Riveting NYC Story PEEPLAND Slices: Final Issue Out NOW!

“Riveting NYC Story PEEPLAND Slices: Final Issue Out 3/22!” by R.J. Huneke is the second part in a series that will unveil a New York Comic Con interview with creators as well as offer up a retrospective of the issues of Peepland, with Spoilers, leading up to the fifth and final book that launches March 22, 2017.
 
From the very first line, ‘HI, HONEY. FIRST TIME?’, delivered by the image of a gorgeously athletic nude woman named Roxy in a black thong hiked way up over her hip line (more on this later) who is facing a suited man behind plate glass, Peepland has you. The reader is intrigued in a way that a comic book does not usually hook you.
 
The woman is already striking: she has a hint of muscle to her biceps, she has a keen sense of acting as she gives her naughty glance and line, ‘I’M LIVE.’, and she is totally in control despite the strangely beat up and bright neon box of a room she is in.
 
This is just the opening for Peepland.
 
And we will now delve into the books and the interview of its makers further.
 
Peepland takes the Hard Case Crime publication’s noir, crime, and boiled mystery novels and bakes that grit into a new graphic novel form from Titan Comics. Rune Works and POWkabam was fortunate to receive an exclusive interview at New York Comic Con 2016 with none other than two of the talented people behind this new visual chapter in Hard Case Crime: writer and founder and editor of Hard Case Crime himself, Charles Ardai, and the co-author of Peepland, and homegrown New York novelist, Christa Faust.
 
The second page of Peepland is another unconventional and enrapturing scene contained as one splash page with no dialogue.
 
It is Times Square on Christmas Eve in 1986 and the graffiti and peepbooths outnumber the holiday decorations by far.
 
There is one sound: a ‘HUFF HUFF HUFF’.
 
Someone is running.
 
As we previously discussed this person is none other than a porno filmmaker named Dirty Dick who rushes into the peepbooth, Peepland, and begs Roxy to take his VHS tape before he runs off to the subway without explanation.
 
Despite no allegiance to Dick, Roxy does not bend when the police question her about the incident after he is found dead.
 
She returns home to her very sick uncle whom she is caring for.

The character is tremendously deep and has gone from playing coy and taking the money from nude-thirsty New Yorkers /or tourists and shown a wit, a loyalty and a purpose in life, despite her young years.
 
Christa Faust and Gary Philips co-wrote Peepland; the artwork is by Andrea Camerini, the colors by Marco Lesko, and the letters by Comicraft’s Jimmy Betancourt.
 
Each centimeter of the page pours history and makes the reader long for more.
 
Noir was meant for the mid-1980’s New York City era and Faust delivers it to the T.
 
R.H.: “What was your inspiration for PEEPLAND?”
 
C.F.: “It was mostly just because . . . you know being a fellow New Yorker it’s so different now.”
 
R.H.: “The way that is was, the city.”
 
C.F.: “That’s never coming back . . . and I wanted to tell that story [of NYC] in a visual medium, because you can tell people what it was like, but if you can show them, it’s more visceral, it’s grittier, it’s more true.”
 
R.H.: “What I loved is that the historicism is there. I love the 80’s perms [for example].”
 
And at this point Charles breaks in.
 
C.A.: “This person,” he says with a smile and playfully accusing point to Christa, ‘was the police person, policing in acronyms.”
 
C.F.: “I was the G-string Nazi – I was like ‘hike that aaaall the way up to be here,” she says pointing to high over her hip.
 
C.A.: “What were the buildings, what were the posters, what were [the] hairstyles, ads, shoes . . . what were the characters?”
 
We will speak more on the Hard Case Crime team’s recollections of infamous New York characters in the next installment.
 
Issue #2 captures the underbelly of the city from the onset, but its not really the underbelly – most people do not understand that all of the horrible crime acts took place in the most prominent places of the greatest city on earth.
 
We open onto a limousine of dirtbags snorting cocaine of a hooker’s breast and another threatening to choke her comrade, despite her pleas for straight sex; a protesting woman is thrown from the moving car . . . on Broadway.
 
The dialogue is as rough as the times and the vernacular works well as the boss who is responsible for Dick’s death ushers the murderers from his steam room as a large breasted woman approaches:
 
‘MAN I COULD USE A MASSAGE LIKE THAT,’ says the one thug.
 
‘I GOT YOUR MASSAGE RIGHT HERE, YA FUCKING MONGOLOID,’ answers his Italian partner with a fist-raising gesture.
 
The story unfolds with more and more great characters and more and more wrinkles in the dirty mystery.
 
Roxy’s best friend at Peepland, who helped her smuggle out the VHS tape, Aiesha is alerted that her African American teenage son has been wrongly accused of a rape and murder of a white woman and was put at a scene by a police officer.
 
She is not there to support her friend.
 
The VHS has come unwound in a cheap VCR and Roxy agrees to do nude commercials for a sleazy neighbor tape bootlegger who sees the murder and attempts to sell it.
 
And the mob-like boss man puts his two assassins onto the bootlegger, but not before they find out from Peepland’s token operator that Roxy takes care of a Leo, her uncle, who has AIDs, and she might be mixed up with the tape too.
 
And then we get the pained caption . . . ‘TO BE CONTINUED . . .’
 
This is just the second part of our Rune Works and POWkabam Comics series of articles conveying the interview of the creators of Peepland. In the next part, we will continue the interview, explore more of Peepland as we approach the fourth issue that just went on sale yesterday.
 
Surely a trade-paperback collection is in order for this great graphic novel comic book series and this series will whet your appetite as you await it.
 
For now get down to your local comic shop [I am going to mine today: Best Comics] and buy up Peepland Issue #4 before it sells out forever!

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