Random Thoughts

Angry Youth Comix #1-14 by Johnny Ryan.

I guess Ryan works in the gross-out humour comics tradition exemplified by people like Sam Henderson, but he’s most similar to Ivan Brunetti in his most deranged moods. Or perhaps there’s a Mike Diana influence going on here, although I think Ryan probably doesn’t really mean it the same way Diana (or Brunetti) does.

So we have a lot of outrageous violence (and sex), and plotlines that usually aren’t very… developed.

Ryan works hard at trying to be as offensive as possible, but it’s the kind where you can just picture him tittering behind the drawing board, so it’s neither that shocking or that funny. In my opinion.

In the early issues Ryan has some stories that have semi-coherent plots (like this one where Loady must get a job, so he transforms Sinus’s pets into mutant hookers (yes, that’s a semi-coherent plot)). There’s almost a sitcom like pacing to these stories.

And then there’s the one-line gags, which mostly consists of some gross absurdity. I think the point may be to be really unfunny, and then that makes it funny? It’s OK.

The most frequent target for Ryan’s fake ire is other cartoonists: I think there’s like five or six pieces in this run about how awful serious comics are. Which is fair.

I can really get behind Ryan’s hatred of stand-up comics. Or perhaps it’s just Loady’s.

Next after other comics, the most frequently recurring subject is racism.

Well, race-based jokes.

Loady’s origin is revealed.

Those are good concentration camp jokes.

For some reason or other, I stopped buying Angry Youth Comix after issue three. I picked up #7-13 easily enough this autumn, but I was completely unable to find the rest at any price. Then I had a look at Comixology (boo hiss Amazon) and all the issues were there, so I cheated and got those instead.

It’s very easy to pick up copies of comics published in the 80s and 90s, but it’s very difficult to find newer alternative comics. I guess the print runs are tiny.  You snooze you lose.

But that’s a good disclaimer up there.

The Comixology issues seem to be complete: Even the letters pages are included.

Ryan gives his perspective on working on comics.

And the ever-popular holocaust skits. (That’s Hipster Hitler, or Hipler for short.)

I’m not sure Panter is right here: Just because somebody works at their artwork doesn’t necessarily mean that they aren’t just having nihilist fun. I think.

On the other hand, there’s this story done in a completely different, 70s underground style. I didn’t think it was by Ryan first, but I couldn’t find any other name attached to the piece, so perhaps it is?

Ryan loves poking fun at Seth and the rest of the Drawn & Quarterly gang.

But that’s a Charles Burns parody (of Black Hole fame). It’s well-observed.

I think this summary of Blankets (by Craig Thompson) is way too kind, myself.

Ah, the letters pages. Half of them are about how great and outrageous Ryan is, and one third is like this. It’s a good guess.

While I’m rather on the fence about whether these comics are “good”, I think that’s the best speech balloon ever.

I may also be more than a bit burnt out by this stupid blog series. Not too many to go now… Just a few more…

Anyway, by this point all the longer stories in the series seem like improvised goofs. “Plot” morph into “plot” aimlessly, and sometimes circle back, but mostly just weave and bob.

The tenth issue is 48 pages of gags like this. Very Sam Hendersonesque.

Noooo!!!

That’s a really weak defence. The old smug “How come you’re discussing offensive comic books when there are children dying in Darfur?” gambit. It’s a moronic line to take, and may give us an indication of Ryan’s level of thoughtfulness about the entire project.

Angry Youth Comix was cancelled after issue fourteen, but a collected hardback edition was published last year. Ryan has continued to publish, and his most well-known series of books is probably the Prison Pit books, which is more violence and less jokes, if I remember correctly. I’ve only read the first book.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

Omaha the Cat Dancer #1-20, vol 2 #1-4 by Reed Waller and Kate Worley.

Reed Waller started Omaha in the mid-70s, and the earliest instalments were published in underground anthologies like Snarf and Bizarre Sex by Kitchen Sink.

It’s an anthropomorphic tale of sex, politics and corruption that focuses on Chuck Katt (real name Tabey (yes, feel free to groan at the surnames)) and the titular Omaha, who’s a stripper.

While there’s a lot of sex in the first issues, it’s not that major a part of the page count. It’s well-integrated. But…

… it’s integrated into a story that doesn’t really make that much sense. In the scene above, that evil beaky guy up there has arranged to spike the drinks of all the politicians at the opening of an underground bar (literally: it’s in a basement) so that an orgy starts so that he can… er… something… and then there’s an assassin that’s going to shoot Katt I mean Tabey but misses and shoots etc etc etc.

The artwork starts off charming and rapidly becomes more than that. Well, rapidly for a reader: Waller isn’t very prolific, and while there’s a constant refrain of “we’re going to be bi-monthly now” during the entire run, I think there’s on average one issue per year. With some multi-year gaps.

Waller has a very appealing art style. While everybody has strange animal heads, they’re extremely expressive and cute. I also love the way he draws a white outline outside the black outlines when there’s a black background (which happens a lot). Everything looks slightly embossed.

The first two “proper” issues were published by Steeldragon Press, but Kitchen Sink took over with issue three (and reprinted the first issues). With the second issue, Kate Worley was brought aboard as the writer, which would continue until the end of Omaha.

Plot-wise, there’s a lot of the stuff like the above: Omaha made her escape to San Francisco, and happened to walk past the restaurant of nephew of the owner of the restaurant above the underground night-club, and he recognised her and pulled her back into the plot.

*phew*

I like funny animals, but funny animal fans *really* like funny animals. Does it make sense to advertise for a children’s funny animal title on the back of a very not-allowed-for-children-at-all funny animal title? I guess so.

Like I said above there, Waller’s characters are extremely expressive.

There’s a lot of firebombing in Omaha: It seems like the go-to tactic for the evil conservatives.

Waller explains his approach to anthropomorphism: He doesn’t really take it that seriously. These are just people who are drawn with animal heads and tails, and the animal chosen may be a shorthand for a personality trait of that character. But it’s not more nerdy than that.

Wow. Bizarre Sex 9 (which was an all-Omaha issue) had sold 50K copies. That’s pretty respectable, and there were probably further reprintings later. It was eventually republished as Omaha #0 a few years later, but I don’t have a copy of that…

Heh. All the characters have only four fingers (which is a funny animal trope since the 1920s, at least), but here he says “four stars” and holds up only three fingers. Waller sticks to his “these are really people no matter how I draw them” philosophy.

The inside front cover of each issue has a recap of the preceding issue. At first I thought this was rather odd: Wouldn’t it make more sense to give a proper recap of the entire plot to bring new readers up to speed? But instead this really is more for faithful readers that may need a slight nudge to be reminded what has been going on.

I remember that, at the time, I did read those pages, but they didn’t really help that much. I had forgotten most everything that had happened, and who all these characters were. Omaha has a cast of more than a dozen characters, and there are several parallel soap opera plot-lines going on. Reading it back then (in the late 80s) as the issues trickled in, I found myself pleasantly confused most of the time, and that led me to believe that Omaha had a quite complex narrative structure.

But re-reading it now (for the first time ever, I think), it’s all very, very straight-forward: Omaha is all text, no subtext. The storytelling is clear as Vodka Lemon. Which is a bit disappointing.

I loved this book at the time, but my main feeling while rereading it is lethargy.

In issue 12 they start running short backup features. This one, by Ken Fletcher, is typical.

A recurring theme on the letters page is that people think there isn’t enough sex in Omaha now, and that it’s probably all Worley’s fault. But this letter writer mentions Yummy Fur as something that compares positively to Omaha in that department. Which is… er… Hm.

There was quite a lot of merchandising around Omaha after a while. Prints, t-shirts, and a porcelain statue. Most 3D versions of characters designed for the comics page often look grotesque, but that’s not that bad, is it?

Hm.

The best backup feature is this one by Howard Cruse. It’s just a reprint of four strips that were created after the recently published collection, so it probably made sense to just chuck them in here. But they’re really funny. Hm… Has there ever been a really complete complete Wendel collection? I’ve got like four, but none of them included these strips… Yes! There’s a “The Complete Wendel” from 2011! Into the cart you go!

Another recurring theme on the letters page is reports of obscenity cases against various comics shops in the US for carrying Omaha (and other comics). They’re mostly pretty tragic (people lost their shops etc etc), but this one is funny, and it’s from New Zealand. The Tribunal read Omaha and found that “the artwork and writings are of an extremely high standard”, and that it isn’t obscene, and didn’t put any age rating on it.

That’s the way to do it.

The plot in the final Kitchen issues of Omaha is such a bummer. While Omaha usually trundles along on a pretty placid place and nothing really horrible happens, the way things turn out during the last issues is rather distressing.

The final issue inexplicably switches to white paper (the rest are on newsprint), and Waller’s artwork becomes rather sketchy at the same time. Both Waller and Worley suffered through major health problems during this time, which may explain the depressing atmosphere.

Finally we’ve arrived at the subject of this blog series! Fantagraphics! We revert back to newsprint and the page count is lowered to 24, but the storylines continue from the first volume without a hitch.

Oh, yeah, there’s a lot of different plotlines that proceed at a glacial pace. Sorry, that’s slandering glaciers.

Omaha is mostly taken up by pages like this where people are talking relationship stuff. That doesn’t leave much room to have any progress among the various plot strands (there’s a murder, there’s a demonstration to keep a block from being redeveloped, there’s missing parents and husbands, and…) and it’s kinda… boring. Yeah. I said it. The last 15 issues of Omaha are boring.

Here’s the explanation for why Waller and Worley changed publishers. Kitchen Sink had “bought” Tundra (or the other way around — has this manoeuvre ever been properly explained?), and Omaha was no longer a good fit. I think that sounds rather odd, because Tundra would have been a pretty good fit for Omaha, I think? Or did they have a “no erect penises” policy? I don’t know.

Waller’s artwork during these last four issues is very nice, and the storylines seemed to perhaps get a bit more development, and sales must have been nice… so why was this the last issue?

Oh! Googling a bit seems to indicate that Waller and Worley broke up and refused to work together. There was a reconciliation a decade later, and they published a few more issues before Worley died. After this, Worley’s widower continued to write the series from Worley’s notes. NBM published the conclusion to the saga in 2013. I have not read any of this newer material and I’m not sure I feel motivated to do so, either.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

Grit Bath #1-3 by Renée French.

Renée French always felt to me like a part of a mini-movement within alternative comics that upped the body horror stakes beyond what was, perhaps, reasonable. I’m thinking of artists like Al Colombia and Dave Cooper, that all mix childish whimsy with horrible, horrible squishy horror. They’re all sort of children of Jim Woodring, perhaps, but off the curb.

French uses this elaborate pointillist drawing technique with a shifting, restless camera. Things are often askew and weird. And somehow the humour makes it even more creepy.

French appeared in most of the major anthologies in the 90s, and usually provided the most shocking piece in anything she appeared in. Grit Bath, though, takes things to another, unhinged level.

Since this is a family oriented blog (I’m not saying what family, though), I’m not including examples of the really, er, offensive stuff, but the main serial in these three issues involves a lot of bitten-off body parts and attempts to sow them back together again.

It’s not all over-the-top gruesome stuff, though. Isn’t this touching?

I’ve read most of her books, and they’re all pretty disturbing.

The mixture of children/sex/horror/humour stuff in Grit Bath, though, is icky on a level that I’m not comfortable with now, at least. I don’t remember being this repulsed when I read her work back then, but, on the other hand, I bought the first two issues just now (and fortunately Borderlinx didn’t inspect the comics closely (although weirdly it took two months for DHL to get the comics to me, while the rest of the batch arrived in two days))… I found myself skimming the narration in the first story, because it just seemed to gruesome to my oh-so-sensitive sensibilities.

The readers react in issue two.

The third issue, which I did have back then, seems to pull way, way back from the extremity of the first two issues. Sure, it’s still gruesome, but it’s also kind of sweet, and is more like I remember French’ comics being. Reading these three issues now, it almost feels like the first two issues are a dare: How far can she take this approach to comics?

The third issue is much milder, and includes some other artists, too. We see Gene Fama above with a pretty inconsequential gag. The third issue feels a bit like a grab bag of bits…

And then we end the issue with the classic Fantagraphics way of saying that the book is cancelled: By having the phrases “next issue” and “to be continued” scattered around.

French continues to publish comics, and the most recent one was Baby Bjornstrand, which I haven’t read. But I’ve ordered it now. She has shifted to a softer all-pencil art style now.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

Swamp Preacher #1 by David Sandlin.

Sandlin is an artist who’s only done a handful of comics, I think. He’s had a few pieces in Blab, I seem to recall.

This magazine sized book is strikingly printed in burgundy and green (and no black ink), giving the pages a muddy, swampy look very apposite for the story.

Which is basically a preacher/salesman ranting away, telling his life story. Sandlin mostly illustrates his outlandish story as he is telling it, but there’s these smaller, saner panels scattered around that hints at a less incredible upbringing. It’s a simple trick, but the effect is really unnerving here, somehow.

Googling Sandlin a bit now, I see that he was born in Ireland, but his parents moved to Alabama when he was a child. That is, perhaps, reflected in this book…

I don’t know whether Sandlin planned on making any further issues of Swamp Preacher, but he seems to be saying so here. Of course, that could be Sandlin just having a laugh.

Sandlin won a Guggenheim a couple of years ago, and is still doing artwork today, but he seems to have stopped publishing comics.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.