By Matt Furie (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-68396-370-7 (HB)
Matt Furie was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1979. After studying at Wesleyan University, he became an artist for pay, creating characters, strips (that eventually became the 2016 graphic novel Boys Club) and children’s book The Night Riders.
Boys Club inadvertently made him a figure of global controversy after one of his characters became a universal meme and was appropriated against his wishes by some very nasty people. If you need to know more you can search for Pepe the Frog online or watch the 2020 documentary Feels Good Man. I’m pretty sure Furie has had enough of the entire affair, so let’s move on.
What we have in plush hardback Mindviscosity is a collection of designs, studies and full, multi-character paintings of incredible monsters, beasts and unnatural wonders displaying fantastic imagination along the lines of Dr. Seuss and Basil Wolverton, rendered in a variety of styles and media: a joyous bestiary of happy horrors, celebrating otherness in a garish parade of surreal collations. Be warned though, there’s so much that kids will love here, but some of the situations are rather mature in content so either police this material or be prepared to answer some tricky comments on the birds and the beasts and where monsters come from…
Quirkily inclusive, brashly optimistic and preceded by appreciative Foreword ‘Matt’s World’ from John Lee of PFFR, this is a superb showcase of Furie’s painterly skills and narrative gifts making him in so many ways this generation’s Bosch or Bruegel. Here, truly, every picture tells a story…
© 2020 Matt Furie. Matt’s World © 2020 John Lee. This edition © 2020 Fantagraphics Books Inc. All rights reserved.