I Was Killing When Killing Wasn't Cool
Encyclopedia
Comics
Comics denotes a hybrid medium having verbal side of its vocabulary tightly tied to its visual side in order to convey narrative or information only, the latter in case of non-fiction comics, seeking synergy by using both visual and verbal side in...
by Al Columbia
Al Columbia
Al Columbia is an American cartoonist, illustrator, writer, photographer, musician, and filmmaker.-Big Numbers controversy:At the age of 19 Columbia was hired to work as an assistant to Bill Sienkiewicz on Alan Moore's Big Numbers series...
. It was published in the fourth (August 1995) issue of Zero Zero
Zero Zero (comic)
Zero Zero is an alternative comics anthology that was published by Fantagraphics Books from 1995 to 2000. It was notable among comics anthologies for the number of serialized works that appeared in its pages, including Richard Sala's "The Chuckling Whatsit", Dave Cooper's "Crumple", Mack White's...
. According to the issue's contributor notes the comic was originally intended for the never-published third issue of Columbia's solo comic book
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
series The Biologic Show
The Biologic Show
The Biologic Show is a comic book series written and drawn by Al Columbia and published by Fantagraphics Books. The first issue, #0, was released in 1994, and a second issue, #1, was released a year later...
.
Synopsis
Seymour Sunshine and Knishkebibble the Monkey-Boy read an announcement by Alexander CrowleyAleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
promising a reward "in excess of $1,000,000,000" to whoever can acquire one of the fabled hummingbird
Hummingbird
Hummingbirds are birds that comprise the family Trochilidae. They are among the smallest of birds, most species measuring in the 7.5–13 cm range. Indeed, the smallest extant bird species is a hummingbird, the 5-cm Bee Hummingbird. They can hover in mid-air by rapidly flapping their wings...
pie
Pie
A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that covers or completely contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients....
s baked by Cinnamon Jack, a blind
Blindness
Blindness is the condition of lacking visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors.Various scales have been developed to describe the extent of vision loss and define blindness...
man said to have murder
Murder
Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...
ed his own twin brother. The garrulous, impulsive Knishkebibble browbeats the mute, reluctant Seymour into joining him in an attempt to recover one of the pies. As the two approach Cinnamon Jack's house, they find it surrounded by the impaled
Impalement
Impalement is the traumatic penetration of an organism by an elongated foreign object such as a stake, pole, or spear, and this usually implies complete perforation of the central mass of the impaled body...
heads of his many victims. Jack, a scowling, heavyset man wearing dark glasses and carrying an oversized folding blade, stands in front of the doorway. When Knishkebibble rudely demands one of his pies, Jack cuts off Seymour's nose
Human nose
The visible part of the human nose is the protruding part of the face that bears the nostrils. The shape of the nose is determined by the ethmoid bone and the nasal septum, which consists mostly of cartilage and which separates the nostrils...
, then attacks Knishkebibble. Knishkebibble dodges Jack's swings and kills him by prying off most of his head
Decapitation
Decapitation is the separation of the head from the body. Beheading typically refers to the act of intentional decapitation, e.g., as a means of murder or execution; it may be accomplished, for example, with an axe, sword, knife, wire, or by other more sophisticated means such as a guillotine...
from his jaw. He hands Seymour's nose back to him with a resigned sigh, and they enter the house.
The two are disappointed to find the inside of Jack's one-room cottage barren except for a bowl containing the remains of a small animal, a bathtub
Bathtub
A bath , bathtub , or tub is a large container for holding water in which a person may bathe . Most modern bathtubs are made of acrylic or fiberglass, but alternatives are available in enamel over steel or cast iron, and occasionally waterproof finished wood...
, and a mirror
Mirror
A mirror is an object that reflects light or sound in a way that preserves much of its original quality prior to its contact with the mirror. Some mirrors also filter out some wavelengths, while preserving other wavelengths in the reflection...
. While Knishkebibble playfully hops into the bathtub, Seymour looks into the mirror and is puzzled by what appears to be an orange dot in the center of his forehead. When he touches it he is faced with a horrifying illusion that he has pulled his own brain out of his skull, and closes his eyes tightly. Reopening them, he finds a pale doppelgänger
Doppelgänger
In fiction and folklore, a doppelgänger is a paranormal double of a living person, typically representing evil or misfortune...
with pointed ears and a black cloak staring back at him from the mirror with an evil grin. Seymour flees across the room in a panic and runs into a wall, momentarily knocking himself unconscious. The doppelgänger climbs out of the mirror and moves about the room while transforming his body in strange ways. Turning his hand into a revolver
Revolver
A revolver is a repeating firearm that has a cylinder containing multiple chambers and at least one barrel for firing. The first revolver ever made was built by Elisha Collier in 1818. The percussion cap revolver was invented by Samuel Colt in 1836. This weapon became known as the Colt Paterson...
, he shoots and kills Knishkebibble, snickering all the while.
Coming to, Seymour attempts to attack the doppelgänger. He picks up a brick
Brick
A brick is a block of ceramic material used in masonry construction, usually laid using various kinds of mortar. It has been regarded as one of the longest lasting and strongest building materials used throughout history.-History:...
from the floor and throws it at him, but the brick dissolves into a swarm of moth
Moth
A moth is an insect closely related to the butterfly, both being of the order Lepidoptera. Moths form the majority of this order; there are thought to be 150,000 to 250,000 different species of moth , with thousands of species yet to be described...
s. The doppelgänger surprises Seymour by sticking out his hand for a handshake
Handshake
A handshake is a short ritual in which two people grasp one of each other's like hands, in most cases accompanied by a brief up and down movement of the grasped hands.-History:...
, which Seymour hesitantly accepts, and telling him "Pleased to make your acquaintance," to which Seymour replies "Oh, likewise I'm sure." As the two continue to shake hands, the doppelgänger's appendage suddenly turns into a pair of clippers which cut Seymour's hand off at the wrist. Seymour glances down at his severed limb in alarm, then looks up to see the doppelgänger's head changing into a malevolent, serpentlike form as it moves towards him. The story ends enigmatically with an image of the exterior of the house at dusk
Dusk
Dusk is the beginning of darkness in the evening, and occurs after twilight, when the sky generally remains bright and blue. Civil dusk is when the earth has rotated enough that the center of the sun is at 6° below the local horizon...
.
Analysis & criticism
While its plot is relatively simple - Paul GravettPaul Gravett
Paul Gravett is a London-based journalist, curator, writer and broadcaster who has worked in comics publishing and promotion for over 20 years....
summarized it as "scheming little Knishkebibble the Monkey-Boy and his hapless crony Seymour meet the Devil and die" - "I Was Killing When Killing Wasn't Cool" is admired for its meticulous design and its powerful evocation of mood. Tom Spurgeon
Tom Spurgeon
Tom Spurgeon is an American writer, historian and editor in the field of comics, notable for his five-year run as editor of The Comics Journal and his blog The Comics Reporter, which he launched in 2004 with site designer Jordan Raphael.-Books:...
wrote that it "allows the reader to slowly realize, like the best horror films, that the adventure you are currently enjoying is going to end in ways too terrible to imagine." An editorial
Editorial
An opinion piece is an article, published in a newspaper or magazine, that mainly reflects the author's opinion about the subject. Opinion pieces are featured in many periodicals.-Editorials:...
that appeared in the final issue of Zero Zero noted that issue #4 "always sells out before any other issues at convention
Fan convention
A fan convention, or con , is an event in which fans of a particular film, television series, comic book, actor, or an entire genre of entertainment such as science fiction or anime and manga, gather to participate and hold programs and other events, and to meet experts, famous personalities, and...
s, even when we take extras," on the strength of Columbia's contribution.
"I Was Killing When Killing Wasn't Cool" was the first of Columbia's comics to conspicuously show the influence of the animated cartoon
Animated cartoon
An animated cartoon is a short, hand-drawn film for the cinema, television or computer screen, featuring some kind of story or plot...
s of Fleischer Studios
Fleischer Studios
Fleischer Studios, Inc., was an American corporation which originated as an Animation studio located at 1600 Broadway, New York City, New York...
, particularly the Out of the Inkwell
Out of the Inkwell
Out of the Inkwell was a major animated series of the silent era produced by Max Fleischer from 1918 to 1929.The series was the result of three short experimental films that Max Fleischer independently produced in the period of 1914-1916 to demonstrate his invention, the Rotoscope, which was a...
series with Koko the Clown
Koko the Clown
Koko the Clown was an animated character created by animation pioneer Max Fleischer. The character originated when Max Fleischer invented the rotoscope, a device that allowed for animation to be more lifelike by tracing motion picture footage of human movement. To test out his new invention...
and "dark" cartoons such as Bimbo's Initiation
Bimbo's Initiation
Bimbo's Initiation is a 1931 Fleischer Studios Talkartoon animated short film starring Bimbo and featuring Betty Boop. It was the final Betty Boop cartoon to be animated by the character's co-creator, Grim Natwick.-Plot:...
. The story's dense layout
Page layout
Page layout is the part of graphic design that deals in the arrangement and style treatment of elements on a page.- History and development :...
, which fits as many as 32 small panels into each page, creates a strong sense of visual rhythm
Rhythm
Rhythm may be generally defined as a "movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions." This general meaning of regular recurrence or pattern in time may be applied to a wide variety of cyclical natural phenomena having a periodicity or...
similar to that of the Fleischer cartoons. Also, its distinctive color
Color
Color or colour is the visual perceptual property corresponding in humans to the categories called red, green, blue and others. Color derives from the spectrum of light interacting in the eye with the spectral sensitivities of the light receptors...
palette, which is restricted to fluorescent
Fluorescence
Fluorescence is the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation of a different wavelength. It is a form of luminescence. In most cases, emitted light has a longer wavelength, and therefore lower energy, than the absorbed radiation...
orange and small amounts of brown
Brown
Brown is a color term, denoting a range of composite colors produced by a mixture of orange, red, rose, or yellow with black or gray. The term is from Old English brún, in origin for any dusky or dark shade of color....
, recalls the palette of the Fleischers' early color cartoons of the 1930s, which were made using a two-color process after Disney purchased exclusive rights to three-color Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
. Columbia explicitly acknowledges the Fleischers' influence, offering "my sincerest apologies to Max
Max Fleischer
Max Fleischer was an American animator. He was a pioneer in the development of the animated cartoon and served as the head of Fleischer Studios...
and Dave Fleischer
Dave Fleischer
David "Dave" Fleischer was an American animator film director and film producer, best known as a co-owner of Fleischer Studios with his two older brothers Max Fleischer and Lou Fleischer...
" at the end of the story.