by Joe Zabel
Atypical SF
Dicebox is not a typical science fiction story. It's not about advanced technology or weird, fantastic creatures-- it's about human characters. Of course most good SF features engaging characters portrayed in depth; but Dicebox almost makes a fetish of neglecting it's SF background. We see the characters riding in space shuttles or walking past exotic alien landscapes, but the focus is always on their casual conversations about mundane personal matters.
Perversely, the author's neglect of the SF background stimulates our curiosity about it. The setting seems more real to us because it's taken for granted. And the narrative tells us just enough to intrigue us and leave us yearning for more. We want to know more about the gigantic sculpture titled 'Weather' that the characters visit, and why shortly after they leave, the sculpture is destroyed in a terrorist bombing. We want to know more about the Strangers, supposedly mythical aliens, who are mentioned in passing. And we want to explore the mysteries of the planet Dresden, where human colonization was stymied by unexplained forces.
But the characters of Dicebox amply fill the space in the narrative that the author has so conscientiously cleared for them.
Griffen Medea Stoyka, aka Peggy Beth Clevenger, is a tall, slender, pale, exceedingly weak and frail woman of androgynous appearance. She's also extremely fussy, self-centered and confrontational. An inveterate troublemaker, she frequently gets herself into fights in which she is ill-equipped to defend herself. But she maintains an easy, cynical sense of humor that helps us forgive her many shortcomings.
Molly Robbins, aka Benecia Robetes, is Griffen's closest friend and traveling companion. A somewhat stout but beautiful black woman, Molly is the steadying and centering influence in Griffen's life. Calm and competent, she has made many friends on many planets. She suffers, however, from a nervous system disease for which she's taking medication. The disease is the apparent cause of her frequent and disturbing hallucinations.
Working Stiffs
Griffen and Molly are itinerant workers with no fixed residence, traveling from planet to planet to follow the work. One such job is managing a stable of horses being transported across space, another is working in a chemical plant. When they aren't working, Griffen and Molly are talking about work-- which plant supervisors they get along with, whose fault it was that they got fired from the last job, and always, where is the next job opportunity going to come from. This is not typical 'entertainment' dialog; but by understanding what the characters do for a living, and how it affects them, we get a stronger sense of their tangible presence and credibility as people.
Indeed, the trials of the working life are a running theme of the story, especially in the most recent sequence of Molly's work at a chemical plant. She must show up an hour early for her physical and blood work, and to get her medications vetted. Later in the sequence, we're introduced to a coworker whose face has broken out with an allergic reaction to a volatile industrial substances.
Sexuality is another running theme, present from the moment we're introduced to Griffens ambiguous gender-hood. The act itself is mostly played out offscreen, as when Molly has a liaison with another woman, or when Griffen is kept awake by lustful commotion in the next room. Griffen herself is mentioned as having slept with the boss on a past job, and she is featured in the comic's first explicit scene, which publisher Girlamatic precedes with a parental advisory. The scene reveals the dominating side of Griffen's character-- no passive partner she.
The most intriguing sexual reference is to the mythical alien Strangers. "Any idea what they are supposed to look like?" muses Molly. "Well, Fai was careful not to say," replies Griffen. "But from most accounts of 'encounters,' I'd say something attractively humanoid. Something you'd want to fuck."
Will Griffen and Molly ever sleep together? In a guest strip by Christopher Baldwin, Molly concedes that she's 'married' to Griffen; and as confirmation, Lee takes up the theme in a later discussion about 'marital privilege.' But when one of her lovers asks her about it, Molly confides that Griffen is "not for me"-- which could either mean that Griffen's not interested or that she's not, or that she simply hasn't the nerve to find out.
Novel Ambitions
Lee's plan is for Dicebox to be a 36-chapter graphic novel consisting of four books. The current book is titled Wander, appropriate to its meandering nature. Writes Lee, "In many ways, Wander is the back story the other three books will build upon." In this regard, the project is well-served by the opening scenes, which subtly establish the backdrop of the action without having characters explicating endlessly. Lee displays admirable patience in unfolding the tale, and has enough confidence to demand patience of her readers as well.
The imaginary world Lee's created is unusually credible, extrapolating an interstellar culture that has discovered alien life but not alien intelligence. It does have some questionable anachronisms-- the frequent references to cigarette smoking for instance. At one point the nearly penniless characters have a 20-hour layover on a space station and decide to visit the planet below; it's kind of like somebody deciding to take a jet to Paris because they have a 20-hour layover in New York. The situation doesn't bear a lot of scrutiny-- if interstellar travel is as cheap as a Greyhound bus ride, why is food so costly, and why is manual labor still necessary? Clearly the story calls for suspension of disbelief.
Lee's artwork is especially rewarding, a beguiling combination of skillful realistic draftsmanship with subtle earth-tone coloring. She's a master at instilling movement into scenes where the characters are basically at rest, and investing visual variety into the ongoing talkfests. The lively compositions of her pages attest to her skill as a graphic designer.
Would the characters have been easier to identify with if Lee had made them more cartoony? I don't think so. Their realistic rendering gives them credibility. It puts their sexuality in the context of real bodies with anatomical flaws. We flinch at the scar on the back of Molly's leg, and some of us wrinkle our noses at the blonde hair in Griffen's armpits.
All in all a very satisfying, intriguingly realistic SF saga, worth following for the remaining 32 chapters.
