Writer: Paulo Baron
Artist: Ernesto Carbonetti
Image Comics, June 2020
The promotional copy for Paul is Dead, now five years old, reads as follows:
John Lennon can’t speak. He can’t take his eyes off the photo of a car in flames with Paul McCartney’s body inside. His friend is no longer here, and that means the Beatles are no longer here either. But John wants to know the truth, and with George and Ringo, he will begin to re-examine the final hours of Paul’s life.
For those readers of this critique who are TikTok devotees and not across the music of the 1960s and 1970s, The Beatles are one of the world’s most successful rock bands, universally popular amongst people of a certain vintage (boomers, we would say today). We initially thought this title might have been inspired by a passing comment in Warren Ellis’ 2007 Marvel comic book, New Universal. In New Universal, Mr Ellis posits a parallel universe where Beatle mainstay Paul McCartney was dead in place of his fellow Beatle, John Lennon. The inspiration for this comic, P.I.D., is instead a significant and more-or-less ongoing conspiracy theory with its origins in 1966, documented with flair in Rolling Stone magazine: Paul McCartney Is Dead: Bizarre Story of Music’s Most Notorious Rumor
Paul is Dead explores those would-be facts, with a completely fictional car crash and associated dialogue, of Mr McCartney’s death within a story told from the perspective of The Beatles. It is not an alternative reality or exploration of the scenario where Mr McCartney is actually dead, although for a long time we are skilfully led by the nose by writer Paolo Baron down that path.
It is a very compelling. The musicians realistically vent their horror and grief within the exchange of dialogue. John Lennon is completely heartbroken. Ringo Starr and George Harrison are not paralysed with shock but instead try to work out what has happened and why Mr McCartney’s death has turned into a matter of national security.
The reader is placed amidst The Beatles’ surviving members as they engage in some amateur detective work in the middle of the night. The sight of three of the most famous people on the planet sneaking about and picking locks is itself riveting, and somehow believable. The Beatles did not care much for rules and laws (in Peter Jackson’s 2021 documentary Get Back, you can see Mr McCartney smirk with delight as the police arrive and helplessly try to shut down The Beatles’ iconic rooftop gig). Trying to determine the truth behind Mr McCartney’s sudden demise, and mess about in a secretive police investigation, is something the band members might have conceivably done in their disregard for authority and convention.
There is an intriguing vignette in black and white, which initially appears to be a man being primed to assume the identity of Paul McCartney. It is a wonderfully executed red herring. The monochrome tones are intended to evoke low-tech 1960s TV. When Mr McCarthy tells his fellow Beatles that he had contemplated hiring a body double, they all fall about in laughter: this is Mr Baron delightfully chiding you, the reader, for being so gullible as to believe his duplicity.
In a May 2020 interview with Forbes (‘Paul Is Dead’: New Psychedelic Comic Explores Beatles Conspiracy Theory (First Look) ), Mr Baron said:
“First, me and Ernesto are both musicians, we feel a special attraction to music legends. I had a band for more than 20 years and The Beatles were my first idols, never to be surpassed,” Baron said in a statement to Forbes Entertainment. “The urban legend known as P.I.D. was always hard for me to believe. I always laughed it off, but still, I was curious about it for years. So, now that I am working with this amazing medium, the comic, I can share, with people, all my research from newspapers, books, documentaries, and interviews about the conspiracy of Paul being dead. It is just like investigating a ‘cold case’ and giving a very personal opinion.”
While the story itself is wonderfully assembled, the art is eye-widening in its artistic mastery. Ernesto Carbonetti appears to have painted every panel. The characters’ faces, so famous as a consequence of being constantly photographed, seem to leap from the page. In the Forbes interview, Mr Carbonetti talked about his meticulous methodology:
“We’ve scrupulously reconstructed the studio of the ‘60s: the same recording rooms, instruments, clothes, and so on. It’s a psychedelic experience for the eyes…”
On psychedelic experiences and the eyes, we also get to see through the eyes of Mr Lennon as he trips on LSD. This enables Mr Carbonetti to cut loose with his artistic skillset. Watching Mr McCarthy suddenly blur into a cute blue hippopotamus was unexpected and funny. It leads to the second-best one-liner in the title. The Beatles have a rule: no drugs in the recording studio. As Mr Lennon’s brain falls into ever deeper hallucinations, Mr Starr and Mr McCarthy are depicted as standing outside the drug experience and solemnly looking in as if through a doorway. Mr Starr forlornly reminds Mr McCarthy, “We’re outside the studio.”
The best one-liner is saved for a chance encounter between The Beatles and an as-yet unknown band called Pink Floyd, who were recording at the Abbey Road Studio at this time. The first panel within a column of panels consists of Pink Floyd dourly eyeballing The Beatles. The second panel has The Beatles awkwardly greeting them. The third panel is perfection: “We prefer the Stones,” a youthful Roger Waters snarks to the wordless Fab Four. Not universally popular after all.