Random Thoughts

The Librarian by Penny Moran Van Horn.

Is that Steve Jobs?

Penny Moran Van Horn had earlier published short pieces in Weirdo and Twisted Sisters, but this was her first (and only, I think) solo publication (except the Recipe for Disaster and Other Stories compilation published later).

The story is about a slum lord librarian who is cursed (by voodoo) and then re-educated. Very odd.

The artwork is in Penny Moran Van Horn’s usual scratchboard style, but with typeset text floating around. I’m not quite sure that the juxtaposition of the very formal-looking text and the images here work as well as they should.

It’s frequently very fetching, like here, but some of the pages (like the one above this one above here (err)) seem slightly disjointed. But pleasurable to look at, nonetheless. I seem to recall her shorter stories from Twisted Sisters being very strong.

Her last published work was in 1998.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

Doofer: Pathway to McEarth by Paul Ollswang, Taft Chatham and James Carpenter.

This magazine reprints a few of the Ollswang pieces from Graphic Story Monthly and Prime Cuts, the two earliest “general” Fantagraphics anthologies. In addition, there’s a framing story of sorts…

… because this magazine was meant as an introduction to a graphic novel to be published later, called “McEarth”. To the best of my knowledge it was never published, which is a shame, because there’s so much here to enjoy.

The humour is rather gentle and relies on very silly word play a lot of the time, like here with The Statue of Limitations. (We later learn of an alien who is “The Flying Saucier: Gastro-Gnome”.) If things like that make you groan in feigned pain, this might not be the book for you.

I just think there’s something rather irresistible about this kinda hippyish, laid-back humour coupled with the 1920-ish cartooning. It rather reminds me of Krazy Kat in many ways: The slight vagueness and the way things flow instead of happen.

If only we’d heeded this warning! Google!

Sadly, Ollswang died in 1996. Somebody should get their act together and publish a retrospective.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

Crucial Fiction by Julian Lawrence and Mark Yuill.

Despite the name, I thought that perhaps this was an autobio series, just based on the intensity of the start of the first issue.

That certainly looks and reads like a confessional religious outsider autobiographical piece, but since it ends with the protagonist building a new Christ from communion wafers and wine, it probably isn’t.

The religious themes continue in the second issue, where we are witnessing a  retelling of the story of Pope Joan, the only female pope (in the 700s).

So now they have a stricter pope admission process in place. I have no idea whether either of these things are true, and I don’t care enough to google it, but it’s a more successful story than the first issue.

The short backup story is kinda amusing. She’s been given orders on how to sabotage society, or something.

And finally we have the story of the quack J. R. Brinkley who was transplanting goat glands into people in the 1920s. And that story is apparently true.

Tsk. Not fiction! You can’t trust anybody these days…

Lawrence and Yuill do not seem to have published a lot after Crucial Fiction was cancelled with the third issue.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

Butt Biscuit by Dean Williams and Ted Couldron.

What a thoroughly unpleasant comic book. The plot is about a kid with Down’s who’s kidnapped by a producer of speciality porn. I guess the idea is to be as offensive as possible, and then it’ll automatically be funny?

So it’s a papery version of 4chan.

The artwork isn’t very exciting, either.

The occasional “experimental” page would have helped a bit… if only they had been any good.

After the series was cancelled (no big surprise: The question is why is was published in the first place (it’s edited by Robert Boyd and not by Thompson or Groth, so perhaps they just didn’t know? (or had all sense of taste blunted by a few years of publishing Eros Comix?))) one further issue was published by Malpractice Graphix.

Neither the writer nor the artist seem to have published much after that.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

Test Dirt #1 by Tony Fitzgerald.

As we get to the 90s, my “collection” of Fantagraphics comics grows spottier. I bought all the major long running comic books at the time, but the less known stuff passed me by: I was a poor student. And had to pay attention to other things. Like getting started rewriting Gnus.  I mean studying!  Nothing but studying, you hear, kind, benevolent student loans people.

So over the summer, I’ve been buying a lot of the stuff I missed, and this is one of those comics.

It’s created by someone completely unknown to me, Tony Fitzgerald, and as I started reading this, I was rather unimpressed by the artwork, which seems rather basic.

But then! The insanity! The silliness! The stupidity! It’s overwhelming!

I haven’t laughed this much at a comic book for quite a while. This brand of incessant deranged silliness is just up my alley, and I was rolling around on the couch at the end here.

Too bad there was only one issue, and I’m unable to google something up on Tony Fitzgerald (unless he’s an Australian judge now), so this was perhaps his only published book?

Boo, hiss.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.