Street Code
Street Code is © Dean Haspiel
Login to Add a Favorite
Jack, a native New York bruiser, is fed up with living in the dregs of a drug-addled Alphabet City where his neighbors are insane shut-ins and his bicycle is always getting stolen. So, Jack escapes from Manhattan to Brooklyn to make a fresh start in Carroll Gardens only to face a new strain of street logic where most everything he stumbles upon is not as it seems. Jack steeps in the hazing of eons old rituals as a polarized community begrudgingly changes hands between tribes. With STREET CODE, Dean Haspiel returns to his semi-autobiographical roots and explores the emotional truths between prime and primate.
Good comic! I'm looking forward to seeing more of this.
Great stuff Dean, always glad to see more Street Code installments!
Fascinating snippets of life in the city, thoroughly enjoyed by this former kid from small-town Iowa!
Good to see you back, Dean. A nice little holiday reverie, too. Exactly the kind of mood I love about this strip.
-Rob
Welcome back. I was beginning to think that we weren't going to see a second season. I enjoy this because the story is so different to anything else here on Zuda.
Great start to the new season. I can't believe I am saying this but I feel touched by this new arc.
Thanks!
I wasn't a fan to begin with, but seriously Zuda needs this strip and these four new screens are a fantastic start to a new season. Welcome back Dean.
Woo hoo!
An honest and beautifully conceived comic. A true staple of Zuda. Thank you, Dean. -- S.
Glad to see you back sir, it feels like a great web comic christmas gift.
Very excited to see this coming back!
yeessssss, 2nd season!! Haspiel has returned!! Looking forward to it.
Great to hear you've got the second season worked out. I'm definitely showing this to some of my fellow comic convention goers!
thx, sean. i ink w/a Japanese brush pen and microns and scan.
I Liiiike. Could I ask you what program you use or do you ink and scan in?
a great attribute for having work online is the empirical fact that new folks can swing by and weigh in 24/7/365. like some of my other webcomix, STREET CODE is always working for me even when i'm not working for STREET CODE. with that in mind, i'd like to thank all the folks who have stopped by and commented since i took my hiatus to draw my next Vertigo collaboration [i'm 13pp away from completing the line art]. community and comments are the currency i thrive on and it is greatly appreciated. i wish STREET CODE was more popular among Zuda readers but the ones who are picking up what i'm laying down are true blue. i have season two all worked out and half written. i hope to return to my semi-autobio comic late january/early february 2010. until then, thank you...thank you.
I don't throw out compliments like candy. Mostly I have 2 pat comments I pull out when I see someone else's work. If I like it, I say "Good Stuff, man!" if I don't, I say "Keep at it, man!" Reading this leaves me with a new one. "Don't stop." This is a good series. You have a very astute view and manner of your storytelling. I really can't put my finger on what it is that I like about these, but like them I do.
you're a fantastic story-teller
I must confess, I did feel sick to my stomach when I got to page to, but I couldn't stop from reading to the end.
Your artwork is fantastic and the issues you raise in an 8 page narrative all come together at the end...I want to say a very Tarintino style of story-telling. Damn fine work mate
Why the hell you don't have over 600 favourites is beyond me. This is my favourite read so far on Zuda and you should be damn proud of yourself. The writing is just fantastic and the art couldn't match up better than it does now.
Street Code is all about the plausibility and you got it down to the mf 'T'. Once your done with that hiatus of yours, please cop us another fix of the street (pretty please with sugar on top).
Trippy. Great Work. ...More?
شات|دردشة
كتابية|العاب
Street Code is, more than anything else, different from the rest of Zuda and the concept of a comic. It isn't something fantastic or ground breaking or unbelievable. It is an imitation of real life.
Our narrator is a real human being, not without fault or prejudice, but able to quickly learn a situation and change. You make a point of sympathizing characters that are removed from the narrator.
All the usual suspects end up being jerks.
This is both a strength and potentially a weakness for the story. Its all fine and well that he's noticing the Latin thugs who called in for the old maid. The same for the Black hulk who ends up being a big brother. However, you must be careful to give equal shares of good and bad to what he knows and what he doesn't. In my opinion that is most important to the realism you're aiming at. The setting itself is perfect and I wouldn't change it for the life of me. New York is real enough for the whole world.
Brilliant. One of the best things on the site, and certainly the most emotional powerful and relevant. The dark parts are rather painful, and even the most uplifting is rather raw.
I really love this. It's one of the better things I've read, in print or not.
Story telling most fine. I really enjoyed that beginning to end.
just loved it :D (and still do ;))
animal rights accent-genius;
I'm from Poland- so I really laughed from the part about the polish guy (it's prtly truth btw ;))
just to many things I liked, to write them all down.
congratulations! :)
Lovn it Dean! M&A in da howse!
Dean's work is what comics are. Pure, honest and simple. He commands the compositions like Eisner did and makes you feel as though you are right there with him. It's just ink on paper, and we feel as though we are right there....amazing. I hope that Dino creates more of these shorts, as I feel this is quintessential comics. A serial can be short stories that move, get to the point, and no one has to fight to save the world. Every day stories are more powerful as we've all been there. I've lived in Brooklyn my entire life and I am honored to have Haspiel share this borough with the rest of us. I've been an illustrator - sequential guy for a while now....and EVERY time I read Haspiel's work, I am re- inspired. Street Code is a classic.
its embarrassing to me that this strip, which I applauded from the first time it was announced here at Zuda, fell beneath my radar in the past few months. I'm only finally getting around to it now, Dean, sorry.
Is that because I knew how strong it would be when read as a whole?
Is it because Dean's amazingly strong sense of naturalism works best when the stories are read in individual pockets?
Is it because he doesn't need my attention and praise in the way younger Zuda talent (no less worthy) might be bolstered by it?
Yeah, probably all of that.
Dean's work on STREET CODE richly rewards each of us comic readers who think that Zuda might be able to offer something extra. Something stronger or more personal than material found each week in a comicshop. Each of the stories shown here are quiet, specific little poems to living in a city you love. Yes, they're about New York, but it's an unspecified New York, the "Big City made Normal" that all urban dwellers identify with.
Dean, through the Zuda model, has brought us something we've all been looking for; Will Eisner's dreams of Dropsie Blvd, the world of a normal life of any one of us rendered as heroic through the context of comics.
Dean, its exactly what I expected, but I'm sorry for not commenting sooner.
If this work doesn't come back to Zuda in the fall when Dean has time for it, well, we'll all be missing something that we really came here for in the first place.
-Rob
When I first read Street Code I thought I recalled your drawing style from an issue of American Splendor and sure enought there you were. Working w/Harvey Pekar had to be a great culmination of many thiings, I would imagine? Then today I took lil' Marley to the bookstore and I found The Quitter. Great work! You have an extremely expressive style to your inks and my eyes followed the story like a pounding freight train. Keep on building an impressive body of work. I will enjoy following your success. Next up for me to read is The Alcoholic.
Thx to everyone who read and weighed in on STREET CODE. I'm taking a long hiatus to draw a new graphic novel for Vertigo. I aim to return to STREET CODE in the Fall to complete season one. Until then, happy webcomix reading!
Thx to everyone who read and weighed in on STREET CODE. I'm taking a long hiatus to draw a new graphic novel for Vertigo. I aim to return to STREET CODE in the Fall to complete season one. Until then, happy webcomix reading!
I've enjoyed this series more than anything else you've done. Eisner would be proud, and I'd love to own a book of this stuff.
Great stories, I particularly like your nine-eleven tale, very subtle and evokes similar memories for me as well. Great writing.
great...
60 screens already? They went by so fast! Congratulations!
Wait...How did you know that cop was Irish?
I enjoy this one (Quality of life) more than most because I wasn't in Studio Deep Six to watch you create it. I read it all here first. That was a perfect last page!
Hey Dino,
I waited too damn long to read Street Code, but caught up in a big way today. These stories so captivate and catapult me into your world, that I want to visit you in NYC, like tomorrow...
And, your story about lost love reborn is WONDERFUL!
Hope you and Sara will come back to Austin soon for a looonger visit...
Later,
Wayne
Thoughtful. Lyrical. Human. I just love these stories.
This reminds me of the time I got pulled over for pot. They searched my car, told me my eyes were dialated (they just asked me to step out of the light), asked me what I was out doing out past 12am (my play just got out), and why I was shaking so much (it was cold and I have AS). I should of pulled out the Mental Disability card, but didn't.
This is just an incredible book. I can't wait for it to be printed.
Yeah, just think - you could've run over Jonathan A. coming out of a bar!
Excellent, especially when you give the cop what for.
at least you didn't get charged as a terrorist
yeah, David, that was a quality face-plant!
Bravo, Dean! Bravo. I love that last page, in particular.
You're lucky Officer Douchenozzle didn't catch you talking on your cell phone while riding a bike. That's against the law, too. And people wonder why NYPD isn't known as New York's Cuddliest.
Holey moley, was that 60 pages? It went by so fast! It didn't seem like enough! For example, we never really found out why he was sportin' bandages on his face from page 1!
Anyway, congrats, Dean, on fulfilling your contractual obligations with style!
Thx, gang. I'm glad the romantic departure in "When I Knew" was received so well.
Just wonderful.
this is excellent storytelling.