Ode to Outlaws

October 25th, 2010 by Dan Nadel

Back in the mid-1980s there was a moment when everyone was publishing black and white comic books, hoping to catch the wave of interest in cheaply made high concept comic books. Most of what was published is garbage but some of it, like some of anything, was unique and worth re-examining. The fun of New York City Outlaws is that is appears to have arrived full-blown as content and package. Published from 1984 to 1987 by “Outlaw Comics” (and more specifically, Steve Kapelonis, then the co-owner of Eva’s Restaurant, where artist Ken Landgraf had done some lettering work for the menu; Kapelonis later founded the popular “Pump” energy food franchise.) it’s a bit of a time capsule of NYC in the mid-1980s.

The title feature concerns a multi-cultural group of misfits from all over the five boroughs – the Bronx, Greenwich Village, Astoria– who train in mystic temple deep in a forest (?!) in Staten Island. The crime-fighting action is of a piece with low-budget gore and thriller movies of the time, and the dialogue is as stilted and melodramatic as you can imagine: “Women!! Mother warned me about them. But God she is beautiful.” “And last night, during a night made for lovers, he found his woman dead of a drug overdose”. Etc.

Ken Landrgaf made the book special. A Vietnam vet and occasional artist for Marvel and DC, Landgraf wanted to push further than the mainstream allowed, and, he says, “draw a more violent comic book so I used a lot of sleazy city stuff.” Working in a quasi-realist vein that crosses Neal Adams with Wally Wood, Landgraf manages a pulpy energy that kind of elevates the comic to pretty heady B-movie heights. NYC itself is rendered in grimy ink and each character inevitably has a climactic set piece on a rooftop, in an alley, or even in a taxi-cab that maximizes the visual drama. Back up features in these comics include “Axe McCord”, about a rockin’ hair metal guitarist/crime fighter (in beating back an alien we get this priceless exchange: Keyboardist Lenny Laine: “My organ!! Not my 1965 Vintage Fafisa Organ?!” Axe: “Yep. Your 1965 Vintage Fafisa Organ! Remind me to buy you a new one… Come payday!”, as Axe clocks the alien with said organ; “The King of Punk”, about a gnarly punker; and later, “Astro-Man” by John Jacobs, which is some kind of right wing fantasia about a communist world and despondent, impotent superheroes. All of this is peppered with ads for local NYC bands (Battalion, “New York’s No. 1 Heavy Metal Band”) and businesses like Trash and Vaudeville, Graffiti NYC and Guitarman Guitars. Many of the ads advise “Call Charlie – 982-3538” Who was Charlie?). There were just five issues, and each has something to recommend it.

All in all I’ve never seen anything with quite such an odd convergence of New York City, go-for-broke art, bizarre concepts, and entrepreneurial verve. In an alternate universe New York City Outlaws is the biggest thing in the world, Battalion plays stadiums, and Axe McCord is a pop culture icon. But here, now, in 2010, it’s all part of the obscure, swampy landscape of the dusty comic book world of the 1980s.