Random Thoughts

Lust of the Nazi Weasel Women #1-4 by Mitch Manzer.

Manzer had previously done the very amusing Rory Randall, the Singing Cowboy serial, but Lust of the Nazi Weasel Women is his first (and only, I think) solo series.

As with the Rory Randall series, what we have here is a number of really silly concepts mashed together (Hitler as a parakeet, I mean parrot; the Easter Bunny smuggling eggs), and then the action takes off from there, but doesn’t really go in any particular direction.

Instead we get a number of gags piled on top of each other. If you string a lot of bad jokes together zanily enough, you get a cumulative effect.

Manzer’s day job is as an animator, and you can really tell. Some sequences seem like they could have been storyboards for a cartoon, but it works on the page, too.

While most of the artwork is fast and friendly, there’s also the occasional freak-out, like in this drug induced sequence.

A lot of stuff happens in these pages, but you can’t really say that there’s much plot development. The first four issues were all about our hero getting a crew together to fly a plane for the Easter Bunny, and by the end of issue four they’re finally in the air. And then the series just stops.

We never get to see any Nazi weasel women.

Manzer doesn’t seem to have published any comics after this series was cancelled, but he seems to have been working in animation ever since.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

It’s Only a Matter of Life and Death
Bleeding Heart #1-5
Wild Life #1-2

By Peter Kuper.

Around this time, Fantagraphics published a number of magazine-sized single creator collections of work previously published in various anthologies: Mostly Fantagraphics anthologies like Prime Cuts and Graphic Story Monthly.

It’s Only a Matter of Life and Death is yet another one of these, but most of the material here comes World War 3 Illustrated and Heavy Metal.

Among these is the famous One Dollar story, that I think was extended and published as its own book later? Although the Internet disagrees with me here, which just goes to show that you can’t trust the Internet any more.

Most of the stories are in Kuper’s familiar scratchboard-like style (but not done on scratchboard, I think), but there’s a couple of completely oddball pages like this one.

And Fantagraphics have even splurged for an additional colour on one of the stories!

Rounding out the magazine, we have an early travel comic from Kuper. These are usually taken from his notebooks that he draws while out travelling, and is in a completely different and more spontaneous style than his normal style. This one deals with a rather harrowing border crossing into Germany in the good old days (i.e., the 80s).

Next up we have the five issue Bleeding Heart series, which is in standard US comic book size, and continues the reprints from WW3 and Heavy Metal (and Real Girl, Itchy Planet, etc).

My, that’s a very handsome page.

One fun bit here is that he’s added a couple of pages to one of the pieces he’s reprinting giving it a critique.  I don’t know whether the coda was added for this printing or the previous one, though. I remember reading it before, but it may be from when I read this comic book originally in the 90s or when I read it in (I think) WW3. Aren’t I a bundle of knowledge today! Hm… comics.org seems to imply that it was added for this printing.

The travel stories are very exotic. Here they are in Tanzania.

Here we see Donald Trump building a wall across Manhattan to keep the poor out. This seems eerily prescient.

I’ve always wondered how Kuper achieved this stencil look. Is he somehow using an airbrush to get the effect? Perhaps I should do some research!

*time passes*

Oh, apparently he spray-paints over stencils… I guess you get that shaded effect by slightly lifting the stencil. Or something.

Speaking of stencils… My, that’s a handsome spread.

He continues to offer the occasional critique of the older stories throughout the series, but I think the last couple of issues are mostly original work.

From “What’s Bad About Men” where he illustrates some reflections on men by some women.

So true.

Finally, we have the Wild Life series, which only lasted two issues before being cancelled. The stories in the second issues have the text “to be continued” underneath the final panels, but I don’t think they ever were.

Anyway, the stories are autobiographical, and are all about sex and drugs and growing up. While interesting and phenomenally drawn, they seem perhaps a bit slight in comparison to the material in Bleeding Heart. Bleeding Heart really worked as a comic book: The mix of stories (some angry, some political, some very personal, some funny) felt well thought out and makes for compelling reads. Wild Life is a bit more one note, but doesn’t really offer increased depth in exchange for the loss of variety.

I think.

Peter Kuper is still active today, and has published quite a few amazing books over the years.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

Har Har Comics #1-2 by Mike Kazaleh.

After Captain Jack was cancelled, Fantagraphics gave Kazaleh another go with this very short-lived series: One issue in 1990, and another in 1992. (The indicia in the latter issue lists it as being published “bi-annually”, which I guess is right in some jurisdictions.)

The two issues mostly consist of short gag pieces, but there are also some longer stories, like this one about anthropomorphic pets. It’s consistently amusing, and sometimes quite funny.

But the main charm of it all is Kazaleh’s irresistible cartooning. It’s just so lively and perfect. I’ll read anything he does just because I want to look at these drawings.

Some of the stories are touching, too, like this one about Hyper Al’s birthday.

On the other hand, not all the gags really fire on all cylinders. But that’s fine.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

Fission Chicken #1-4 by JP Morgan and Kyle Rothweiler.

Fission Chicken ran in Critters for most of that magazine’s run. I think I mentioned in that blog article that I wasn’t much fond of Fission Chicken when I read it in Critters as a teenager, so I didn’t buy this series when it came out. But re-reading those Critters issues now made me realise just how funny this stuff is, so I’ve now bought the Fission Chicken solo run.

And it’s super-silly and thoroughly amusing.

If this type of thing isn’t your type of thing, then it’s not your type of thing. But it is mine, and I laughed quite a few times while reading this series. It doesn’t really develop much during its very short run, but it’s consistently amusing (when it isn’t hilarious). Morgan found his voice during the Critters run, and he’s going with it.

The backup feature in the series is Duck “Bill” Platypus by Kyle Rothweiler. His drawing has a nice organic thing going on, and his storylines consist of piling insanity upon stupidity until the whole thing resolves itself in the end. It’s a bit exhausting to read, but if you’re in the mood, it works.

Fission Chicken gives a critique of the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels. And there’s nothing organic about Morgan’s artwork.

And after four short issues it’s over (due to bad sales). Too bad there wasn’t a market for this kind of humour back in the early 90s.

Fantagraphics indicia is almost never humorous, but this has some wry touches.

Hey! Let’s say that’s a reference to Tuxedomoon, and here’s the song where that lyric is from:

Morgan continued publishing Fission Chicken sporadically during the 90s via Shanda and Mu. After that, Fission Chicken was published online until 2010 when Morgan died. No collected edition seem to have been published.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

Grootlore #1-2
Grootlore volume 2 #1-3

By Peter Gullerud.

I’ve always known that Kim Thompson was the one of the two Fantagraphics owners who’s into anthropomorphics, but I wasn’t aware that it was so clear-cut: Anything funny-animal (Critters) or European(ish) (Sinner) is edited by Kim Thompson, and anything sci-fi-ish (Threat) or art (Flash Marks) is edited by Gary Groth.

Since this book is edited by Thompson, and the author isn’t European (despite the name), it’s anthropomorphic.

The first Grootlore series opens with a two-pager that explain the origins of the series (that Gullerud is an animator who’s doing this to relax).

The first series consists of strips (printed sideways) in a very traditional one-joke-per-strip format. The humour is a bit sitcom-ish. If you found those two jokes funny, there’s 37 more pages of it in this two-issue mini-series.

The second series is in a traditional comic book format, and is not joke-driven. Instead it’s about our heroes trying to save a rain forest from being destroyed.

Lots of oddly shaped panels with strangely big speech balloons with strangely large lettering.

There’s also a lack of differentiation visually between … well, anything. At a glance it’s often difficult to pick out the characters from the background, and everything seems to have the same greyness level. Even the text can be hard to pick out at times. My eyes were skidding around on the pages a lot.

Gullerud doesn’t seem to have published many comics after this, but is still an active artist.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.