By Malachy Coney & Paul J. Holden (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-56097-263-7
The Irish have always rightly prided themselves on their ability to tell a tale and comics especially have long-benefited from that blessed gift. One writer especially gifted and yet inexplicably not world famous yet is Malachy Coney, who first started turning heads in Fleetway’s socially informed Crisis in 1989 when he was invited by Pat Mills to co-write a sequence of the controversial serial Third World War set in Ireland.
Coney was raised in the Ardoyne area of Belfast during the time of “The Troubles†and much of his work deals with the politics of the era and issues of gender and gay rights.
In 1993 he scripted the miniseries Holy Cross for Fantagraphics: three separate tales all linked by history, geography and incidental characters Jimmy and Davy – a local gay couple – illustrated respectively by Davy Francis, Chris Hogg and P. J. Holden. That lost delight happily led to the lovely book under discussion today.
Since then Coney, who is also a cartoonist and publisher, has written a number of Gay-themed superhero tales (Major Power and Spunky, The Dandy Lion, The Simply Incredible Hunk), socially aware material such as The Good Father and Catholic Lad, and worked with Garth Ennis on Top Cow’s The Darkness and Steven Grant on Vampirella.
Active in the arts in Northern Ireland, he has contributed to DNASwamp, Small Axe and Fortnight, produced material for the internet and self-publishes his own Good Craic Comics.
Paul Jason Holden is also from Belfast and, as well as working closely with Coney on the Holy Cross stories, The Dandy Lion and The Simply Incredible Hunk, has illustrated Mike Carey’s ‘Suicide Kings’ and worked for Warhammer Monthly, 2000AD, Judge Dredd Megazine, Image Comics, Garth Ennis’ Battlefields and Strip Magazine. He is also active in developing web- and app-based comics…
Rendered in stark and seductive black and white, The Moon Looked Down and Laughed is again set in the Holy Cross district of Belfast and is narrated by hopeful writer Tommy Doherty, a decent and sentimental young man just starting to learn the way of the world.
He’s always got time to listen to his old dad’s stories about the bad days past, especially the one when he was a young man doing odd jobs for a mean, rich old sod named Burke. That privileged, demented swine used to work him like a slave every day and then set the dog on him if he stayed on his land one second after quitting-time. Sometimes Burke even deliberately kept him late just to see him run…
That all changed on the fateful day Pa Doherty’s watch stopped and the vicious landowner gloatingly watched as the manic canine brought him down…
Of course that was the day sheer terror made the worm turn and a scared lad learned another use for the hated shovel in his hands…
From that he learned a hard but necessary lesson: there are mad dogs everywhere and usually the shovel is the only way of dealing with them…
With thoughts of wildlife documentaries, carnivores and prey in his head, Tommy heads for the pub and a drink with his outrageous pals Jimmy and Davy and obliquely encounters the district’s apex predator when Francie O’Neill‘s gang of thugs and troublemakers harass him for hanging out with “faggotsâ€â€¦
It had only been weeks since the pack of jackals had beaten up Jimmy and Davy in one more gay-bashing incident. O’Neill had been a bully since they were all at school but always managed to come off like some roguish golden boy. Nobody could understand why the loveliest girl in class had married him, especially Tommy, for whom Annie would always be “the oneâ€, ever since that incident when they played “spin-the-bottle†as nippers…
Now she was shackled to a possessive, brutal thug, permanently pregnant and with all the life leaching out of her.
Staggering away at closing time, Tommy and the boys spot Francie stalking the streets, looking for a fight to start and, not for the first time, the writer ponders the worth of pens against swords and why people like that are allowed to get away with so much…
Pa Doherty’s pride and joy is his allotment garden and on the way there next day, father and son see an ambulance rushing away. It seems poor fat Big Junior has had a breakdown and harmed himself. The lad wasn’t the same since his ma died and the constant bullying and sadistic harassment by certain people has pushed him over the edge…
As they watch Annie O’Neill and her two oldest pass by, Pa invites them to spend time in his garden. The kids have the best day of their life just playing and, with a bit of peace at last, Annie idly chats about the old days with Tommy…
The next day the writer answers a desperate call: his father is in a bad way. It seems someone has destroyed his precious beloved garden; razed it to rubble and ruins…
Consoling the heartbroken and despondent elder, Tommy sees Francie’s unmistakable signature to the despicable act. Soon after, finding the psychotic lout terrorising his own wife and children, the frustrated scribe realises he has found his own mad dog…
Disposing of the body on the nearby railway tracks, the shell-shocked and traumatised writer is unaware that Jimmy and Davy have been witnesses to the whole thing…
And that’s just the start of Tommy Doherty’s road from boy to man in this superbly told tale, blending wry humour and bucolic Celtic charm with shatteringly personal conflicts that test the miraculous bonds of childhood loyalty and friendship, revealing not only the horrific acts good men can be pushed to but how deeds shape character and how little the universe case…
Long overdue for re-issue preferably in a bumper edition collecting the three-issue Holy Cross miniseries and the fabled unpublished fourth issue as well, this is a wonderfully beguiling and incisive story of human life at its most vibrant and compelling…
© 1997 Malachy Coney & Paul J. Holden. This edition © 1997 Fantagraphic Books. All rights reserved.