Eddy Current – Ted McKeever

Perhaps Ted McKeever’s most wild and entertaining work, the creation of Eddy Current, an escaped lunatic from an asylum who believes he has superhero powers, gives the writer/artist free reign to indulge in the wildest of adventures and push his scratchy drawings to expressionistic lengths.  

Eddy’s not insane and doesn’t know why he is in an asylum, but inspired by the adventures of his comic book hero the Amazing Broccoli, Eddy purchases a Dynamic Fusion power suit from one of the ads in the comic book, hoping to realise his true potential. If only batteries had been supplied, Eddy wouldn’t have had to plug himself into the mains, but when the activation of his suit brings the power down in the asylum, Eddy realises he has 12 hours to explore the city of Chad and perhaps find his old girlfriend. Instead he runs into a couple of violent backstreet criminals, is worshipped as the second coming by an unusual nun and, naturally in a Ted McKeever storyline, stumbles upon a fiendish apocalyptic plot to take over control of the city.

The artwork is dark and harsh, almost abstract in places, some scenes meaningfully referencing Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, but in return Miller seems to have learned something from McKeever’s stylish stark black-and-white compositions for his later Sin City work. The expressionism of his artwork and the apocalyptic storylines would find new depth in the colouration of Plastic Forks and in Metropol, full of dysfunctional characters that can also be found in The Extremist and Industrial Gothic, but Eddy Current sees the essential characteristics of McKeever’s scripting and artwork in all their raw beauty.