REICH #5-6 by Elijah Brubaker

Reich #5-6 (Sparkplug Comics): At last year’s San Diego Con, I picked up Reich #1-4 and was blown away by Elijah Brubaker’s research ability and attention to detail in his penciling. Since my LCS seems to have an ever-growing aversion to small press titles, I was excited to pick up another two issues this year and see how the story continued to unfold. It’s not an excruciating wait since Brubaker seems to be on a quarterly schedule. These two issues focus squarely on the peril (and paranoia) of the life of a real-world sexual/political activist. With his aggressive conviction of beliefs, Reich surpasses Freud (in his own mind) as an arbiter of abstract thought. He doesn’t want to be bound by societal norms, which is the way he perceives Freud to be, evidenced in a telling sequence where Freud is portrayed like a caged animal pacing back and forth. Reich wants the freedom to explore and educate, but his natural paranoia about both communists and psychoanalyst organizations out to get him is only fueled by real world suspension of freedoms by the government in the name of preserving itself. The book's link between sex and politics is really captured crisply with lines like “the public craves discipline and tyranny because everyone is so sexually repressed.” It also manages to capture the rapid pre-War decline with “Germany was the guiding light of cultural and progressive thought. Now it’s a vile, soulless place.” We’re given another rare treat in the form of a flashback to Reich’s youth which explains how an early brothel experience has helped inform his views of sex and male/female hierarchy. Brubaker’s pencils continue to astound with emotive lines, clever cross-hatching, and a unique sense of style, bringing a level of fun and engagement to a set of topics that might otherwise play boring. Grade A.
All six issues are available for just $4 each at: www.sparkplugcomicbooks.com