The Adventures of Tad Martin Super-Secret Special

Plot

Man, it’s been awhile.

Not as long a while as the gap — no, make that gulf — between Casanova Frankenstein’s The Adventures Of Tad Martin #5 and The Adventures Of Tad Martin #sicksicksix, a book that was literally a couple of decades in the making, but still — four or five years, by my count, is a pretty long wait. Still, as always with The Cartoonist Formerly Known As Al Frank, the wait has proven to be more than worth it.

That being said, in order to fully appreciate Frankenstein’s latest, entitled The Adventures Of Tad Martin Super-Secret Special #1, you have to be a bit of a “process-lover” — or, perhaps more accurately, a “progress lover,” as in “work in.” This is no place for fans of the polished, the refined, the sanitized — this is the straight dope, right from our guy Cassie’s subconscious to his pens and brushes to the page. A wordless channeling of pure nihilism — and not the cheap, rage-fueled nihilism of youth, but the considered, soul-deep nihilism of someone who knows damn well this is a fallen world but is nevertheless, perhaps paradoxically (and perhaps not), determined to enjoy the right straight down