Writer: Joel Newman
Artist: Finn Kidd
Secret Society Press, 2024
Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “The best tunes are played on the oldest fiddles.” This review of Heaven is an Afterparty looks at the zany first issue, with its sense of mortification arising from the passage of time. Writer Joel Newman,and the artist Finn Kidd appear to have a surprisingly subtle message immersed within the pages of partying and silliness.
On the face of it, this is an absurdist parody. An “infamous party peddler” named Ariel “Ari” Santanas has seized a brand new super yacht, the SS Enchantertainment, spoiling the carefully prepared counter-strategies developed by her former friend, Jenny Baxter. A DJ with the very English stage name of Cecile K starts up some music and some dancers – “Ravers! The Devil’s fun-havers!” yells Baxter in disgust – start bouncing around on the decks. The piracy is ridiculous, the effort by Jenny to foil Ari’s plans are silly, and the ending improbably consequence-free. (Ari should have been arrested and thrown in jail for ten years upon returning to shore.)
Mr Kidd’s cartoon-y art is appropriate to the madness. It is generally slight on backgrounds, other than shadowy dancers caught mid- movement which are used to contrast Ari’s statis, her verbal hustling. And the panels are appropriately heavy on manic facial expressions.
But there is something a little curious at play here. The thick overlay is the prankster hijacking, the beautiful people dancing on the yacht, the drug-taking and the booze. Beneath it all there is the shadow of ageing and time. Trends, including musical taste and fashion, move in very slow cycles. Ari is terrified by two things: being caught out as born in the 1980s (which seems laughably young to your critic), and being behind the curve on style. Baxter realizes one way of shutting down Ari is to have a plane fly by the yacht with a pennant evidencing Ari’s real age. Ari stops this by launching a giant inflatable rendition of the yacht’s owner at the plane and its banner,. It is an act of defiance against her twin adversaries, Baxter and the march of time. Baxter is deterred, but time does not care: Ari is mortified that some aspects of the dance party are considered by younger attendees to be retro.
People who were once 1990s ravers have been identified as a lucrative audience for dance parties involving children. See for example https://slidingmagazine.com/2026/02/22/family-raves-the-evolution-of-edm-parties/ and https://www.mamamia.com.au/kids-raves/ . Perhaps Ari’s greatest oversight is that there are too many influencers on the yacht, and not enough toddlers bopping about with their T-stepping mums and dads. Same fiddle, different scene, Mr Emerson might have missed.
It seems somehow appropriate that we purchased this title at Gosh! Comics in Soho, London in March 2025. Unfortunately, it has taken us over a year to finally review Heaven is an After Party #1. In the intervening period Heaven is an After Party #2 has been published, and which is not the subject of this review. The passage of time slows us all down. Both issue 1 and issue 2 can be found on the Heaven is an After Party website: https://www.hiaapcomic.com/