ESSENTIAL // 11.07.02

CHAMPS
By Dan Carroll

CHAMPS
By Steven Weissman
Fantagraphics
US $12.95, 96 pages
ISBN: 1560973722
STAR10475

A few weeks ago, I went back to my old hometown for the weekend. While rooting through my mother's basement, I discovered a treasure trove of comics I never should have left behind. But now they're all with me in Chicago, so that's okay.

Amongst the comics were a collection of old Peanuts strips. For the first time in about two years, I sat and read through the adventures of Charlie Brown and the gang. I had never realized before just how dark some of those old strips were. Human misery on parade, wrapped up in the adventures of the least happy little boy in the world.

But you don't notice at first with Peanuts because everything is so damned adorable. Things which should seem out of place simply work. The dog wears World War I pilot goggles. The cranky little girl runs a psychiatric practice. Debates on theology break out on the ol' pitchers mound. And all the things that seem so incongruous also seem like an ordinary part of childhood.

This brings us neatly to CHAMPS, by Steven Weissman. Weissman's characters, like Charles Schulz's, inhabit a world where the dark is glossed over by the light. Where the local six year old's biggest concerns are bullies, homework, what to do when his vampire friend bites someone, and how to afford new comics down at the drugstore.

Set in the fictional suburb of Milltown, USA, CHAMPS reads somewhat like the Little Rascals, by way of a B-grade horror movie. Each individual child has their own quirk, such as Kid Medusa (whose pigtails turn men to stone) or Pullapart Boy (sewn together from the parts of other dead little boys.) But the kids of Milltown don't have horrifying tales. They exist as any other child growing up in the suburbs would. They read comics, they head down to the local swimming hole, they get chicken pox… and most of all, they're all best friends, especially Pullapart Boy and Li'l Bloody (the aforementioned vampire.)

In CHAMPS, however, Pullapart Boy and Li'l Bloody's friendship is threatened when the championship Big Wheel races come to Milltown, and Pullapart Boy befriends Li'l Bloody's fiercest competition for first place, the spoiled, world-famous Johnny Takagi. While enamored of his hero, Pullapart Boy forgets the friends who really matter to him.

Of course, the fight is eventually forgotten, and all is forgiven between the two friends. These things happen when you're little; it's all part of growing up. And nobody minds the merciless beating received by the local bully, or the pint of blood missing from Johnny Takagi's neck. Boys will be boys, after all.

The art of CHAMPS is as subtly misleading as the plot. Colored entirely in black, white, and turquoise, the comic has a way of lulling you into a feeling of calm. The heavy ink lines, the playful lettering outside the word balloons, and a dozen other tricks serve to give the constant feeling that everything's okay. Even as a boy's stomach is jumped on repeatedly, causing him to cough up blood, the most outstanding feature is the grin on the jumper's face.

When a character cheers, their whole body (along with the background) is behind it. When somebody cries, they curl up into a tiny little ball to do so. The figures in this story are icons, not of their actions, but of the attitudes and feelings they represent. The feelings run from innocence to sadism, from friendliness to hatred, and from power to failure.

If you're lucky, CHAMPS will remind you of your own childhood. It describes a world that probably never existed for any of us, but does now through the rose-colored glasses of hindsight. In this world, the most frightening events are charming and cute, and everything fits in its proper place. Having your head pulled off and kicked down the stairs by "Mean" Chubby Cheeks is just as ordinary as… well, as a six-year-old virtuoso obsessed with Beethoven.