June? We've survived into June...? How about that.
The New Statesmen (1988/1989/199o) - written by John Smith & illustrated by Jim Baikie, Duncan Fegrado, and Sean Phillips, + Brendan McCarthy & David Hine
How many times have I read this, at this point? Six times? More? Sad fact is, I don't know enough about the history of orchids to say whether their symbolic use in this comic works. But most everything else does. Future histories are tricky business. This one holds up, even if its fashions don't.
Tyranny Rex (1998) - written by John Smith & illustrated by (deep breath) Steve Dillon, Will Simpson, Mark Buckingham, Paul Marshall, and whatever other flying monkeys were indentured at 2000ad on a given week
Tyranny Rex starts funny and ends by never fucking ending. The first arc, with Steve Dillon, is full-on comedy. It's got some great sight gags. Then it's au revoir Steve, and hello muddy inks from everybody's least fave, grottiest Hellblazer artist, Will Simpson. Whom I frequently confuse with Mike McKone, of 'Sex Warrior' infamy. But yeah. From Will Simpson onward, I have no clear idea what Smith intended to accomplish with these comix. Comedy? I guess Tyranny was meant to be a female counterweight to Devlin Waugh, but wotta bellyflop. Like the kind that causes a body to lose consciousness.
Fires & Murmur (1988 & 1991) - written & illustrated by Lorenzo Mattotti
These are Vibe Comix. Like, on an intellectual level, the plot of Fires is easy enough to piece out. But it's never quite about the business it declares-- there's a shiftiness to these books, both on the artistic & narrative levels, such that you're never quite certain what you're reading. The easiest dismissal would be to call them dream comix, or art comix, but even if they are those things, they're not. Because the pages, the pages always tell you something different. Panel to panel, chapter to chapter, they're not interested in lining up so much as communicating the vibe. These books vibrate with captured energy. Murmur is the slipperier of the two books. One is a horror comic, the other is a metaphysical wrangle with self. But which is which, and why does it matter? Just lay back with 'em and let the vibes wash your kinks out.
Exquisite Corpse (199o) - written by Jerry Prosser & illustrated by The Pander Bros.
Speaking of kinks. This was a weird one. Have I talked about this before?
So I was seventeen, and a virgin, and didn't know a single thing about sex, really, despite being raised by degenerate hippy scum, when this comic showed up in a quarter bin. I was always convincing my aunt to take me to the one comic shop Dogwater had to offer, and she was always reluctant. Like, waits in the car reluctant. She wouldn't go into a record shop, even. That could be because the one CD store we had in town hoisted a flag-sized poster for Ritual de lo Habitual over the register... It could also be because my aunt Edwina was a classic repressed churchgoing lesbian. Anyhow. She thought filth was everywhere-- and was she wrong? Because in that dingy quarter bin I found one issue of Exquisite Corpse. A book that seemed quite unhappy about sex, gray and antagonistic and menacing.
What I could not know, then, is that I'd found the least explicit & disquieting of the three (unnumbered) issues. I'd seen a couple house ads in issues of Dark Horse, promoting it, and I knew the Pander Brothers from reading Grendal, but as to what the comic -was-, its narrative intent, I couldn't decipher. It seemed like a dying dream, or fantasy. I knew it was one of those books it would be a bad idea to get caught with. By that point I'd already been suspended for "trafficking pornography" at school-- i.e. bringing an issue of Heavy Metal to use for reference for a painting. So I knew what smut was, even as I didn't have the slightest idea what sex was for, or about.
Because let's be up front here: my school did not have a sex ed course. It disguised its sex ed course as Home Economics, and squirreled away the realities of sexuality in an elective. So I got what passed for sex ed, because I wanted to take a course on sewing and balancing a chequebook. What I knew about sex, you could've inscribed on an oyster cracker. I was a hick. But I knew enough to realize that Home Ec was not actually teaching us anything other than some murky biological realities; Home Ec was on the curriculum so the school could argue that it was not teaching anything godless.
Point being, even dumb as I was, Exquisite Corpse felt dangerous. It wasn't trying to sell a hollywood notion of fucking, and it wasn't pushing a heteronormative, judeo-xtian agenda. It also wasn't interested in talking down to the reader. If I'd been able to get the other two issues, when I was seventeen, and if I'd been caught with them...? Those books would have been burned. By my parents. Who grew up rebelling against book burnings, public pyres of Beatles records and being told that masturbation would result in disease & insanity. They grew up knowing what repression really was, and they tried to avoid me experiencing it, but by god they would have disapproved of these comix.
Because they're grimy, and unpleasant, and grim. But they're also really well built, artsy little things. Three issues, which may be read in any order. And you should. Do what I did, find 'em on the 'bays. They're cheap. They're beautifully packaged, with photo covers, and fun design elements-- each issue, in lieu of a # number, is represented by a type of knot. And they're quite elegant little knots, dedicated to a knotted subject: abuse.
That's me putting a trigger guard in there. It's just not a nice book.
I don't know how successful this little project was. Honestly I'm amazed Dark Horse was able to publish it at all. In most places, as I understand, these books were relegated to the Adults Only bin. With reason. But yeah. Solid book. And the least sexy thing you're guaranteed to read this year.
Dick Tracy: the Ballad of Crewy Lou (1951) - written & illustrated by Chester Gould & Dick Locher
You've never heard of Crewy Lou!?!? Well, it's not like she didn't try.
The bodycount on this one is something. Crewy's no The Brow, but she herself straight up threw a bedridden mobster over her shoulder and stuffed him into a medical sterilizer like he was a load of wash. She was primed to crank the steam when she was stopped. Nothing is beyond. Look at that hair!!! Ruthless. Beat Tess Trueheart in the head with a rock and kidnapped Bonny Braids! Villainous as they come. Doesn't even hesitate when it comes to offing Brainard, her big brother, neither. Hell, the number of cars she goes thru... Crewy Lou's harder on wheels than Furiosa!!
Yessir, mmm-mm!! Good comix.
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