MESSENGER 29

by Bungalow Bob

Moving Target, Spring 1997, issue 23

Messenger cartoons tend be wish-lists of various gory vengeances in which car-drivers, cops, security guards & receptionists receive their richly deserved just desserts at the hands of the omnipotent messenger. Max Speed fits a heat seeking missile to his bike and obliterates a cab on Oxford St; Messenger 666 consigns another erring cabbie to his maker, this time on Market St and with a flaming D-Lock. This kind of thing, even when it is executed as well as Rob Lancaster drew Max Speed can get a little tiresome. Surely messenger imagination stretches to more than grisly deaths for erring road-users? Fortunately, it does.

I first saw Messenger 29 in the Moving Target office about 7 years ago. He comes from NYC, but is surprisingly unbrash.

Jay Jones, his creator says that "anyone can kill & hate. Doing something positive is a bit harder. Messenger 29 doesn't have super powers; he is a hero in his own right. Jay worked full time as a messenger for about 2 years in 83/84, stopping because "I got hit a few times and that made me pretty soft and tender. But I didn't stop nobody actually stops. I have worked on and off for the last 12 years, as well as mechanic-ing in Enoch's (legendary NYC messenger hang-out featured in issue 2 of M29). But that's funny 'cos most of the time I'm more like a bartender, just listening to their stories and wondering how many are true." He started as a messenger because: you don't have a boss looking over your shoulder the whole time. The whole city is your office. Sure, on a bad day it 's bad, but on a good day it's really good. "

The bad things, according to Jay, are that "people look down their noses at you. You're always in the wrong. Stuff like, you know, a car hits a messenger and the messenger ends up paying. I used to think, 'hey, it‘s almost like being black,’ and then I'd think 'but hey I am black'.

Messenger 29 shows Jay‘s admiration for Marvel Comics Jack Kirby, and has been appearing as a strip in NYC cab mag Taxi Talk and twice as a full-length comic, five years separating the two issues 29 rides the classic East Coast fixed gear setup but the actual bike "a disjointed consistency... most of the time it looks like a Kestrel but I try and squeeze as many names as I can on there in the hope of one day finding a guy who hasn't been laid in his whole life and maybe getting 29 sponsorship...

Perhaps the most distinctive thing about 29 is his helmet and shoulder pads: the helmet is an Army motorcycle helmet that 29 found in a surplus store but the pads are hockey pads...there was this guy called Joey Love (who is now working in Chicago) who used to wear all that hockey gear, way before the X-men [notorious NYC messengers most famous for shooting off their mouths at the first CMWC] started doing it. I based the way that 29 looks on him, even though 29 is not nearly as crazy as him. Joey called himself 29 after that... He was crazy, he got into an argument with a guy once and challenged him to race the wrong way up 5th Ave. all the way to the Park (about 5 miles)."

If you have comments or suggestions, email me at messvilleto@yahoo.com