Review: AIRBOY #4

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AIRBOY #4
Written by James Robinson
Art by Greg Hinkle
Published by Image Comics
Release Date: November 11, 2015

It’s over almost as fast as it began. James. Greg. Airboy. It was all a dream. Or was it? A hoax? No, it was all an imaginary story. Or was it?

Aren’t they all?

Oh shut up.

The finale to Robinson and Hinkle’s drug and sex-addled travails through fantasy, exaggeration, and myth has arrived and like the beginning, it paints a perfect picture of the creative mind, the tortured soul, and real goddamn emotions that get muddled up between the two. In some ways, it’s too sweet an ending to feel real, but the thing is, none of this has been real in that sense — although the grounding for the story seems inarguably genuine. Robinson writes the story the way he wants to experience it (maybe even in the way he wants us to experience it, but I’m not sure that feels as important a note). And that’s what stories — hero stories, villain stories, and everything in-between — are meant for.

I had this discussion with my father a few months ago. He’s recently developed a passion for storytelling and taken classes at Second City in Chicago to learn, make friends, and do it. Really do it. And if you don’t know, some of the best storytellers of the last two generations came from Second City — Tina Fey, Steve Carell, Amy Sedaris, Dan Castellaneta. It’s an amazing program and more importantly, he loves it. Really loves it.

Except they told him he can’t lie. That his stories have to be true. And I don’t get it.

Because every story a writer or artist tells is always true. It comes from a place that’s truer than the story we walk around with on our face every day, that’s for certain. And that’s the kind of story we’ve been gifted in Airboy. Something that is true in the realest sense, and real in the truest sense, and not really one or the other the way we have come to understand those terms.

The genius behind all the self-effacement and most of the outrageous insult is that it finds this balance between comedy and heartbreak. I literally have laughed out loud at a sequence in this issue, only to turn the page and get that flushed feeling in my sinuses and gut that can only be… sorrow? Heartache? It’s not pity. But it’s something powerful, and that ability to stream me across the entire emotional spectrum in three flimsy comic book pages speaks great things of this medium and the creators of this book.

The truest irony of Airboy, of course, is that a soliloquy on James Robinson’s self-deprecation and talent-fail could be the most profoundly brilliant thing he’s ever put to paper. Even in issue #4, it doesn’t take itself too seriously but still manages to get at the real heart of inadequacy and shame spiraling and just generally being human in its most difficult moments. Hinkle’s art continues to capture that gorgeously sad feeling, with a color palette that grows dark in dreams, but dull in daylight — giving me this longing for the dream, but still letting me feel more deeply the potential in waking up from it.

So, was any of it true? It was all true in some ways, I’m sure. Did Airboy just manifest as a shaming device? Did James really come crashing down in a heap of his own self-pity, only to come out the other side ready to do it all over again? Was Greg’s penis ever really that large? Or was it all imagination? Does it matter?

It felt real to me.

The Verdict: 10/10

 

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