BOOK REVIEW | BENJAMIN | BEN H. WATERS / LEOMACS (artist) / LUCA BERTELÈ (colourist)

 

BOOK REVIEW | BENJAMIN | BEN H. WATERS / LEOMACS (artist) / LUCA BERTELÈ (colourist)

ABOUT THE BOOK

IN ONE L.A. MOTEL ROOM, A COSMIC QUEST IS ABOUT TO BEGIN . . .

More than just a writer, more than just a science-fiction icon, Benjamin J. Carp was a cultural revolutionary. Over the course of 44 novels and hundreds of short stories—including the counterculture classic The Man They Couldn’t Erase—Carp pushed the boundaries of literary respectability for the sci-fi genre and his readers’ perception of reality itself . . . until decades of amphetamine abuse and Southern California excess finally ended a mind-bending career that always just escaped mainstream success. He died in 1982.

Until 2025 . . . when Benjamin J. Carp awakens, alive, in a burned-out motel on the fringes of Los Angeles. He remembers dying. He knows he shouldn’t exist. Is he a dream? A robot? A ghost? A clone? A simulation? In his own time, Carp pondered all of these scenarios through his fiction—and now, as he treks from Studio City to Venice Beach and onward into the paranoid sprawl of 21st-century Los Angeles, he will be called to investigate his greatest mystery yet: himself.

From Edgar Award nominee and Philip K. Dick Award winner Ben H. Winters (EC’s Cruel Universe, The Last Policeman trilogy) and rising star Leomacs (EC’s Epitaphs from the Abyss, Ghostlore) comes a uniquely fascinating and hilariously deranged excursion into the metatextual nexus where existence and oblivion, past and future, genius and madness, and glitter and grim reality all meet just beyond Hollywood Boulevard.

REVIEW

It’s a mad, mad world. Especially if you are a dead author who died in 1982 and you’re brought back into some dingy motel with no memory and a bunch of disgruntled employees banging at your door asking who the hell are you?

It sounds like the plot of a book, right? It may as well be! When Marcus Dingle takes the resurrected Benjamin J. Carp back to his apartment, they discover that life is mirroring the plot in one of Benjamin’s books that Marcus’s superfan father left him.

Kicking off, the story is a madcap resurrection tale that makes the reader question whether Clay is delusional or whether something else is at play.  But, after the initial introductory beats the story hones its focus to become a more deliberate look at authorial obsession, what it means to be alive and high concept sci fi with a surprisingly warm heart

Leomac’s art and Bertelè’s colour are vibrant and vivid throughout. Shifting effortlessly from dark, dingy motel rooms to punchy, psychedelic tripiness  that feel wrenched from Carp’s delirium. Dynamic page layouts and bold tones  - including a great double spread that resembles Game of Life - match the frenetic and galloping pace of the narrative.

Thoughtful and entertaining, Benjamin is a wildly entertaining sci fi romp about existence, creativity and what it means to wake up in a world that has moved on without you. 

Verdict: 3.5/5