Category: Adult/Erotica

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Richard Corben Complete Works volume 2: Underground


By Richard Corben and various (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 978-0-87416-026-X

Although never a regular contributor to the comicbook mainstream, animator, illustrator, publisher and cartoonist Richard Corben is one of America’s greatest living proponents of sequential narrative: an astoundingly accomplished artist and unique, uncompromising auteur with an unmistakable style and vision.

Corben flowered in the independent counterculture commix of the 1960s and 1970s to become a globally revered, multi-award winning creator. He is most renowned for his mastery of the airbrush and his delight in sardonic, darkly comedic horror, fantasy and science fiction tales.

Born in Anderson, Missouri in 1940, he graduated with a Fine Arts degree in 1965 from the Kansas City Art Institute and began working as an animator. At that time, the Underground movement was just stating to revolutionise, reinvigorate and liberate the medium of comics as a motley crew of independent-minded creators across the continent began making and publishing stories that appealed to their rebellious, pharmacologically-enhanced sensibilities and unconventional lifestyles.

Most of them had been reared on and hugely influenced by 1950s EC Comics or Carl Barks’ Duck tales – and usually both.

Corben started the same way, producing the kind of stories that he would like to read, in as variety of small-press publications including Grim Wit, Slow Death, Skull, Fever Dreams and his own Fantagor often signed with his affectionate pseudonym “Gore”. As his style matured and his skills developed Corben’s work increasingly began to appear in more professionally produced venues. He began working for Warren Publishing in 1970 with tales in Eerie, Creepy, Vampirella, Comix International and latterly, the aggressively audacious adult science fiction anthology 1984. He also famously re-coloured a number of reprinted Spirit strips for the revival of Will Eisner’s the Spirit magazine.

In 1975 Corben submitted work to the French fantasy phenomenon Métal Hurlant and subsequently became a fixture in the magazine’s American iteration Heavy Metal after which his career really took off. Soon he was producing stunning graphic escapades for a number of companies, making animated movies, painting film posters and producing record covers such as the multi-million-selling Meatloaf album Bat Out of Hell. He never stopped making comics but preferred his own independent projects with collaborators such as Harlan Ellison, Bruce Jones and Jan Strnad.

This regrettably out-of-print collection is the second of three collecting his early strip efforts, mostly taken from Fantagor, offering a unique insight into his burgeoning mastery and displaying more powerful, wickedly whimsical and sardonic suspense tales in the EC vein. The first few are in black and white beginning with ‘Inna Pit’ a post apocalyptic comi-tragedy followed by an anti-capitalist eco-fable entitled ‘Dumb Story’

‘Razar the Unhero’ (written by “Starr Armitage” in 1970) is a dark and sexily violent spoof of Sword and Sorcery epics with a deprecating edge whilst Herb Arnold signed his real name to his script for ‘Chard’: a far more straightforward barbarian adventure saga. ‘The Story of Otog’, based on an ancient Japanese folk tale and adapted by Corben and Harvey Sea, is an impressive and moving early taste of more ambitious things to come…

Obnoxious, smug Razar was far too enjoyable a character to abandon and he returned in all his mendacious glory in ‘Necromancer’, a far less jolly romp and the last monochrome tale contained here whereas the Jan Strnad penned ‘To Spear a Fair Maiden’ returned to outrageous tomfoolery, bloody violence and Frat-Boy crassness as the itinerant warrior was hired by a desperate father to save the world by deflowering his daughter before a wizard can turn her valuable virginity into a deadly spell. Of course things do not go as planned…

‘The Secret of Zokma’ is a truly grim and horrific tale of exploration and contamination balanced by the grotesque and hilarious parable of backwoods infidelity ‘Lame Lem’s Love’ and this volume concludes with ‘The Temple’ – a whimsical and vituperative reinterpretation of the Garden of Eden myth with a sting in the tail…

Corben’s infamous signature-stylisation always includes oodles of nudity, extreme and graphic violence and impossibly proportioned male and female physiques, and there’s plenty of all included here. His groundbreaking work reshaped our art-form and the fact that so much of his canon is currently unavailable in English is a crime. Not only are these early works long overdue for a definitive re-issue but all his rude, riotous, raucously ribald revels need to be re-released now…
© 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1986 Richard Corben. © 1986 Catalan Communications. All rights reserved.

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Richard Corben Complete Works volume 1: Underground


By Richard Corben and various (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 978-0-87416-018-5

Although he has only infrequently strayed into the comicbook mainstream, animator, illustrator, publisher and cartoonist Richard Corben is one of America’s greatest living proponents of sequential narrative: a stunningly accomplished artist and unique, uncompromising stylist who grew out of the independent counterculture commix of the 1960s and 1970s to become a globally revered, multi-award winning creator.

He is best known for his mastery of the airbrush and delight in sardonic, darkly comedic horror and science fiction tales.

Born in Anderson, Missouri in 1940, he graduated from the Kansas City Art Institute with a Fine Arts degree in 1965 and found work as an animator. At that time, the Underground Commix revolution was just beginning as a motley crew of independent-minded creators across the continent began making and publishing stories that appealed to their rebellious, pharmacologically-enhanced sensibilities and unconventional lifestyles. Most of them were hugely influenced either by 1950s tales from EC Comics or Carl Barks’ Duck tales – and occasionally both.

Corben started the same way, producing the kind of stories that he would like to read, in as variety of small-press publications including Grim Wit, Slow Death, Skull, Fever Dreams and his own Fantagor often signed with his affectionate pseudonym “Gore”. As his style matured and his skills developed Corben’s work increasingly began to appear in more professionally produced venues. He began working for Warren Publishing in 1970 with tales in Eerie, Creepy, Vampirella, Comix International and laterally, the aggressively audacious adult science fiction anthology 1984. He also famously re-coloured a number of reprinted Spirit strips for the revival of Will Eisner’s the Spirit magazine.

In 1975 Corben submitted work to the French phenomenon Métal Hurlant and subsequently became a fixture in the magazine’s American iteration Heavy Metal where his career really took off. Soon he was producing stunning adult fantasy tales for a number of companies, making animated movies, painting film posters and producing record covers such as the multi-million-selling Meatloaf album Bat Out of Hell. He never stopped producing comics but always stuck to his own independent projects with collaborators such as Harlan Ellison, Bruce Jones and Jan Strnad.

This regrettably out-of-print collection of those early strip efforts, translated from a European edition by Jim Lisle, features a rather inaccurate introduction by Luis Vigil but boasts a dynamic collection of raw, powerful and wickedly sardonic and whimsical suspense tales in the EC vein that graphically display the artist’s rapid, radical creative development beginning with ‘Heirs of Earth’ (1971), a post-apocalyptic tale of love and cannibalism.

Corben’s infamous signature-stylisation includes lots of nudity, graphic violence and near grotesquely proportioned male and female physiques, none of which are apparent in the tantalisingly low-key spoof ‘Alice in Wanderlust’; an early skit by long-term co-creator Jan Strnad, after which ‘Horrible Harveys House’ (1971) tells an intriguing tale of young lust when film student Jarvis talks his stacked and rather easy girlfriend Zara into visiting an abandoned house to make an “art-movie”. Turns out the place isn’t completely empty after all…

From 1970, ‘Twilight of the Dogs’ is a classic sting-in-the-tale saga as Earth’s last surviving free men uncover some rather unfortunate facts about the aliens who conquered them whilst ‘Gastric Fortitude’ displays another side of love. ‘The Dweller in the Dark’ (from a story by Herb Arnold) is an early exploration of Corben’s fascination with and facility for depicting lost civilisations, wherein rain-forest dwellers Bo Glan and Nipta break taboo to explore a dead city only to fall foul of rapacious, invading white men and ancient things far worse…

All the previous yarns were reproduced in black and white: ranging from pen-line to airbrushed monochrome tones but worlds-within-worlds alien romance ‘Cidopey’ reveals its tragic twist in full colour, as does ‘For the Love of a Daemon’ which shows inklings of the artist’s later airbrush expertise in a boisterous black comedy of Barbarians and hot naked babes in distress.

Jan Strnad also wrote the dark dystopian ‘Kittens for Christian’, a moody post-cataclysm thriller with chilling echoes of Corben’s later graphic novel Vic and Blood (an adaptation and extension of Harlan Ellison’s “A Boy and his Dog”) before this volume concludes on a light and colourful note in the artist’s 1973 collaboration with Doug Moench: ‘Damsel in Dragon Dress’: a gleeful witches brew of fantasy, fairytale foible – a saucy cautionary tale on the unexpected dangers of drug abuse…

Richard Corben is a groundbreaking and rightfully renowned figure in our art-form and the fact that so much of his work is currently unavailable in English is a disgrace. Not only are his early works long overdue for a definitive re-issue but all his rude, riotous, raucously ribald revels need to be re-released now. Until that time stay tuned…
© 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1985 Richard Corben. © 1985 Catalan Communications. All rights reserved.

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King of the Flies Volume 2: The Origin of the World


By Mezzo & Pirrus, translated by Helge Dascher with Dag Dascher & Kim Thompson (Fantagraphics)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-390-3

Scary stories are everywhere, even in the most ordinary of suburban paradises: when DC Comics started calling Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing stories “Sophisticated Suspense” in the 1980s, to differentiate them from the formulaic “Set ’em up and then go Boo!” traditions of the horror comics medium, this kind of subtle, disorienting, creeping disturbia is exactly what they were aspiring to. Cleverly constructed, laconically laid out in the classic nine-panel-grid picture structure and rendered in comfortingly mundane style a la Charles Burns, King of the Flies is a landmark in metafictional mystery tales.

In volume 1, noted crime comics creators Pascal (Mezzo) Mesenburg and Michel Pirus introduced readers to the community of Hallorave and the eponymous Eric, a very troubled young man with a predilection for donning a gigantic Fly mask. A budding sociopath, the lad is into drugs, sex (consenting and otherwise), booze, introspection and instant gratification… but in that he’s not much different from the other residents of this little slice of Heaven. He also sees dead people occasionally – and again, he’s not the only one.

The book unfolded in seemingly unconnected vignettes narrated in the first person by a broad cast of unhappy campers and this second volume of three continues the tradition, but with the disparate threads increasingly overlapping and interlocking: the inevitable denouement seemingly inescapable and darkly bloody…

‘The Origin of the Species’ opens with Eric idly daydreaming of killing his mom’s new man Francis before heading out for Marie’s place. She isn’t Eric’s girlfriend really but she is sweet and easy and despises her parents too. Things kick off when gangster reprobate Ringo shows up and tells them to look after a bag he’s carrying.

Eric is cool but Marie takes a peek, finding bundles of cash and a bowling pin inside. Later that day Eric saves an old guy from drowning because he fancied the geezers young girlfriend Karine: once again his uncontrolled desires are screwing up his life…

‘Departures/Arrivals’ follows Karine, showing her dysfunctional relationship with her bitch of a mother and how her aged lover Becker dies of a heart attack in an airport. Karine is pregnant and Eric sees opportunity…

In ‘Come Back’ we see that Damien has no luck. Not only is he killed by a genuinely remorseful drunk driver, but his last mortal sight is the three thugs who chased him to his demise and his girl screwing his best friend Eric. He’s far more mellow as a ghost though, pitying his killer and hanging out with Becker, just as dead but far less sanguine about Eric, who’s now moved on to Karine… Damien’s ex-girl Sal was always wild and she too is making use of Eric’s hound-dog ways…

‘Flesh Safari’ returns the spotlight to Eric. His stepdad is wise to him but Marie’s father still trusts him to look after his little girl. When the youngsters go to a rich kid’s party at Coralie’s place, Fly boy is set up and humiliated, but does meet a new friend in the outcast intellectual David, before spitefully punishing Marie by sleeping with his host’s mother…

‘Maternal Damage’ shows the turmoil afflicting Marie’s mother and just how close to the breaking point she is, whilst ‘Superhero’ follows Eric as Sal leads him into trouble and somebody administers a particularly efficient punishment beating. Moreover, even though Eric has done with Marie he can’t bear her seeing a new guy and inflicts some rough injustice of his own.

We learn some intriguing and unsavoury insights about David in ‘Robin Redux’ before the focus switches to Ringo: a full-throttle psychopath who isn’t happy at all when he asks for his bag back and Eric discovers somebody’s taken it…

Ringo sees ghosts too, but they are no help when his Boss Ramos gets heavy. Eric and Marie are in deep trouble until somebody intercedes from ambush and there’s one more phantom in the cast…

‘Crazy Horse’ finds Eric still haunting Karine until he has a strange and disturbing encounter with Marie’s dad and this intermediate book ends on a foreboding spiritual high note with ‘2,969 Light Years From Earth’ as Damien takes steps to protect his loved ones from an angry spirit and each other. Meanwhile, the bag thief is revealed and the repercussions of all the messed up crap the residents have been inflicting on each other is coming to a head. The doorbell rings…

…And readers will have to wait for the concluding book to discover how this stunning, mesmerising amalgam of Twin Peaks, Desert Palms, Peyton Place, The Omen and Blue Velvet plays out. A stylish and magical portmanteau saga of a community cursed with an excess of human frailty – lust, rage, greed, despair and especially shallow selfishness – this is a story that will surprise, compel, distress and haunt anybody with even half an imagination.

Darkly addictive, casually violent and graphically sexual, King of the Flies is “adults only” and well worth waiting until you’re 18 for…
© 2005 Glenat Editions/Drugstore. This edition © 2010 Fantagraphics Books. All rights reserved.

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Butterscotch (The Flavour of the Invisible)


By Milo Manara, translated by Tom Leighton (Eurotica/NBM) or (Catalan Communications)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-109-4 NBM or 978-0-87416-047-5 Catalan

If the cover images haven’t already clued you in, for some folks the graphic novel under review here will be unacceptably dirty. If that’s you, please stop here and come back tomorrow when there will something you’ll approve of but which will surely offend somebody else.

I’m feeling all grown up and continental today, so here’s a long overdue review of a milder masterpiece by one of the world’s greatest graphic eroticists. Originally translated into English by Catalan in 1987 it was re-released in 2002 under NBM’s Eurotica imprint, but has since languished in that great big limbo-land of the inexplicably Out-of-Print…

Maurilio Manara (born September 12th 1945) is an intellectual, whimsical craftsman with a dazzling array of artistic skills ranging from architecture, product design, painting and of course an elegant, refined, clear-clean line style with pen and ink. He is best known for his wry and always controversial sexually explicit material – although that’s more an indicator of our comics market than any artistic obsession.

He studied painting and architecture before becoming a comic artist in 1969, beginning with the Fumetti Neri series Genius, worked on the magazine Terror and in 1971 began his adult career (see what I did there?) illustrating Francisco Rubino’s Jolanda de Almaviva. In 1975 his first major work, a reworking of the Chinese tales of the Monkey King, was released as Lo Scimmiotto (‘The Ape‘).

By the end of the seventies he was working for Franco-Belgian markets where he is still regarded as an A-list creator. It was while working for Charlie Mensuel, Pilote and L’Écho des savanes that he created his signature series HP and Giuseppe Bergman for A Suivre.

In 1986 he wrote and drew, in his inimitable blend of social satire, bawdy burlesque and saucy slapstick, the incredible tale of the ultimate voyeur’s dream in Il profumo dell’invisibile, translated here as ‘Butterscotch’ …

The star is a rather brilliant and incredibly innocent nerd-physicist who has invented a lotion which can bend light rays around anything smeared with it. He also has an unnerving and utterly sexless fascination with prima ballerina Beatrice D’Altavilla – which is a pity as she is a heartless, sadistic bitch and the biggest slut in creation.

Honey is Beatrice’s extremely liberated, licentious and hot-blooded associate (Beatrice don’t do “friends”) and when she discovers the naked, semi-invisible man in the dancer’s bedroom she feels it her duty to show the innocuous stalker what his dream girl is really like…

Sadly there are none so blind as those who will not see, especially if we can’t see them either, and her various attempts to open his invisible eyes lead to violence and a bizarre sexual co-dependence (what with Beatrice being far too virginal and perfect for that nasty, dirty stuff…)

As Honey perpetually and ever-more frantically attempts to prove the existence of her invisible man – whose cloaking lotion smells powerfully of Butterscotch – her already low position in the ballerina’s entourage plummets and the abuses intensify.

Finally however, as Honey grows increasingly closer to the omnipresent, unseen (but regularly felt) voyeur, she finally shows him Beatrice’s true nature, leading to a tempestuous climax nobody expected and some might not survive…

Couched in Manara’s beautifully rendered, lavish line-work this highly explicit and sexually charged tale casts fascinating light on what people can’t and won’t see around them. Absolutely for adults only, Butterscotch is a captivating exploration of love, obsession and misperception.

Raunchy, funny and extremely hard to find, this is a book desperately worthy of a new edition.
© 1987 Milo Manara. English Language edition © 1987 Catalan Communications. © 2002 NBM. All rights reserved.

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Anarcoma


By Nazario, translated by David H. Rosenthal (Catalan Communications)
No ISBN

Here’s another warning: this book is filled with graphic homosexual acts, full frontal nudity and coarse language: if that causes you any offence don’t buy this book and don’t read this review. The rest of us will manage without you.

You know what it’s like: sometimes you’re just in the mood for something challenging, different or just plain nasty and nothing better sums up that feeling than this startling pastiche of film noir chic transposed into the even grimmer, darker and nastier milieu of the gay-underworld of post-Franco Spain.

Francisco Franco Bahamonde was a right-wing general who ruled the country from 1947 until his death in 1975, “on behalf” of a puppet monarchy helpless to resist him. His repressive Christian-based attitudes held the country in an iron time-lock for decades as the rest of the world moved an around him. Vera Luque Nazario was an intellectual, college professor and cartoonist living under the fascist regime, but inspired by the freedom and exuberant graphic license displayed in American underground commix, especially the works of R. Crumb, Gilbert Shelton and possibly Spain Rodriguez.

In an oppressive state that openly advocated the “curing” of homosexuals, Nazario founded an artist’s collective or “contracultural group” in 1971 to produce home-grown underground commix (El Rollo Enmascarado, Paupérrimus, Catalina, Purita and others) often incurring the wrath of the Francoist censors and police. His work received far fairer treatment outside Spain, appearing in such groundbreaking mature magazines as It, Actuel, Oz, Gai Pied, and L’Echo des Savanes.

When Franco died the country opened up and there was a tumultuous cascade of artistic expression. Extremely strident adult material designed to shock began to appear in new magazines such as El Víbora, Cannibale and Frigidaire. After years of comics production multi-talented artist Nazario eventually moved into design and record cover production. In recent years he has concentrated on painting and his first prose novel was released in 2006.

Anarcoma began as strip in a porn magazine, but that quickly folded and the artist transferred the feature to El Víbora in 1979, reveling in homoerotic excess in a magazine with no censorial boundaries. It ran for years and this hardcover translation is but the first collection of many.

Symbols of freedom never came more outrageously formed that Anarcoma; a spectacularly endowed, star-struck transvestite private detective who hangs all-out in the notorious red-light district of Las Ramblas. A stunning blend of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall “she” works as prostitute and club entertainer while pursuing her dream of becoming a real gumshoe like the ones in the American movies she adores…

Life is complicated: ex-army buddy Humphrey is her current her boyfriend, but he won’t leave his wife and kids and Anarcoma’s hobby has won her no friends among both the cops and the criminal gangs run by the ruthless Captain Seahorse. Moreover there are even weirder and more dangerous folk around…

After a series of profound prose appreciations from Alberto Cardín and Ludolfo Paramio and a thoroughly absorbing cartoon cast-list, the ultra-explicit adventure begins…

The city is in turmoil: Professor Onliyu’s latest invention has been stolen. Nobody knows what it does but everybody wants it and Anarcoma thinks she has a lead…

The trail leads through all the sleaziest dives and dens, and implicates almost everybody at one time or another, but when the manic religious order The Black Count and his Knights of Saint Represent and feminist paramilitaries Metamorphosina and her One-Eyed Piranhas start their own conflicting campaigns for the missing machine, Anarcoma is distracted and almost loses her life to a mysterious sex-robot XM2.

Luckily her charms extend and affect even artificial he-men…

Outrageously brutal and sexually graphic, this devastatingly ironic genre mish-mash is audacious and bizarre, but unflinchingly witty as is probes the role of hero in society and eulogises the heady power of liberation.

Anarcoma was first released in 1980, but even by today’s laxer standards the incredibly violent and satirically, staggeringly baroque pastiche is a shocking, controversial piece of work. Raw, shocking and wickedly delightful; the perfect walk on the wild side for people with open minds and broad tastes.
© 1983 by Nazario. English edition © 1983 Catalan Communications. All Rights Reserved.

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Miss Don’t Touch Me volume 2


By Hubert & Kerascoet, translated by Joe Johnson (NBM)
ISBN:  978-1-56163-592-4

The first volume introduced innocent housemaid Blanche who one night espied a psychopathic murderer in the house next door. Intending to silence the witness “the Butcher of the Dances” mistakenly killed Blanche’s sister Agatha and her employers sacked her to avoid a scandal, throwing the pious innocent onto the streets of fin de siècle Paris. She found refuge and unique employment within the plush corridors of The Pompadour, arguably the city’s most exclusive and lavishly opulent bordello.

Fiercely hanging on to her virginity against all odds Blanche became Miss Don’t Touch Me, a spirited and energetic proponent of the “English Method” – specifically, she became an excessively enthusiastic flagellating dominatrix beating the dickens out of men who delighted in the exquisite pain and exorbitant cost. The first volume ended with Justice for both Blanche and the Butcher…

This delightfully audacious and risqué sequel opens with Blanche, virtue still infamously intact, as the most popular attraction at the Pompadour, which is undergoing an expensive and disruptive refit. However the girl is unhappy with her life and tries to flee, buy and even blackmail herself out of Miss Don’t Touch Me’s contract. She is made brutally aware of how business is really done in the twilight world of the courtesan-for-hire…

Thoroughly trapped, Blanche loses all hope until she becomes slowly enamoured of the Apollo-like young dandy Antoine, one of the wealthiest men in the country and a man apparently content to simply talk with her… At the same time her unscrupulous, conniving mother returns to Paris and begins to avail herself of her daughter’s guilt-fuelled generosity and social contacts…

Blanche’s velvet-gloved imprisonment seems destined to end when her bon vivant boy begins to talk of marriage, but as suddenly her life at the brothel begins to unravel. Obviously the aristocrat’s dowager mother has no stomach for the match, but social humiliation is not the same as the malicious lies, assaults, attacks and even attempted poisoning that Blanche experiences.

Moreover, the genteel dominatrix’s mother seems to hold a hidden secret concerning Antoine’s family and, if they are to be wed, why doesn’t the prospective groom want his bride-to-be to give up her day – or more accurately – evening job?

Originally published in France as Le Prince Charmant and Jusqu’a ce que la Mort Nous Separe this enticing, knowing and hugely enthralling tale follows the inspired murder-mystery of volume 1 with a classic period melodrama of guerilla Class Warfare that promises tragic and shocking consequences, especially once Antoine mysteriously disappears and the apparently benevolent brain surgeon Professor Muniz begins his terrifying work…

A compelling saga full of secrets, this engagingly sophisticated confection from writer/colorist Hubert, illustrated with irrepressible panache by Kerascoet (artistic collaborators Marie Pommepuy and Sébastien Cosset) will further delight the wide variety of grown-up readers who made the first book such a popular and critical success.

© 2008, 2008 Dargaud by Kerascoet & Hubert. All Rights Reserved. English Translation © 2010 NBM.

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Betsy’s Buddies


By Harvey Kurtzman & Sarah Downs (Kitchen Sink Press)
ISBN: 0-87816-029-9

Harvey Kurtzman is probably the most important cartoonist of the last half of the 20th century. His triumphs in the fledgling field of comicbooks (Frontline Combat, Two-Fisted Tales, Mad) would be enough for most creators to lean back on but Kurtzman was an innovator, a commentator and a social explorer who kept on creating, kept on observing and with satire magazines such as the black and white magazine Mad (a highly successful format he invented), further inspirations Trump, Humbug and Help!, all the while still creating challenging and powerfully effective funny strips such as Little Annie Fannie (for Playboy), The Jungle Book, Nutz, Goodman Beaver and the strip on review here. He died far too soon in 1993.

This superb hardcover volume was collected by that much-missed champion of all things grand, esoteric and/or naughty in comics, Denis Kitchen through his Kitchen Sink Press outfit, and collects the racy, revelatory exploits of young Betsy, a fresh, if not so innocent student in the jaded halls of Academia and the Big City, a full-on, dedicated Sexual Revolutionary – at least by her own lights. Through one and two page exploits (all the colour strips were previously printed in Playboy whilst the black and white adventures have no single source or provenance I can find), this feisty femme – in a still mostly man’s world – endeavours to live her life by her own ready-made rules.

She’s got an apartment, a nudist roommate, a horny law-student boyfriend and enough savvy, modern sense not to tell anybody she’s shagging her English Lit Professor. Her classy, sophisticated, raucous riotous, hilariously true-to-life exploits and uniquely female viewpoint come in no small part from Sarah Downs, who was Kurtzman’s associate, assistant and co-writer in the 1980s, and a highly skilled colourist and teacher of cartooning at the School of Visual Arts.

As well as these delightful adult strips they also produced material for Europe together seen in such classy mature vehicles as L’Echo des Savannes and she also appeared in the Marvel Epic all-star anthology Harvey Kurtzman’s Strange Adventures (coming soon to a graphic novel review blog near you…)

Sharp, sassy, wickedly barbed and penetratingly insightful about the differences that draw men and women together Betsy’s Buddies is an utter delight and long overdue for a fresh edition and another close look…
© 1988 Harvey Kurtzman and Sarah Downs. Entire contents © 1988 Kitchen Sink Press. All rights reserved.

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The Last Days of American Crime


By Rick Remender & Greg Tocchini (Radical Books)
ISBN: 978-0-935417-06-4

Win’s Christmas Gift Recommendation: Perfect for thrillseekers needing to get that pulse pounding again…  8/10

If you’re in need of a sobering dose of deeply disturbing hyper-reality then I thoroughly recommend this brilliant, extremely adult, cross-genre thriller which posits a fascinating premise, starts the countdown clock ticking down and delivers a killer kick to finish the rollercoaster ride.

America is a mess and the government need to take drastic action if they want to keep control. Terrorism and crime are rampant but luckily the boffins have come up with a radical solution: the American Peace Initiative – a broadcast frequency that utterly suppresses the ability to knowingly break a law. Any law.

Taking the radical decision to make all lawbreaking impossible (which is the only logical flaw I can find: what politician is ever going to make bribery obsolete?), and fearing a social meltdown in the run-up to going live, the powers-that-be also set up a distraction in the form of a complete switch-over from a cash economy to universal electronic transfers – an unstealable digital currency.

From D-Day on citizens will top up pay-cards from charging machines which are tamper-proof and impossible to hack and from that day every transaction in the USA will be recorded and traceable and every illegal purchase – drugs, guns, illicit sex – impossible…

In the weeks before the big switchover there is a huge exodus for the borders of Canada and Mexico and a total breakdown of law and order in the country’s most degenerate areas, but generally everybody seems resigned to the schemes – even when the anti-lawbreaking API broadcast plan is leaked…

With the world about to change forever low-rent career criminal Graham Bricke spots a chance for the biggest score of his life. He’s working as a security guard in one of the banks that will house the new currency technology and has an unmissable opportunity to steal one of the charging machines before the system is locked down forever. Unfortunately because of the API broadcast he has to pull off the caper before it becomes impossible to even contemplate theft…

In a hurry and needing specialised help Bricke and his silent partner are forced to hire a crew of strangers, but as the days dwindle he realises that safecracker Kevin Cash and hacker Shelby Dupree are trouble: a murderous psychotic and crazed libidinous wild-child with daddy issues. If only he can work out which is which…

Moreover there are other distractions. Graham is being hunted by a manic gangbanger and his posse and there’s a good chance at least one of his team are planning a double-cross…

This is a fascinating idea carried out with dizzying style and astounding panache: smart, sexy, unbelievably violent and utterly compelling, combining all the brooding energy of The Wire, the unremitting tension of 24‘s first season and the off-centre charm of Reservoir Dogs. It has blockbuster movie written all over it – which is no surprise as Remender’s previous efforts include comicbooks, like All-New Atom , X-Men and Punisher, computer games Dead Space and Bulletstorm and the animated feature Titan A.E.

Cannily concocted by Rick Remender and stunningly executed in dazzling colour by Greg Tocchini, this economical paperback also includes an extensive sketch and design section, an interview with the author and a lavish cover gallery which includes variants from Alex Malleev, Jerome Opeña & Matt Wilson and Joel dos Reis Viegas.

Short. Sharp. Shocking. Let’s hope they can do it again…

© 2010 Rick Remender and Radical Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Little Maakies on the Prairie


By Tony Millionaire (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-392-7

Tony Millionaire clearly loves to draw and does it very, very well; referencing classical art, timeless children’s book illustration and an eclectic mix of pioneer comic strip draughtsmen like George McManus, Rudolph Dirks, Cliff Sterrett, Frank Willard, Harold Gray, Elzie Segar and George Herriman seamlessly blending their styles and sensibilities with European engravings masters from the “legitimate” side of the storytelling picture racket.

Born Scott Richardson, he especially cites Johnny (Raggedy Ann and Andy) Gruelle and English illustrator Ernest H. Shepard (The Wind in the Willows, Winnie the Pooh) as definitive formative influences.

With a variety of graphical strings to his bow such as his own coterie of books for children, (particularly the superbly stirring Billy Hazelnuts series), animation and the brilliant Sock Monkey, Millionaire still finds the time to produce a deeply odd weekly strip entitled Maakies which describes the riotously vulgar and absurdly surreal adventures of an Irish monkey called Uncle Gabby and his fellow über-alcoholic and nautical adventurer Drinky Crow. They are abetted but never aided by a peculiarly twisted, off-kilter cast of reprobates, antagonists and confrontational well-wishers.

In the tradition of the earliest US newspaper cartoon features each episode comes with a linked mini-strip running across the base of strip – although often that link is quite hard to ascertain. Nominally based in a nautical setting of 19th century sea-faring adventure, replete with maritime monsters and stunning vistas, the dark-and-bitter comical instalments vary from staggeringly rude and crude through absolutely hysterical to conceptually impenetrable, with content and gags utterly unfettered by the bounds of taste or wholesome fun-squelching decency.

Millionaire even promotes his other creative endeavours in his Maakies pages, brings in selected guest creators to mess with his toys and invites the readership to contribute ideas, pictures and objects of communal interest to the mix This penetratingly incisive, witty and even poignant opus is his playground and if you don’t like it, leave…

Launching in February 1994 in The New York Press the strip is now widely syndicated in US alternative newspapers such as LA Weekly and The Stranger and globally in comics magazines such as Linus and Rocky. There was even an animated series that ran on Time-Warner’s Adult Swim strand.

Since continuity usually plays second fiddle to the avalanche of inventive ideas, the strips can be read in almost any order and the debauched drunkenness, manic ultra-violence in the manner of the best Tom & Jerry or Itchy & Scratchy cartoons, acerbic view of sexuality and deep core of existentialist angst (like Sartre ghostwriting The Office or perhaps The Simpsons) still finds a welcome with Slackers, Laggards, the un-Christian and all those scurrilous, lost Generations after X.

This latest lush landscape hardcover collection provides still more of the wonderful same with such spit-take, drink-coming-out-of-your-nose moments as ‘The Brainy Balls Procedure’, a visit to ‘the Cootie Farm’, the secrets of ‘Booze Vision’, ‘The Universal Moon Genius’. ‘The Neanderthal Super-Genius Society’, ‘Rainbow of Illness’, a sordid selection of ghastly interspecies progeny, assorted single entendres and bodily function faux pas and more mandatory, gory death-scenes.

If you’re the kind of fan who thrives on gorge-rousing gags and mind-bending rumination this is a fantastic and rewarding strip, one of the most constantly creative and entertaining on the market today and this latest collection is one of the very best yet. If you’re not a fan of Maakies this is the ideal chance to become one and if you’re already converted it’s the perfect gift for someone what ain’t…

© 2010 Tony Millionaire. All rights reserved.

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Prison Pit Book Two


By Johnny Ryan (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-1-60699-383-5

Johnny Ryan is a cartoonist with an uncompromising vision and an avowed intention of producing shock and even revulsion whenever he wants to. In Prison Pit he pushed the limits of taste with a brutal, primitive cascade of casual violence that sprung, teeth bared and claws extended, from his apparent obsession with casual violence, social decay and the mythology of masked wrestling, as well as his obvious fascination in the “berserk” manga strips of Kentaro Miura.

That initial volume presented a disturbingly child-like view of a science fictional Hell: an extra-dimensional purgatory where the most violent felons were dumped to live or die by a society that had no place for them. This barren landscape was littered with grotesque monsters, vile organisms and the worst specimens of humanity ever captured by the forces of civilisation. C.F., a masked wrestler, was dumped there and told to fight or die…

What followed was non-stop excessive force and graphic carnage: a never-ending Darwinian struggle which saw the wrestler damaged beyond comprehension, altered by horrors internal and external, but nevertheless still clawing his way to the top of the gory, scatological heap…

Unbelievably Ryan has gone even further in this second volume as the wrestler defeats what he had assumed to be the king of the heap, aided by a biological travesty that then turns on him, before being kidnapped by a robotic Dr. Moreau, who transforms the wrestler’s most intimate man-parts into a weapon of interpersonal destruction and sends him off violate a monster. Typically, nobody here is doing anything for anyone else’s benefit…

Man’s oldest gynophobic horrors and most simplistic delight in sheer physical dominance are savagely delineated in this primitive, appalling, cathartic and blackly funny campaign of cartoon horror. Resplendent, triumphant juvenilia is adroitly shoved beyond all ethical limits into the darkest depths of absurdist comedy. Not for children, the faint-hearted or weak-stomached, this is another non-stop rollercoaster of extreme violence, profanity and cartoon shock and awe at its most visceral and compelling.

And now that we’ve put off the intellectual and moral stuck-up sticky-beaks who just love to whine and complain, I’ll let you into a secret: this book is all-out over the top and flat out hilarious. Buy and see if you’re broad-minded, fundamentally honest and purely in need of ultra-adult silliness…

© 2010 Johnny Ryan. All rights reserved.