FF1994: Raisin Doofus

Doofus #1-2, Raisin Pie #1-5  by Rick Altergott and Ariel Bordeaux.

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Doofus had been running in various anthologies, but must prominently as a backup feature in Hate. So spinning it off into its own title probably seemed quite natural.

I’ve never enjoyed reading Doofus, but haven’t really examined why. It’s obvious why people would find his artwork attractive: It’s got that Wally Wood sheen going on. It’s like Altergott’s art style was based on just reading those few appearances of Wood in Kurtzman’s Mad.

Wally Wood drew plenty of stuff figures; sure, but Altergott takes that one step further. What the fuck is going on here? I know it’s supposed to be funny, but this makes no sense. Perhaps my main beef here is the bad anatomy and proportions: Most of the heads are vaguely too large, giving this all a queasy quality.

It’s not just the art that I find off-putting, though. I get the joke; I just don’t like it.

OK, I think that’s enough of a hate-fest for a twenty year old comic book that few people have read. I’m starting to feel like I’m abusive or something…

Anyway, most of the first issue isn’t about Doofus at all, but is about, er, some complicated political plot. Much satirical. The second issue, appearing three years after the first one, is mostly Doofus.

Then that was apparently cancelled, because in 2002:

Raisin Pie. A collaboration between Ariel Bordeaux (of Deep Girl fame) and Rick Altergott. They are apparently a couple now, and that’s as good a reason as any to start creating a shared anthology.

They do the occasional collaborations, like the very self critical introduction above, but mostly stick to their own halves of the book.

Altergott starts a serial about some drug dealers (where Doofus is tangentially involved), and Bordeaux starts two serials: One about a library that burns down, and one about a girl who hangs out with three nerds.

As you saw in the introduction, Bordeaux is pretty hard on her artwork, but as you also can see here, it’s fine. Some pages look a bit rushed, but there’s also plenty of images like that one above, that are really quite attractive and feel quite real.

*clutches pearls* So controversial.

There’s also the occasional stray piece that’s not part of the main serials, like this one where Altergott meets Jim Woodring (who has bad things to say about his neighbour).

Raisin Pie is slightly oddly printed. It’s on white non-shiny paper, which is nice, but the ink is washed out. Perhaps it wasn’t printed with black ink, but with a very light grey ink? Or perhaps it’s a printing mistake? Over several issues?

After three issues of very straightforward storytelling, Bordeaux switches to pastiche. Here we’ve got hard boiled detective…

And here we have romance comics. Good lord! *choke* Javascript!

What on Earth is up with the scale of that staircase? Six humongous steps between floors? And is that a girl very… small? Or possibly a monkey?

SORRY! I SAID I”D STOP!

To atone for my lapse here, I’ll include this:

The naked fishermen are really quite an inspired piece of lunacy from Altergott.

In the fifth issue Bordeaux announces that she’s ending her Raisin Pie contributions (and she does wrap up her two serials quite nicely in this issue), and that Altergott would wrap up his in the next issue. No further issues were published.

Altergott has since published stuff at Vice, but I don’t know what he’s up to these days. I can’t find any publications by Bordeaux since Raisin Pie, but she has a tumblr.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

FF1997: Steve Ditko’s Strange Avenging Tales

Steve Ditko’s Strange Avenging Tales #1 by Steve Ditko.

After leaving Marvel in the early 70s, Ditko has been publishing a stream of Ayn Rand-inspired comics at any publisher that would let him do whatever he wanted without any interference.

Strange Avenging Tales was apparently an attempt at doing one of these comics at Fantagraphics, but for (reasons unknown to me), only one issue was published.

Let’s have a gander.

Most of the stuff I’ve seen from his post-Marvel period has been line drawings only, with little shading. For the lead piece in this comic book, he’s apparently using washes to paint in some greys? Looks pretty nice.

The other stories are in his usual style: Very clean black and white.

The stories are, like most everything I’ve read from him the past few decades, simple short stories where somebody does something wrong, and then horrible retribution arrives setting things straight. Here a litterer is junked.

A one page philosophical treaty.

There is something quite attractive about Ditko’s artwork. A blend of experimentation and old school drawing.

I wonder why Groth put this page in. Ditko is known to be pretty prickly, right? So why put a page of not very respectful quotes about Ditko into his own magazine? Groth is even quoted saying “didactically repetitive Randian tracts [laughs]”, which is probably not something that any artist would want their publisher to say about them.

A second issue is announced, so they were probably going for a quarterly schedule. No such comic was ever published, apparently.

Ditko is still active to this day, and there’s probably a project being kickstartered as I type… Yup. A rolling kickstart campaign has been going for a few years now. I haven’t participated in any of them, because even if I like the artwork, I just find the stories to be repetitiously didactic.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

FF1996: Empty Skull Comics

Empty Skull Comics by Gerald Jablonski.

Mm, yes…

Jim Woodring provides an introduction and offers the idea that Jablonski is possibly insane.

The first half of this collection doesn’t seem particularly crazy. The humour is off-kilter, but the silliness is within normal parameters, I would say.

This sort of humour is just my thing. You know: A cow that’s so dumb that she’s suddenly on the roof of the house? Brilliant!

Glamorous farm life? Nice fish breakfast for the horse? Yes! Bring it on!

Totally stupid word play? J’adore.

So I wasn’t quite getting whatever Woodring was… getting at.

Then, halfway through, things got weirder. But still kinda normal underground acid visions.

But then it started.

Page after page of this. Every page the same format and with the same structure:

First the father barges into the boy’s bedroom to complain about the noise (which is music from a band called Poopy).

Then, after a while, the boy explains to the father that his teacher is an ant.

Then it ends with us being told that the world will end and we’ll all die.

In between these three “plot points”, there a seemingly endless stream of puns, non sequitur, cross-talk and general yammer, but the delivery is so straight-forward that it doesn’t really work as a stand-up routine.

The rhythm is rather hypnotic, though. After a while, I started looking forward to getting to the part where the son tells the father about his ant teacher.

Such a weird effect. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen anything like it.

Jablonski’s speech balloon tails also go awry from time to time, and you have to visually untangle them to tell who’s saying what.

A very peculiar reading experience, and quite enjoyable.

Jablonski is still publishing comics today, and it looks like they’ve gotten even stranger now.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.