with Noble’s writing and Azzopardi’s art altering for every page, perfectly pitched each time. From Sightings Of Wallace Sendek by Douglas Noble and Sean Azzopardi)

And after these simple recordings of a man’s impact upon disparate lives come the sightings – someone is appearing across the world, across the years, and a mystery unfolds, more complex and bizarre each time. There’s mumbled dream talk of murder from a hitch-hiker in ’81, a class of children in ’85 all producing identical pictures of the “scary music man“, TVs in three countries in 2005 tune in to the same blurred image of what appears to be Sendek’s face. And most telling of all, a meeting in Knossos in ’86 where Sendek’s jokey words of getting together again some time “the next time hell lets me visit” takes the whole thing into far darker territory. And what of the possible car crash in ’76 happening on the same day as the concert that opens the story – a concert that saw Sendek on edge and acting so strangely beforehand?

(Sinister? Just a little. From Sightings Of Wallace Sendek by Douglas Noble and Sean Azzopardi)

The whole comic’s just one huge unresolved mystery, where you can take whatever reading of it you desire; has Sendek deliberately vanished? Is he dead? A ghostly presence haunting the world? Are the sightings simply some form of mysterious mass hysteria? Or could there be a far more sinister explanation for it all?

I don’t know. Something I always seem to find myself saying when it comes to anything involving Douglas Noble. But like every time before, it doesn’t matter, not one bit, since Noble creates so much suspense and intrigue in his comics that the conclusion isn’t the point, isn’t the best thing about them. Wallace Sendek, just like Complex, just like Live Static, is all about the mystery. The fun’s in experiencing it, not solving it. But should you wish to try and pull the mystery apart, you’ll find a discrepancy in there, all tied into the failings of the reported word, something I suspect Noble deliberately planted in there to keep eagle-eyed readers on their toes.

Noble’s comics always promise something special and always confuse and confound. But so much of what I’ve read by him is simply sublime that he’s fast becoming one of my favourite writer in comics right now.

As for the art, it’s Sean Azzopardi showing huge growth and variation in his style. There’s sketchy line work, surreal effects, cartooning with bold lines. Every page seems to showcase a different style, fitting nicely in with the different voices on each page. There’s some masterful work from Azzopardi in Wallace Sendek.

And whilst I’m talking Sean’s art, he also sent along a copy of his second A5 sketchbook collection. And the strange thing is that there’s actually more variety on display in Wallace Sendek than there is in the pages of the sketchbook. Not that there isn’t some lovely stuff in the sketchbook, but it is, by very definition, sketchy. Front half is more warm up, doodling, mental process leaking onto the page sort of thing, back half is mostly Necessary Monsters prelim work.

(A beautifully atmospheric double page spread from Sean Azzopardi’s sketchbook.)

Douglas Noble continues his fascinating, confusing, brilliant Complex online at Strip For Me, Sean Azzopardi’s work appears in many places, but the best way to keep up to date is on his website Phatcomics. His next project is the teen romance rock series Black Leather. Sightings Of Wallace Sendek is available from both Noble’s and Azzapardi’s website. Trust me, it’s well worth ordering and is on the short list for my best of the year.