Bibliosnark reviews Postcards: True Stories That Never Happened. She loved it. I'm not lying, she says:

It was completely worth the money. I absolutely loved it.

See? Anyway, it's always nice to see some new reviews pop up, even a year-and-a-half after the book was published. Plus, her site has a wicked cool design and she kind of looks like Sarah Paulson. Win-win-swoon.

Labels: news, postcards, review

Last night wrapped up Heroes Volume Three ("Villains"). I sort-of-kind-of-liked the first season of this show. It had some horrible moments but, you know, it was about superheroes and that was cool enough to keep me watching. The second season was a car wreck that was impossible to look away from. It was mangled limbs and gore and shattered glass and fire but it was just too spectacularly horrible to take my eyes off of. It was a nice wallpaper show – TV running but 60% of my attention is on my laptop – and it gave me something to make fun of at the conventions.

Well, if season two was a car wreck then season three, so far, has been two eighteen wheelers running into each other at 80mph while getting sideswiped by an Acela train. Your mom’s driving the first truck and she’s getting ass-fucked by your best friend and face-fucked by your worst enemy while shooting heroin into her eyeballs and eating bloody shit out of an adult diaper. The other truck is driven by Santa Claus. His colonoscopy bag is rocketing through the front seat but he’s paying it no mind because he’s busy shoving the cutest baby you’ve ever seen in a blender and setting the controls for puree. As the two trucks hit Santa’s yelling, “If you only believed in me I would have gotten you that fucking pony!” And now he’s dead, and you’ll never get a pony. The train is being driven by the manifestation of all your hopes and dreams. We’ll call it “Bob.” As Bob’s face gets cut in half by rail and rusted metal you can actually see little bits and pieces crumbling off and being swallowed by the explosions of gasoline and spit and piss. There goes the house with the extensive library. There goes your All-Star pitcher of a son. There goes the hair. There goes the erection. Early-onset Alzheimer’s and another D.U.I. is all you can look forward to now.

This apocalyptic crash is set to the soundtrack of Kenny G covering Phillip Glass’s tribute to the songs of Kenny Loggins. It’s oddly catchy and disturbingly fitting. In the background is a concentration camp where the Jews and gypsies and blacks and Polish and midgets and liberals and puppies and rainbows and cookies are being incinerated. Then the incinerator is being incinerated inside a mammoth incinerator that looks like an open sore sliced across an ankle and smells like the rotting corpse of a dead whale’s aborted fetus’ diseased vagina. The sky is fuschsia explosion and the ground is the color and texture of the morning mucous from an emphysematic lung. There’s stickiness in the air, reminiscent of blood and cum and the crud one finds in the toilet of a long-forgotten Tennessee outhouse.

And while all this is going on you want to pull away. But you can’t – you’re strapped in with your eyelids held open by barbed wire. Your arms are tied-down by the entrails of a vulture that just finished eating a combination of excrement and nun. One bare foot is lodged into the ass of an 800lb shut-in while he seductively licks your other foot as if it’s a bucket of chicken deep-fried in chocolate. You squirm and you yell and you beg for God to take your life. When God doesn’t answer you pledge your allegiance to Satan if he’d just help you turn the TV off. But even he ignores you – you’re in a vacuum with Charles Manson and Adolf Hitler and Christopher Hewett and Sarah Palin. They’re asking you questions about two girls and one cup and lemon parties and goatses and even though you tell them you know what they are they keep showing them to you anyway. An epileptic wildly vomits Fruity Pebbles on your face and in the background is this symphony of pain that will be etched into your brain for as long as you live. Every time you close your eyes you’ll be forced to relive this cacophony of shame and regret and heartache and angel burgers.

And then it’s over. Volume Three is over. But a promo for Volume Four comes on with promise of fugitives and pussy pancakes and asperger gangbangs and mustard gas attacks on your dignity. And you say to yourself, “That’s it, seriously, I’m done! It just doesn’t make sense! How could all of this shit have happened in two days time? How is it possible that every character is capable of forgetting what happened two minutes ago? How are characters' arcs transformed into roller coaster rides that just shake you around until your brain is punctured by your cock and you always end up exactly where they started? How is it that the only thing that ever seems to motivate these characters is a desire to destroy whatever it was they were motivated to accomplish yesterday? What came first, the motivation or the self-hatred?”

And these questions keep running through your head and you laugh and you swear off future episodes but you know, deep down in your self-loathing heart, that you’ll be tuning in at 9PM on February 2nd, ready for another serving of Hell.

At least Ali Larter’s kind of hot for a transvestite.

Labels: heroes, review, television

Robin made chicken cutlets for dinner. Baked. They were pretty good. We drank iced tea with the meal. After dinner we made our way to the metro, took it to Farragut West, and walked seven blocks down to DAR Constitution Hall. We’re walking up the steps to the venue when we see a guy on a motorcycle spill and slide halfway down 18th Street. Another guy in a pick-up truck gets out, asks if the motorcycle guy is alright, says he didn’t realize “it was a one-way street.” We couldn’t figure out what just happen, who was going which way and who almost hit who, but we made our way inside thinking that would be the only anomaly to an otherwise perfect evening.

Boy, were we wrong.

We get drinks at the bar. Robin gets a Bud Light, I get a Heineken. We can’t drink the beers at our seats so we hang outside the auditorium, people-watching. I’m amazed at how the Smashing Pumpkins fans are all in their 30s. At first it looked like a fanbase that grew up with the band but on closer inspection, seeing all of the sports coats and polo shirts, I realized this was a nostalgia trip for most of the audience. Chances are this is the first time most of these folks would be hearing songs from Adore, the Machina albums, or Zeitgeist. For the sake of the show, I was hoping they wouldn’t be hearing too many of those songs for the first time.

Boy, was I wrong.

We take our seats and there’s this girl sitting in front of us. She reeks of sour milk and she’s as high as a kite attached to a fucking rocket. I think she asks us what seats we’re in, I can’t be sure. Her boyfriend comes over and gobbles her up into his arms, gets her hair off her neck, asks if she’s alright. She responds by projectile vomiting on the guy in front of her. The dude has metal hair and now it’s covered with chunks of white vomit. It’s all over his shirt. The girl’s boyfriend quickly escorts her out of the auditorium. The guy with puke all over him runs after the two of them and says something along the lines of, “Dude, she puked in my fucking hair.” The boyfriend says something like, “What the hell am I supposed to do? Say I’m sorry? I’m sorry!” Robin goes to get someone to clean the shit up. The guy with puke all over him takes his shirt off and reveals the most mother-fucking metal tattoo of all time across his entire back. No-one’s coming to clean up the puke – it smells rancid. I figure they’ll get to it before the music starts.

Boy, was I wrong.

The lights go out and Jimmy Chamberlin starts pounding on the drums. The rest of the band comes on stage. There’s puke everywhere and people standing in the aisles, waiting for someone to clean it up. As Billy Corgan begins wailing into the microphone someone comes out with a mop, a dustpan, and a paper towel. That’s what’s used to clean the puke. It doesn’t do the job. The Pumpkins are doing all post-Mellon Collie songs; no-one knows what the fuck’s going on except for a select few. The applause are restrained, the crowd is bored. It tracks like “Tonight” and “Today” to get people into it. And then it’s back to the Machina and Zeitgeist tracks and the audience never really comes back. But the girl that puked came back and she was so fucked up that she didn’t even realize she was standing and dancing in her own puke and rubbing her body against the puke-covered chair. The Pumpkins keep rocking, they sounded so tight. They did “The Beginning is the End is the Beginning” and the nerd in me couldn’t help but picture Dr. Manhattan destroying Vietnamese soldiers. They end with a noise art track that would put Sonic Youth to shame and then walk off. I imagined they’d never grace this lame-ass audience with an encore.

Boy, was I wrong.

I firmly believe that most bands consider three options for the encore. The rocking encore, the no encore, and, if the audience really sucks, the “Fuck You” Encore. If this wasn’t a Fuck You encore I don’t know what is. They did “We Only Come Out at Night,” a great track but not an encore track. Oh…and they didn’t really sing the whole song – they used kazoos for half of it. Then Billy Corgan got heckled by an audience member, he heckled right back (UPDATE: Some more on the heckler here. Also, reading through the site's archived post I'm realizing the Pumpkins are happily becoming the Andy Kaufmans of rock). He then starts talking about how they haven’t sold out in over twenty years. About how they spent three weeks rehearsing for this two-night show where they were spreading 48 songs out over five-hours of playing. And how that’s not what sell-outs do. It was awkward disguised as funny. And that was their encore. It was, without a doubt, a “Fuck You” encore.

Don’t get me wrong, the Pumpkins put on a great show. But between motorcycle accidents, puking girls, and a dead audience everything was just kind of killed. And to make things worse, McCormick & Schmick’s wasn’t having their usual late-night happy hour specials because it’s a holiday. And the calamari sucked. And Robin and I got into a mini-fight.

So, on the whole, a complete let-down of a night. I’ve been looking forward to it for a couple of months but, you know, shit happens. And that my Smashing Pumpkins concert review: shit happens.

Labels: music, review

I’m using Absolutely MAD Magazine - 50+ Years to read and comment on every issue of Mad Magazine published between 1952 and 2005. You can track the progress at this link.

Mad #6 starts off with a return to the Harvey Kurtzman cover after the Bill Elder cover from issue #5. Harvey once again proves his mastery of empty space and composition in this comical take on the King Kong movie crew. King Kong and his supporting cast are further lampooned later on in the book. The first page in this book is a gorgeous advertisement for Mad, illustrated by Jack Davis. It has your stereotypical Mad reader going from newsstand to newsstand only to find that no-one is stocking the book. It gives the reader some ideas as to how to ensure that the newsstand gets Mad, including “sending the attached subscription coupon which gets you 60¢ worth of comic books for 75¢.” It is funny watching Bill Gaines try to explain why the subscription costs more than a non-subscription by saying the comics will be mailed in “a strong manila envelope.” Bill said that the 75¢ was the honest-to-God price of the comic-plus-shipping but it seems pretty obvious, to me, this is just another example of Gaines’ notoriously tight wallet.

Anyway, on to the stories…

I’d be lying if I said I was crazy about the Wally Wood illustrated “Teddy and the Pirates.” Some of the visual gags were great and Wally Wood’s work is fantastic but the comic as a whole – I don’t know, I just didn’t get it. Of course, I never read Terry and the Pirates so that’s probably part of the problem.

The return of Melvin in the Jack Severin-illustrated “Melvin of the Apes!” was quite fantastic, however. In this story Melvin’s long-lost relatives take him out of the jungle and try to reintroduce him into high society. Chaos ensues, of course. Severin’s use of spot colors and powerful sound effects on certain action shots was an inspired decision that lead to some of the best comic panels I’ve ever seen.



The letters column has some more correspondences from angry parents. One really captures the tone of the times, saying, “How such a piece of filthy-minded pictures and so-called stories can be printed and sold on newsstands to young innocent children I can’t understand.” The other letters from “concerned parents” attack the book for its literary merit. The fact that the letters column is followed by an illustrated version of the poem “Casey at the Bat” says to me that this was Gaines thumbing his nose at the public. Again.

The Jack Davis-illustrated “Casey at the Bat!” was phenomenal. Casey being recast as a sometimes-sniveling, sometimes-overconfident buffoon was a great touch and the visual gags, from basketball chucking pitchers to fans armed with guns and knives were all well played.




The final story is the Will Elder-illustrated “Ping Pong!” a somewhat straight-forward parody of King Kong loaded with hundreds of ingenious visual gags. The story is really nonstop, gag-after-gag, and it sort of builds to the type of ending you can only really get from Mad Magazine – it wouldn’t make sense anywhere else.

Labels: mad_magazine, review

I’m using Absolutely MAD Magazine - 50+ Years to read and comment on every issue of Mad Magazine published between 1952 and 2005. You can track the progress at this link.

Starts off with a great Will Elder cover – what else can I say? Moves into a fantastic self-deprecating biography of EC Comics publisher Bill Gaines. It’s another great example of Gaines’ war against the censors and parental groups. In the bio, Gaines describes himself as the “twisted publisher of the perverted E.C. line.” It goes on to describe his younger years where he was a juvenile delinquent – his crimes culminating into a career “selling “cartoon books” (you know the kind!) on dark street corners outside burlesque houses.” It just keeps going on (I’ve posted the whole thing below) and ends with, “Don’t send fan-mail…he can’t read!”

Classic.



The first story is a horror spoof titled “Outer Sanctum” with artwork from Will Elder. Gorgeous artwork, jam-packed with gags, “Tomb It May Concern” etched onto the mausoleum being one of my favorites. The story is Swamp Thing which kind of confuses me because Swamp Thing didn’t appear until 14-years later. The only difference I can tell is that Swamp Thing was made from toxic waste interacting with the vegetation in a swamp and Heap (the monster from the Mad Story) was made from toxic waste interacting with trash in a swamp. It really seems like a perfect lampoon of Swamp Thing – what gives?

EDIT: Ok, I got it – the Mad story seems to be a parody of a character called The Heap developed in the 1940s. Learning something new!

The Wally Wood illustrated “Black and Blue Hawks” is an obvious spoof on the long-running comic featuring the multi-national ace-pilots the Blackhawks. The story was ok, I admit I’m not all that familiar with Blackhawk so a fair amount of the jokes are probably lost on me. I am a fan of supporting character Chop Chop Chop, an Asian pilot that gets screwed-over throughout the story. He comes to his demise for the good of the team, as illustrated below.



“Miltie of the Mounties” is damn-near perfect. Severin knocked it out of the park with the artwork and the story was a fantastic tale of the battle-ready Mounty that always gets his man…unless he turns out to be a woman. Great story, well-executed, and one of my favorite Mad tales so far.



Finally we have Jack Davis lending his pencils to “Kane Keen”, a nice little detective tale. The story was good enough – a private detective that’s always one-step ahead of his enemies and the cops. Desired by every woman he comes across but he always has his eye on the prize and his hand on a bottle of brandy. A nice little Scooby Doo ending wraps this tale up and brings the magazine to a close.

All-in-all a fun issue; the Gaines bio being my favorite part.

Labels: mad_magazine, review

I’m using Absolutely MAD Magazine - 50+ Years to read and comment on every issue of Mad Magazine published between 1952 and 2005. You can track the progress at this link.

What a cover, what a cover.

What an issue. The “Superduperman” issue that spiked Mad’s popularity and brought the first lawsuit to their door. This issue has four incredibly strong stories but before we get to those I think the letters page deserves some special attention.

Bill Gaines, publisher of EC Comics, was fighting back against the experts and psychologists and media personalities that were linking comics with juvenile delinquency. He published a call for criticisms and defenses across his EC line, wanting to hear from actual parents who had praise or critiques of his books, promising to publish their letters. This issue published a letter from an angry parent and I just wanted to share it with you all:

Dear Editors,
You asked for it, and Brotherrrr! you are going to get it. Educational, entertaining, humorous? No. Your “brain-child” is none of these. In fact, it is plain rot. If my brains had so little to offer, I would blow them out if I could find them. We have four boys bringing in so-called “funny books,” and I usually glance over them to weed out those that are downright detrimental, and have found some disgusting books. But never one that seemed to have no purpose or excuse for going on than this one of yours. When will editors and publishers get over the idea that the public are morons and not capable of understanding good literature? I consider it an insult to children to put out such trash for the feeding of the mind. My neighbors agree with me on this, and I hope many parents will be as frank as I have been in answering your request for criticism. Television programs are bad enough, but one can turn them off and forget it. The ash-heap for MAD.

Mrs. C. Patterson
Oakland, CA

Just an interesting window into the times. At this point we’re still several years away from the establishment and enforcement of the Comics’ Code and the decimation of the industry that followed. Mad will turn to magazine format in order to escape censors. You have to wonder how many of comics' problems back then came from Gaines stoking the fires? I mean, good for him, but he seems to be a man ahead of his time. If he had some means to speak to a larger audience and not just his comic audience I’d imagine he’d get people to put up a good fight. With guys like Gaines, you can’t help but wonder what they would have accomplished if they had the internet at their disposal.

Anyway, the comic. It opens with the famous “Superduperman!” illustrated by Wally Wood. It’s a great take on a classic character, with Clark Bent being portrayed as a mousy creep and his alter-ego being portrayed as a cocky creep. Lois has no interest and his arch-enemy is Captain Marbles, a superhero-turned-villain that realized he’d have a better life if he started robbing people instead of helping them. The story’s fantastic; it’s jam-packed with visual gags and graced with one of my favorite lines in the mag so far, “One day while I was punching my way through a mountain…” If only every conversation could start like that.

My favorite story of the issue goes to the Davis illustrated “Flob Was A Slob!”, an inspired spoof of the old romance comics. It’s the “true confession” of a young woman who had to choose between her lifelong sweetheart, Flob, and the handsome Rackstraw Him. She chooses Rackstraw, of course, and he ends up being the wrong choice, of course. But unlike the romance comics, where the wrong choice ends up being a sissy or a womanizer, Rackstraw is a drug-dealing, gambling, bank-robbing loser. Plenty of great visuals and a nice departure from the clichéd ending to wrap it all up. I thought this story was something magnificent.

Two short stories in this issue: “The Parole” and the faux-advise column “Let’s Deplore Your Mind.” They were ok.

The Severin-illustrated “Robin Hood!” is next. I really liked this version’s take on the Robin Hood/Sparkie (Big John sends his sidekick out in this tale) cudgel fight over the water. Robin Hood can’t even balance on the beam and he falls right in. The final pay-off is clever, as well, with Robin Hood and his bank of Merry Men being nothing more than your everyday thug, stealing from everyone to give to themselves.

Finally there’s Will Elder’s take on The Shadow in a story aptly titled “Shadow!” I honestly don’t know anything about The Shadow so I can’t comment on the story as satire but I will say that the jokes were pretty fantastic. There’s a great gag that has the invisible Shadow eating a slowly disappearing watermelon and spitting out the seeds. For some reason it reminds me of the Kramer’s Lollipop gag from the backwards episode of Seinfeld. All this actions going on and there’s just this floating watermelon being slowly consumed.

I loved this issue – all four stories were tight and the letter from the concerned mother in the front was the icing on the cake.

Labels: mad_magazine, review

I’m using Absolutely MAD Magazine - 50+ Years to read and comment on every issue of Mad Magazine published between 1952 and 2005. You can track the progress at this link.

Mad #3 opens with a tremendous cover by Harvey Kurtzman. I love the composition, the character’s isolation, the darkness closing in, the sea of tombstones, the way the umbrella bleeds into the suit and the handle’s a substitute for a handlebar mustache, and I’d buy a stuffed animal that looked like the little vampire boy any day of the week. The issue also features the first appearance of Mad’s letter column, “Mad Mumblings.” Lot’s of praise heaped on issue #1 (“simply delirious”) and a couple of negative comments (“a new low in the comic book industry”).

Kurtzman and Elder’s (credited as “Sergeant Elder”) opening story “Dragged Net!” was my favorite of the issue. Every panel is absolutely packed with visual gags – you get something new every time you read the story. The play between Detective Sergeant Joe Friday and his assistant Ed Saturday is magnificently crafted and, along with the comical twists and turns of the story, is a perfect play on the police dramas of the time. Also, supreme bonus points for referencing Nanook of the North, the 1922 film widely considered the first feature-length documentary.

Next up was the Severin-illustrated “Sheik of Araby!” A hilarious comic that takes on the French Foreign Legion. The sergeant abuses his regiment of foreigners and outlaws that are nowhere near the level of toughness he commands. He throws them over walls, breaks their backs, and breaks rifles over their heads, all the way shouting obscenities at them with his thick French accent. The payoff in the end was a bit of a surprise and well executed.

We go into the two short stories. Honestly, I’m not really enjoying these as much anymore. The Gladiator/Baseball story was pretty funny but I didn’t enjoy the Dandelion Caper all that much. It’s hard – the artwork and humor in the illustrated stories are just too good, if I have to pause to read prose it needs to really grab me. I see myself skipping some of these in the future…

…because skipping them means getting to stories like the Wally Wood illustrated “V-Vampires!” This is a great little tale that takes on the old “she’s obviously a monster, stupid” genre of horror stories. Of course, the twist is that he’s a monster as well. Well played.

And then there’s the Jack Davis-illustrated “Lone Stranger!” A great parody of the “Lone Ranger” that has the Stranger as the bumbling, attention-starved idiot and his sidekick, Pronto, as the guy that needs to take care of business. The gag at the end is hysterical, with the Lone Stranger waiting for the perfect moment to jump on his horse (Golden) and ride off into the sunset. Of course, the Lone Stranger never manages to make the jump onto his horse, causing him to suffer through a sore rump through the majority of the story.

Interestingly, “Dragged Net!” and “Lone Stranger!” seem to be turning towards spoofs of the genre TV shows and not the genre comics that the first two issues relied heavily on. We’re already starting to move towards the conventions of today’s Mad Magazine.

Labels: mad_magazine, review

I’m using Absolutely MAD Magazine - 50+ Years to read and comment on every issue of Mad Magazine published between 1952 and 2005. You can track the progress at this link.

Mad #2 – you have GOT to love that cover. I laughed out loud when it first popped up on my screen, the idea of the prototypical horror comic narrator going to a baseball game and inadvertently jinxing the players is comedy gold. The opening story (illustrated by Jack Davis although he’s credited as “Melvin Davis”) is the horror/baseball hybrid alluded to on the cover, appropriately titled “Hex!” I guess I should say something about “Melvin” since it seems to be a running gag in early Mad mags. All four stories in Mad #1 (as well as the cover) featured a protagonist or antagonist called Melvin. In issue 2, all of the artists are credited under an assumed name “Melvin” except for John Severin who, for some reason, is not credited at all. In two of the four stories featured in issue 2 the protagonist is named Melvin but the name doesn’t seem to appear in the other two stories. I really don’t have a point, listing all of the times a Melvin appears in Mad, but I doubt Harvey Kurtzman had a point using “Melvin” all of the time, either. It’s just Mad setting the standard for a touch of irrelevance in all of their satire and I dig it.

Anyway, back to “Hex!” The story itself has a bit more to it than the cover suggests; our hero makes a deal to marry the woman with the evil eye in exchange for a pennant. Ironically, the team our hero plays for is obviously modeled after the Red Sox, a team that knew a thing-or-two about hexes. I couldn’t help but laugh as the fabled Curse of the Bambino made way for the Curse of the Woman with the Evil Eye. I’m not sure how far back talk of The Curse went but I know it wasn’t a pop-culture phenomenon until the late-80s/early-90s. Unintentional historical relevance aside, “Hex!” was a funny tale with some fantastic visual gags, especially the supernatural forces acting on the baseball once the pact was sealed.

The second tale was “Melvin!” with art from the uncredited John Severin. “Melvin!” is a Tarzan spoof with a FANTASTIC gag that has Tarzan calling his jungle buddies for help that’s followed by a stampede of dogs, pigs, dinosaurs, dodo birds, whales, and other members of the animal kingdom.

There are two short stories in this issue, just like the first one. The first one is pulp detective homage and the second is a rather funny sci-fi piece about a boy who transmits radio waves from his teeth.

Kurtzman and Wally Wood’s (credited as Melvin Wood) sci-fi spoof “Gookum!” was up next. I didn’t like it as much as the sci-fi story from issue one but it’s still a humorous story about jello waking up every five-hundred years and taking over the world. Plus, you know, it’s Wally Wood.

Will Elder (credited as Melvin Elder) brings the best story of the issue, the crime-spoof “Mole!” The story of man that can use anything to dig his way out of prison but he gets caught by the police the moment he pops out of the ground. Great gags, I especially love the way Melvin Mole only says “Dig” and various textbook crime lines like “John Law” and “Coppers won’t put me in jail!”

Labels: mad_magazine, review

I recently purchased Absolutely MAD Magazine - 50+ Years, a DVD that contains every issue of Mad Magazine published between 1952 and 2005. That’s over 400 issues. I’m looking forward to reading all of them over the next couple of years and I plan on offering some commentary on each one. I thought it’d be interesting to see how the magazine changed over 50+ years and also use it as a window into the popular culture and trends of the times.

The first issue of Mad doesn’t look or feel like the Mad my generation is familiar with. It was comic-sized, it didn’t feature Alfred E. Newman anywhere in the book, and its brand of satire focused almost entirely on genre comic books. The book was the brainchild of Harvey Kurtzman, legendary cartoonist and editor. Harvey was pulling triple-duty at the time, editing EC Comic’s Frontline Combat and Two-Fisted Tales in addition to Mad. Despite his heavy workload, Mad #1 was an achievement in satire and storytelling, undoubtedly helped along by the talented illustrators and humorists Harvey managed to wrangle together to pitch in some pages.

The first story was a spoof on horror comics called “Hoohah!” It’s a fitting way to start the mag, considering EC Comics popularized horror comics in the 50s. It lays the gauntlet down and lets the reader know that nothing’s sacred in the eyes of the Mad Men, including EC’s own cash cow. “Hoohah!” was illustrated by Jack Davis and lampooned most of the horror comic conventions – the haunted house (and the protagonists’ increasingly illogical decisions to explore it), the creepy butler, the contrived back-story, the “gotcha” ending. All-in-all it was a fairly straight-forward parody, the best gag being Galusha, the male protagonist, constantly trying to sneak away from the house only to be wrangled back by the headstrong and horror story telling girlfriend, Daphne.

Wally Wood’s sci-fi spoof “Blobs!” was a take-off on the old morality tale. We’re in the distant future, where society’s dependence on machines has made everyone fat and lazy. Kurtzman and Wood were indeed futurists; I just don’t think they realized the future they predicted was coming down the pipe a lot sooner than 1,000,000AD. One of the more interesting aspects of the piece was how the machines were making men’s jobs easier and women’s housework easier. It’s a product of the times, of course, but I guess even futurists get some things wrong. Also, according to the cartoon, men of the future will rely on “disposable prefabricated robot women” for their sexual pleasure. Sales of the Real Doll compared to Viagra and porn downloads seem to be disproving that theory, as well, but time will tell.

The Mag then has two short stories, really smart, trippy stuff. One’s a sci-fi story about a boy that contemplates the infinite by studying a salt advertisement only to be sucked into the advert and the other tells the history of erasers via a Korean War parable transplanted into Roman times. Yeah, I know.

And then there’s Will Elder’s crime spoof, “Ganefs!” My favorite story of the issue, the visual gags were masterful and the nuances of the elaborate extortion-plot and escape plan perfectly lampooned all aspects of crime and action movies that we still see today. I laughed harder and harder as the characters run away from the coppers by car and then boat and then underwater, using their gun barrels as snorkels. An obvious but well-executed twist ending caps off the story perfectly and strengthens my undying love and appreciation for everything Will Elder has ever done.

The final story’s a western called “Varmint!” with art from John Severin. Plenty of great visual gags accompany a funny satire of the hard-as-nails, never-back-down cowboy looking for his man and killing anyone who gets in his way. I’m a fan of the slow pace and the heavy exposition that continuously streams from the characters' mouths. The story itself, about a cowboy that doesn’t realize that he’s the man he’s looking for, reminds me quite a bit of Atlas/Marvel Comic’s Outlaw Kid. Outlaw Kid started to run two years after this issue of Mad was published (but the whole “Outlaw Kid was looking for himself” angle wasn’t introduced until 2000), so Mad’s version of the story certainly came first. It makes me wonder if it was an often-used cowboy storyline from way-back-when or there was a little bit of influence taken from the Mad concept. As an interesting side note, John Severin actually supplied some covers for the 1970s relaunch of Outlaw Kid.

The rest of the mag consists of house ads, an ad for German-crafted binoculars (seven-years after WWII and we liked the krauts again, apparently), an ad for a mystery product that will turn you into a muscular girl-magnet, and an ad for an auto repair manual. Ads like these will be mercilessly skewered in future issues of Mad.

So that’s issue one. I don’t expect to be anywhere near this detailed for all 450+ issues but I at least wanted to start it off on the right foot.

Labels: mad_magazine, review

I've been a fan of Perry Bible Fellowship for quite some time. If you go back to the archives I first pimped Nicholas Gurewitch's excellent comic back on February 14th, 2005. He has since published a chunk of new webcomics, been nominated for (and won) Harveys,Ignatzes and Eisners, and has seen his archive published by Dark Horse. It's been a good three years for Mr. Gurewitch but there's a problem - his PBF production has slowed down considerably. I'm constantly waiting for a four-panel strip to be posted. Weeks turn into months and I tend to feel the hole in my heart growing. I'm incomplete, I long, I yearn for that sublime humor that's the heir apparent to The Far Side.

And then I saw a comic that I originally mistook for a new Gurewitch strip. It was posted on the Brian Michael Bendis message board. I went to the PBF website to see if it has been updated but, alas, nothing. I went back to the Bendis board and asked the original poster where that strip came from and I was introduced to the work of Lee Healey. The wait for a new PBF has just become slightly more bearable. Feast your eyes on the genius, and then go to his site for more:

Labels: plug, review

An excellent read from Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece. The story about a black journalist that passes for white, going undercover in the deep south mid-1900s under the penname Incognegro. The story has him investigating a murder that his brother has been accused of but didn't commit. Fast-paced read, in fact...

It was lacking some quieter moments - the whole thing just seemed to move and move and move. That's not necessarily a bad thing but it was such a powerful story that I would have loved a couple of moments of reflection; especially considering Warren Pleece's fantastic artwork. But beyond that little nitpick I'd have to say this was a great piece.

Buy Incognegro.
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Summer Reading
Read So Far:
Incognegro
The Men Who Stare at Goats
War Fix
The Yiddish Policeman's Union
Shortcomings
Cairo
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Up Next:
Lives of the Popes
The Left Bank Gang

Labels: review

Summer reading continues...

I finished two books yesterday. The Men Who Stare At Goats was funny 50% of the time and frightening the other 50%. It's the (supposedly) true story about a US military division that's been around since the 70s exploring different avenues of psychological warfare. One of the programs believed men could be trained to be super soldiers; the fifth level of that program try to teach people how to stop a goats heart by simply staring at it. Apparently only one person ever got to that level. The rest of the book is equally odd - subliminal messages and psychic spying and the program's ties to fuck-ups like the Koresh Branch Davidians and Heaven's Gate. On the whole it was an entertaining read but sometimes the story seemed to lack cohesion. Other than that it's a fantastic summer read.

Buy The Men Who Stare At Goats

War Fix was gorgeous but I think it was the result of an inexperienced comic writer with an inexperienced comic artist. Layouts were confusing and the writing sometimes seemed detached from the incredible visuals. I got to read a sample of the follow-up book and that's looking much better already.

Buy War Fix

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Summer Reading
Read So Far:
The Men Who Stare at Goats
War Fix
The Yiddish Policeman's Union
Shortcomings
Cairo
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Up Next:
Incognegro
(I need to make a library run - out of books)

Labels: review

Well, it's summer time. During the summer is when I do the bulk of my reading, averaging around 2 books a week (including graphic novels). I usually track what I'm reading on Good Reads but I think I'll do it on this blog as well as well, just to get some stuff posted. Of course, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

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I finished The Yiddish Policemen's Union yesterday. It was a fantastic book but I think it suffers from being Chabon's follow-up to Kavalier & Clay, one of my all-time favorite books. It seems like a lot of the themes from Kavalier & Clay were reexplored in a new environment and genre. It was still fanciful and heart-wrenching and clever as all hell, it just felt like it went back to the well a couple of times. Does that mean it's a bad book? Of course not. If this book was written by anyone else I think I would have been praising it to no end. I guess I just wanted a little but more.

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Read This Summer:
The Yiddish Policeman's Union
Cairo
Shortcomings
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Currently Reading:
The Men Who Stare At Goats
War Fix

Labels: review

Ok, so here's the deal. Anyone who knows me knows that I am deeply in love with the work of Dave Lapham. He wants people to try out his new Vertigo series, Young Liars (which so far has been on par with Stray Bullets, one of the best continuous series comics has ever seen) and he's offering up a cool promotion to get the word out. Below:

Labels: review

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