MEET RICK VEITCH
Rick Veitch draws in his Townshend, Vt. studio on Sept. 8
By DANIEL BARLOW Southern Vermont Bureau TOWNSHEND - Rick Veitch first saw the image of Chad Roe, his businessman protagonist tattooed head-to-toe in indelible ink, as he watched the second World Trade Center tower fall on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
Veitch, a Townshend cartoonist who has written and drawn comic books professionally for 30 years, already had parts of his new comic worked out: He wanted it to be literate, novel-like and factor in an urban legend about a man who finds covered in permanent magic marker.
The tragedy of that day provided the setting, the conflict and the questions for "Can't Get No," the 350-page graphic novel that tells the story of Roe, a bankrupt New York City businessman who survives the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on his office building, but finds himself tattooed in permanent marker.
"I don't think we ever had a national dialogue about how that event has impacted our lives," Veitch said during a recent dinner overlooking the Connecticut River in downtown Brattleboro. "The talk in the media was just militaristic and jingoistic and meanwhile we were left trying to digest what just happened."
Veitch spent nearly three years writing and drawing the book, which utilized an unusual dual narrative. His drawings depicting the silent story of Roe, now stripped of his job and identity, embarking on a journey of rediscovery, while the narrative tells a separate apocalyptic tale in the form of a long poem.
"The naked and the dead/ driven to their knees/ before the advancing God," the narrative reads as the second plane hits the World Trade Center.
Veitch was born in Bellows Falls, a small Windham County village along the Connecticut River and the New Hampshire border. He knew from a young age that he wanted to be an artist, but said school officials actively discouraged it for being unrealistic.
He later was later in the first graduating class of Joe Kubert's School of Cartoon & Graphic Art in New Jersey. Throughout his career he has worked for DC and Marvel Comics and published a series of comics under his own publishing company, King Hell Press.
"The arts is one of the few viable ways for Vermont to survive in the coming generations," Veitch said. "Most of the good work has long since moved out of state."
Recent years saw Veitch working again with comic writer Alan Moore, illustrating a series of his dream journals and writing some superhero comics for DC. But in the late 1990s he said he took to heart a plea from legendary artist Will Eisner to rebuild the industry with strong, literate work.
Veitch said he found his inspiration for the narrative in "Can't Get No" in rock lyrics by artists such as Bob Dylan and poems by noted beat writers such as Allen Ginsberg.
"I saw this as a challenging way of approaching the story," he explained. "I wanted to create a literate graphic novel that was challenging to look at and asked the big questions that we were all struggling with."
DC Comics, the home of Batman and Superman, released the book earlier this summer. Publisher's Weekly called it one of the "most remarkable achievements in recent comics history." Variety praised the book as a "fascinating and dream-like."
Stephen Bissette, a retired cartoonist from Marlboro and a longtime friend, said much of Veitch's work involves a hero going on a literal quest of discovery. He said he sees "Can't Get No" as a "rational exploration" of the nation's mood five years after the attacks.
"The reality of what has happened since 9/11, from the Iraq War to the 2004 election, has actually been very surreal," Bissette said. "It's surreal to see the president telling people to go shopping after the attacks. And suddenly Rick's new work begins to feel like a very rational reaction."
Five years after the United States was set on a new path, Veitch is still thinking about country and war. Next year he will launch a new monthly comic series, "Army@Love" which he called "a satirical look at an Iraq-like war four or five years into the future."
"It's in the same tradition as M*A*S*H and [Joseph Heller's] Catch-22," Veitch said of the series. "It's a big, exaggerated look at what war might be like in the future and just how crazy it may get."
(This article is an expanded and unedited version of a story that appeared in the Sept. 10 edition of the Rutland Herald).