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Written by Byron Kerman Friday, 25 August 2006 02:02

Comics don't get more philosophical - or more dense.

  (DC/Vertigo; 352 pgs. B&W; $19.99)

(W/A: Rick Veitch)

Rick Veitch's new graphic novel Can't Get No is ambitious. Epic. Huge. Like Robert Crumb's most disturbing tale of self-loathing or Will Eisner's most intimate beseeching to an unjust god, Veitch's 352-page monster asks the big questions: Why are we here? What does it all mean? What's the point of connecting with one's fellow man? And what does Salma Hayek look like naked, anyway? (Give or take that last one).

Can't Get No is the story of a common businessman who wakes up one day the victim of a prank - he's covered in crazy freak-show tattoos (technically, they're lines drawn by an "indelible" marker) from head-to-toe. He wanders the country in a dazed state, made even more so by the events of September 11, 2001.

A strange plot, even for Veitch, made entirely trippy by the writing, which is one, very long extended poem. The abstract poem matches up with the panels only after some studied contemplation - it's portentous, heavy stuff, like T.S. Eliot's Wasteland got the Vertigo treatment. Comics don't get more philosophical - or more dense. This one's an acquired taste.