Satire/Politics – Page 29

June 18, 2012June 24, 2012

Abandon the Old in Tokyo

By Yoshihiro Tatsumi, translated by Yuji Oniki (Drawn & Quarterly)
ISBN: 978-1-77046-077-5

Yoshihiro Tatsumi was born in Osaka in 1935 and grew up in the TennÅji Ku district. By the time World War II began Osaka was the undisputed industrial, commercial and almost-evangelically capitalist trading-centre of the nation: a place of great wealth, fervent modernisation and nigh-universal literacy as well as vast slums, massive unemployment and crushing poverty. Osaka was the first Japanese city to introduce a welfare program for relief for the poor, modelled after the British system that began in the early 20^th centuryâ€¦

One of 24 political wards, TennÅji Ku was named for the ancient Buddhist shrine ShitennÅ-ji (Temple of the Four Heavenly Kings) and growing up there, Tatsumi must have been constantly exposed to the glorious past, tantalising future and ever-present frustrated desperation of the poor suffering the daily iniquities of the class system.

Growing up during the nightly American bombing raids Tatsumi was obsessed by books and cartooning and devoted his life to the budding comics industry in all its forms.

His earliest successes were all-new, large graphic novels for the uniquely Japanese Kashihon or Manga lending shops (story-books purpose-made to be borrowed and returned for a pittance, rather than bought outright: cost and remuneration were necessarily low and turnover quite high) before moving into the fringes of manga magazine sales.

By 1969 Tatsumi ran a small publishing house for these tomes but the lending shops were dying outâ€¦

Since the mid fifties the author had been struggling with a new kind of manga, one that was more than simply childish entertainment, and in 1957 coined the term Gekiga or â€œDramatic Picturesâ€ to describe the adult, mature-themed, downbeat and decidedly bleak material he was crafting.

His restless pictorial questioning of affairs of the state and the state of affairs in the furiously reconstructing modern nation, as well as humanity’s breakdown in a disillusioned new Japan subjected to incessant and unceasingly building internal pressures didn’t find much popular success, but fellow manga artists slowing began to create their own serious narratives as the drive towards post-war modernism began to founder and more and more citizens began to question not just the methods but the goal itselfâ€¦

After decades of virtual obscurity both at home and abroad Tatsumi was â€œdiscoveredâ€ by the West and in 2005 Canadian publisher Drawn & Quarterly began compiling collections of his vast output in hardback editions which re-presented a selection of material on a year-by-year basis.

Now the on-going annual project is at last available in deluxe monochrome softcover editions, their appeal greatly enhanced by the fact that Tatsumi’s monolithic cartoon autobiography A Drifting Life turned him into a domestic and global comics superstar, winning a brace of Eisner Awards, Japan’s Osamu Tezuka Cultural Prize as well as the regards sur le monde Award at the AngoulÃªme International Comics Festival between 2009-2012.

After an introduction from modern manga superstar Koji Suzuki (creator of The Ring, Dark Water, Birthday and other shocking blockbusters) this second collection gathers longer works from the year 1970 and begins with the deeply disturbing ‘Occupied’ as a lonely and unsuccessful creator of children’s comics experiences digestive troubles. Forced to use public toilets he discovers a different sort of drawing and is inexorably drawn into a world where the cubicles offer an utterly different kind of reliefâ€¦

‘Abandon the Old in Tokyo’ finds diligent Kenichi slowly crumbling under the pressure of his ailing intolerant mother’s constant carping demands. It’s no help that his girlfriend wants to see â€œhisâ€ place and eventually the weary prevaricator does something about the situationâ€¦

‘The Washer’ spends his life cleaning windows and watching powerful businessmen force themselves on young office secretaries. Things turn decidedly difficult however when the girl behind the gleaming glass is his own daughter, whilst a down-trodden factory worker’s grim, grey life only comes alive when he returns home to his hovel and his ‘Beloved Monkey’. Tragically it’s all spoiled when he lets a girl into his heartâ€¦

When old Mr. Yamanuki‘s company goes under, he cannot accept his life’s work is done and some debts have to remain ‘Unpaid’. Why and how then, does he derive such comfort and solace from that thing he does with the Collie at the Dog Appreciation Club?

‘The Hole’ sees a hiker taken prisoner by a woman hideously deformed during botched cosmetic surgery, but when the man’s divorced wife comes to his rescue, his smug arrogance seals his own fate, after which ‘Forked Road’ examines two childhood friends and the different paths their first experiences of sex made for themâ€¦

The eerily intimate episodes end with ‘Eel’ as a young sewer-cleaner sees too many parallels between the fish caught in the rake and bucket and his own existence. Some days having a disgusting, dead-end job and a callous bar-girl wife who’s delighted when she miscarries your baby doesn’t seem that different to swimming the wrong way in rubbish and excrement until you dieâ€¦

Stories of sexual frustration, human obsolescence, dislocation, impotence, loneliness, poverty or the futile and vainglorious acts of rekindled pride are again depicted through rat-run mazes populated by a succession of hookers, powerless men, disaffected women, ineffectual lovers and grasping dependents and via recurring motifs of illness, retirement, injury and inadequacy in ramshackle dwellings, grimy streets, tawdry bars and sewers obstructed by things of no further value: pots, pans, peopleâ€¦

Concluding with another extensive ‘Q & A with Yoshihiro Tatsumi’ this second breathtaking compendium further illustrates why no serious devotee of graphic narratives can afford to miss the masterful literary skill of one of the world’s great masters of the comic arts.

June 17, 2012June 17, 2012

The Push Man and Other Stories

By Yoshihiro Tatsumi, translated by Yuji Oniki (Drawn & Quarterly)
ISBN: 978-1-77046-074-4

Since the 1950s, compulsive manga storyteller Yoshihiro Tatsumi has worked at the edges of the colossal Japanese comics industry, toiling for whoever would hire him, whilst producing an absolutely vast canon of deeply personal, agonisingly honest and blisteringly incisive cartoon critiques, dissections, queries and homages to the Human Condition as endured by the lowest of the low in a beaten nation and culture which utterly and ferociously and ruthlessly re-invented itself during his lifetime.

Tatsumi was born in 1935 and after surviving the war and reconstruction of Japan devoted most of his life to mastering – most would say inventing – a new form of comics storytelling, now known universally as Gekiga or â€œDramatic Picturesâ€ – as opposed to the flashy and fanciful escapist entertainment of Manga – which translates as â€œIrresponsible or Foolish Picturesâ€ and was targeted specifically at children in the years immediately following the cessation of hostilities.

If he couldn’t find a sympathetic Editor, Tatsumi often self-published his darkly beguiling wares in DÅjinshi or â€œVanity projectsâ€ where his often open-ended, morally ambiguous, subtly subversive underground comics literature gradually grew to prominence as those funnybook-consuming kids grew up in a socially-repressed, culturally-occupied country and began to rebel. Topmost amongst their key concerns were Cold War politics, the Vietnam war, ubiquitous inequality and iniquitous distribution of wealth and opportunity, so the teen upstarts sought out material that addressed their maturing sensibilities and found it in the works of Tatsumi and a growing band of serious cartoonistsâ€¦

Since reading comics beyond childhood was seen as an act of rebellion – like digging Rock ‘n’ Roll a decade earlier in the USA and Britain – these kids became known as the â€œManga Generationâ€ and their growing influence allowed comics creators to grow beyond the commercial limits of their industry and tackle adult stories and themes in what rapidly became a bone fide art form. Even the â€œGod of Comicsâ€ Osamu Tezuka eventually found his mature author’s voice in Gekigaâ€¦

Tatsumi uses his art as a symbolic tool, with an instantly recognisable repertory company of characters pressed into service over and again as archetypes and human abstracts of certain unchanging societal aspects and responses. Moreover he has a mesmerising ability to portray situations with no clean and clear-cut resolution: the tension and sublime efficacy revolves around carrying the reader to the moment of ultimate emotional crisis and leaving you suspended thereâ€¦

Narrative themes of sexual frustration, falls from grace and security, loss of heritage and pride, human obsolescence, claustrophobia and dislocation, obsession, provincialism, impotence, loneliness, poverty and desperate acts of protest are perpetually explored by a succession of anonymous bar girls, powerless men, ineffectual loners and grasping spouses, wheedling, ungrateful family dependents and ethically intransigent protagonists through recurring motifs such as illness, forced retirement, crippled labourers, sexual inadequacy in ramshackle dwellings, endless dirty alleyways, tawdry bars and sewers too often obstructed by discarded foetuses and even dead babiesâ€¦

After decades of virtual obscurity both at home and abroad, Tatsumi was â€œdiscoveredâ€ by the West (despite a bootlegged English-language edition in 1987 and occasional reprints in France and Spain) and in 2005 Canadian publisher Drawn & Quarterly began compiling collections of his vast output in hardback editions which re-presented a selection of material on a year-by-year basis.

This initial outing gathers seminal pieces created in the turbulent year 1969 and also includes an introduction by series editor/designer Tomine and a concluding ‘Q & A with Yoshihiro Tatsumi’.

The trawl through the hearts of darkness begins with ‘Piranha’ as an apathetic factory worker, sick and tired of his wife’s brazen philandering, deliberately maims himself at work for the workman’s compensation pay-out. Even relatively well-off and with his wife now attentive and loving he is not content, so he starts collecting Piranha fish. When she returns to her old habits, he looks at his fish and has an ideaâ€¦

‘Projectionist’ tells of a another disillusioned labourer whose job is to travel the country screening blue films for executives keen to get secretaries â€œin the moodâ€ and provide cinematic bonuses for company clients, whilst ‘Black Smoke’ details the existence of an incinerator operator who can’t satisfy his wife, or father children. Meanwhile his days are filled with chucking dead newborns from the local Women’s hospital into those fierce cleansing flamesâ€¦

‘The Burden’ relates the inevitable fate of a placard carrier advertising a massage parlour. Why can he get on with prostitutes of the street but not his wife, constantly carping about her unwanted pregnancy? Why is murder the only rational option?

In ‘Test Tube’ an over-worked sperm donor allows his latest â€œinspirationâ€ to get too close with catastrophic results, whilst the ‘Pimp’ who permits his wife to continue her profession so that they can buy a bar together finds the situation increasingly intolerable and ‘The Push Man’ who crams commuters onto the city’s hyper-crowded trains finally experiences a little too much enforced and unwelcome closeness of his ownâ€¦

Whilst daily unclogging the city’s mains, a harassed young man no longer reacts to the horror of what the people above discard: baskets, boxes, babiesâ€¦ even when the deceased detritus in the ‘Sewer’ is his own, but the ‘Telescope’, which brings a crippled man too close to an aging exhibitionist who needs to be seen conquering young women, leads only to recrimination and self-destructionâ€¦

In a place where every one is trying to survive and make a little progress, one couple have reached a necessary accommodation that allows the wife to prosper just so long as her trouble husband remains ‘The Killer’, whilst for the strait-laced mechanic who discovers his TV ideal has loose knickers and a whorish heart after a ‘Traffic Accident’, life is no longer worth living.

‘Make-Up’ is the only solace of a poor salary-man living with a cheap cocktail waitress. In her clothes and with her face he can truly be himself, even if the lonely and lovelorn telephone sanitizer of ‘Disinfection’ cannot bring himself to connect with the many women of easy affection he meets in his job, and well-meaning nondescript auto-parts worker Matsuda who struggles long and hard, seeking the best way to get rid of his wife and help the young girl resisting their nasty boss’s urgings to abort the embarrassing baby he’s fathered in ‘Who Are You?’

When Mr. Fukuda is badly injured in ‘Bedridden’ he entrusts young Tanno with his greatest secret: locked in his house is a sex slave, trained and shaped from birth to please men. He will pay the apprentice anything and everything to keep her fit and fed until he can get out of hospital. Big mistakeâ€¦

This initial outing ends with a superbly outrÃ© examination of life wherein Shoji returns to his rat-infested apartment and frumpy, horny woman. As she cleans herself up the pensive post-coital drifter ponders all those wasted sperm – each one a potential Napoleon or ‘My Hitler’, until a scream alerts him to the fact that one determined rodent has taken up residence.

Despite all his efforts the rat, pregnant and determined stay put, avoids every attempt to remove or kill it. With his strident companion moved out and back in the bar where she works, the contemplative Shoji discovers a new appreciation of the valiant mother and her progenyâ€¦

Like Adrian Tomine, Editor of the English-language series, I first discovered Mr. Tatsumi’s astounding works in the aforementioned album sized – and it transpires, wholly unauthorised – Catalan Communications edition at the end of the 1980s, and was blown away by the seductive and wholly entrancing simplicity of his storytelling and bleak, humanist subject matter.

Now that I know just when these stark, wry, bittersweet vignettes, episodes and stories of cultural and social realism were first drawn, it seems as if a lone voice in Japanese comics had independently and synchronistically joined the revolution of CinÃ©ma vÃ©ritÃ© and the Kitchen Sink Dramas of playwrights and directors like John Osborne, Tony Richardson and Lindsay Anderson – not to mention Ken Loach and Joe Orton – which gripped the West in the 1960s and which have shaped the critical and creative faculties of so many artists and creators ever since.

Tatsumi, like Robert Crumb and Harvey Pekar, worked for decades in relative isolation producing compelling, bold, beguiling, sordid, intimate, wryly humorous, heartbreaking and utterly uncompromising strips dealing with uncomfortable realities, social alienation, excoriating self-examination and the nastiest and most honest arenas of human experience. They can in fact be seen as brother auteurs and indeed inventors of the â€œliteraryâ€ or alternative field of graphic narrative which, whilst largely sidelined for most of their working lives, has finally emerged as the most important and widely accepted avenue of the comics medium.

These are stories no serious exponent or fan of comics can afford to miss and this series of collections is the best way yet to enjoy a hidden master’s dedication and brilliance.

May 31, 2012May 30, 2012

The Desert Peach volume 6: Marriage & Mayhem

By Donna Barr (Aeon)
ISBN: 1-883847-07-9

The Desert Peach is the supremely self-assured and eminently efficient gay brother of the legendary German soldier hailed as â€œthe Desert Foxâ€. Set in World War II Africa and effortlessly combining hilarity, absurdity, profound sensitivity and glittering spontaneity, the stories describe the trials and tribulations of Oberst Manfred Pfirsich Marie Rommel; a dutiful if unwilling cog in the German War Machine, yet one determined to remain a civilised gentleman under the most adverse and unkind conditions.

However, although as formidable as his beloved elder sibling, the gracious and genteel Peach is a man who loathes causing harm or giving offence and thus spends his service commanding the dregs of the military in the ghastly misshapes of the 469^th Halftrack, Gravedigging & Support Unit of the Afrika Korps, daily endeavouring to remain stylish, elegant, civil and gracious to the assorted waifs, wastrels and warriors on both sides of the unfortunate global conflict.

It’s a thankless, endless task: the 469^th houses the worst the Wehrmacht has ever conscripted, from malingerers and malcontents to useless wounded, shiftless conmen, screw-ups and outright maniacs.

Pfirsich unilaterally applies the same decorous courtesies to the sundry natives inhabiting the area and the rather tiresome British and Anzac forces – not all of whom are party to a clandestine non-aggression pact Pfirsich has agreed with his opposite numbers in the amassed Allied Forces. In fact the only people to truly annoy the peace-loving Peach are boors, bigots, bullies and card-carrying Blackshirtsâ€¦

The romantic fool is also passionately in love with and engaged to Rosen Kavalier: handsome Aryan warrior and wildly manly Luftwaffe Aceâ€¦

Arguably the real star of these fabulous frothy epics is the Peach’s long-suffering, unkempt, crafty, ill-mannered, bilious and lazily scrofulous orderly Udo Schmidt, a man of many secrets whose one redeeming virtue is his uncompromising loyalty and devotion to the only decent man and tolerable officer in the entire German army.

This tragically rare sixth softcover collection reprints issues #16, 17 and 19 (#18 being a reproduction of the innovative Musical Program which accompanied the stage show: to see that check out The Desert Peach Webcomic or http://www.desert-peach.com/comic/DP18.pdf) and starts with an enchanting comic introduction from the captivatingly clever Mike Kazaleh before ‘Flight of the Phoenix’ opens the comedic assault. Even though ill-bred rogue Udo’s impending wedding to Tuareg princess Falila has been apparently side-lined, a spoil of that outrageous betrothal – a magnificent Arabian war-mare named Phoenix – is still causing trouble for Pfirsich, who is her nominal owner.

The steed is wild and utterly untrained, constantly causing trouble for the decidedly neat and tidy Peach and especially Sergeant MÃ¶gen and Lieutenant Hecht, who are responsible for her careâ€¦

When scattered tribesmen convene a colossal horse-fair on the camp’s doorstep, the problems magnify exponentially: not only was Phoenix stolen, but she comes from legendarily purebred lines and unless the Peach can arrange an honourable and fitting stud for her it might result in a native uprisingâ€¦

Now all he has to do is select the right one out of the hundreds of willing stallions and touchy, eager Arab owners, but as usual the soldiery have the own ideas on the perfect partner, all filtered through personal prejudices and ideological bigotryâ€¦

So when Udo attempts to settle the quandary one dark night by taking Phoenix to his own preferred favourite, all hell naturally breaks loose as the skittish steed rampages through camp before making her own choiceâ€¦ When the valiant Rosen and sundry soldiers try to catch her, Udo then ends up trapped between the ever-so-keen equine bride and her equally impatient suitors, and taken for a ride he’ll never forgetâ€¦

As a consequence of the riot Udo is held responsible for the accidental gelding of a stallion and as an outlander faces death or worse – until somebody suggests that if he were actually married to his desert princess he’d be a tribesman and allowed to buy his way out of troubleâ€¦

This is followed by ‘Culture Shock’ as fanatical political officer Winzig works himself into a tizzy about the upcoming miscegenation nuptials and reveals a long-hidden shameful secret: he is a musical prodigy whose piano playing could make Devils weep and Angel dance with delight. Most appalling of all is his facility for jazz – a form of music the Nazis have declared â€œsub-humanâ€â€¦

His secret out, Winzig is easily cajoled by Pfirsich into playing at the up-coming wedding, but other problems are surfacing. The rumours that Udo is Jewish are circulating again (they’re all true but were scotched by the Desert Peach in book 5: Belief Systems) but when the coordinating commanders of both Tuareg and German parties are trying to sort out the form of service, the panicking and reluctant groom sees a get-out-of-jail-free card – whatever ceremony is performed, it won’t be bindingâ€¦

Udo had been griping and trying to weasel his way out of his impending, unwanted but necessarily pragmatic wedding from the start. The swarthy little scoundrel wanted sex not commitment, and now only the threat of agonising dismemberment is making Schmidt nee Isador GÃ¼lphsteinÂ honour his word and live up to his responsibilitiesâ€¦

That is of course until the poor shmuck catches sight of Falila in all her wedding fineryâ€¦

After a chaotic, joyous and hilarious wedding and reception in the local bordello everything seems to have worked out until the bride’s father hears a certain tale that his new son-in-law is a Hebrewâ€¦

Using humour to devastating effect, the author manipulates the crisis to make a few telling points about religion and prejudice and, with order restored, this volume then concludes with the utterly manic and earthily scatological ‘Self-Propelled Target’ as some of the weary and jaded grave-digging unit play with wrong cadaver and both Winzig and Pfirsich accidentally ingest organic matter from a rotting – and exploding â€“ corpse. With Pfirsich revoltingly hors-de-combat the men of the469th declare open war on the hated political martinet they call the â€œHuman Swastikaâ€â€¦

With the Peach incontinent and incommunicado the battle of nerves and dogma rapidly escalates to terrifying heights and when the recuperating Peach almost loses his life in one of the malicious pranks, Udo at last steps in to settle things with disastrous and disgusting consequencesâ€¦

Treading in the same the same anti-war trench as Three Kings, Hogan’s Heroes, Oh, What a Lovely War! and Catch 22, these Desert Peach adventures are always bawdy, raucous, satirical, authentically madcap and immensely engaging; this time though they’re also painfully romantic, revoltingly near-the-knuckle and intoxicatingly subversive.

These gloriously baroque yarns were some of the very best comics of the 1990s and still pack a shattering comedic kick, liberally leavened with situational jocularity, accent humour and lots of footnoted Deutsche cuss-words for the kids to learn. Moreover, with this volume the potential of the minor supporting characters is at last fully realised with The Peach often relegated to a minor or supervisory role.

This captivating excursion is also capped off with many magical extras: hilarious marginal illustrations and more cut-out paper-dolls and extra outfits for you to admire and play with: this time featuring the wardrobe of Udo and the log-suffering Winzig.

The Desert Peach ran for 32 intermittent issues via a number of publishers and was subsequently collected as eight graphic novel collections (1988-2005). A prose novel, Bread and Swans, a musical, and an invitational collection by other artists entitled Ersatz Peach were also created during the strip’s heyday. A larger compendium, Seven Peaches, collected issues #1-7 and Pfirsich’s further exploits continue as part of the Modern Tales webcomics collectiveâ€¦

Illustrated in Barr’s fluidly seductive wood-cut and loose-line style, this book is another must-have item for lovers of wit, slapstick, high drama and belly-laughs and grown-up comics in general. All the collections are pretty hard to find these days but if you have a Kindle, Robot Comics have started releasing individual comicbook issues, and for anybody with internet access and mature tastes as mentioned above there’s always The Desert Peach webcomic to fall back onâ€¦
Â© 1992-1994 Donna Barr. Introduction Â© 1994 Mike Kazaleh. All rights reserved. The Desert Peach is â„¢ Donna Barr.

April 30, 2012April 29, 2012

Stinz: Horsebrush and Other Tails

By Donna Barr(Eclipse Books)
ISBN: 1-56060-069-1

Donna Barr is one of the comic world’s most unique talents. She has constructed a fully realised fantasyscape to tell her stories and tells them through a style and voice that are definitely one-of-a-kind. Her most well known creations are The Desert Peach, which features the poignantly humorous adventures of Field Marshal Erwin Rommell’s homosexual brother in the deserts of World War II Africa, and the star of this particular show, the Half-Horse Steinheld â€œStinzâ€ LÃ¶whard.

Using an idealised Bavarian agricultural landscape as her starting point, Barr has been taking good-natured pot-shots at humanity with an affable centaur soldier-turned-farmer and his family since 1986 when she adapted characters from her own book into the lead strip in Eclipse Comics’ fantasy anthology The Dreamery. The contents of this out of print but happily easy-to-find online collection gathers the equine bits of issues #1, 3 and 5-13 of that much-missed fantasy anthology and includes four new Stinz sagas to sweeten the graphic narrative pot.

The stunning black and white comic tales are set in the idyllic Geisel Valley, a rustic, idealised 19^th century Germanic state that includes ingredients from grim reality and fantastic mythical creatures. Stinz’s world is a full-blown tapestry of drama, politics, war and wild adventure, redolent with mythic old-world charm and brilliantly engaging, earthily accommodating characters and settings.

After an effusive introduction from Kim Thompson, the charm offensive begins with Chapter One: Young Stinz and a quartet of intriguing glimpses into the young colt’s formative years beginning with ‘The Last Horselaugh’ wherein the rambunctious teen centaur and his equally obnoxious cronies try to play a trick on a bad-tempered old farmer and quickly rue the consequences, after which ‘A Breathing Spill’ agonisingly describes the lad’s first attempts at impressing a fair maidâ€¦

‘Animal Attraction’ hilariously recounts the problems of being a young colt in love for a species that can’t wear trousers and addresses the tensions between the rural half-horse people and the ubiquitous human â€œtwo-leggersâ€ before the early adventures end with ‘The Proving Ground’ as the disgraced but hot-tempered Stinz finds true love and parental approval when the deep snows bring wolves to harry the valley’s herds and flocksâ€¦

Safely married to BrÃ¼na DÃ¤mmling and returned from a human war, the troublesome teen grew into a pillar of the community and a parent himself so Chapter Two: Stinz & Son, concentrates on LÃ¶whard’s relationship with his own lad, beginning with the delightful ‘Andri’s Christmas Shoes’ wherein the little guy applies pester-power to the problem of getting his first set of big-boy iron hoof-coverings and almost pays a fatal price, whilst father and son’s disastrous attempts to catch ‘The Carp of Easter’ shows that the old man’s talent for finding â€“ and dealing with – trouble had not fadedâ€¦

When a band of dissolute, de-mobbed two-legger soldiers start picking on little Andri they discover that sad fact to their painful cost in ‘Nothing Like Gone’ whilst the spooky bed-time legend of ‘Sprunghack Hans’ proves as frightening to the teller as the listener when told under a cold, pale outdoors moon and ‘Blooming Affections’ reveals little Andri is every bit his father’s colt when it comes to the eligible young ladies of the valleyâ€¦

Chapter Three: Stinz opens with another folktale as LÃ¶whard and his farrier friend share the cautionary tale of a satanic rooster in ‘Chicken’ whilst the luckless human mercenaries return to again incur Stinz’s wrath by poaching in ‘Not My Problem’ after which the centaur meets his match in the form of a rampant equine whole-horse in ‘Horsebrush’â€¦

The last section Chapter Four: the Wolves begins with ‘Smoked Out’ as Stinz’s uncle Rauchl Schorsche supplements his charcoal-burning business with a spot of moonshine-making and inadvertently makes the ever-hungry and never too far away wolf-pack his bosom buddies: a hilarious situation exacerbated in ‘Hair of the Wolf’ when the tipsy canines invite a werewolf to play and this fabulous bestiary ends on a high note with ‘Pack Ice’ as part-time Lupine Ulli learns to deal with his human and centaur neighbours under the full moon and his pack-mates during daylight hoursâ€¦

The warmth and surreptitious venom of Barr’s sallies against contemporary society are still in evidence here, but, as always the sly commentary is stiletto tip not battle axe. Barr’s work is clever, warm, distinctive and honest but oddly not to everybody’s taste, which is a shame as she has lots to say and a truly astounding way of saying it.

Illustrated in her fluidly seductive wood-cut and loose-line style, this book is a must-have for any wonder-loving, devotee of wit, slapstick, period romance and belly-laughs. This is a tome no whole-hearted fantasist should be without.

April 22, 2012April 21, 2012

NeMo Balkanski’s FIB Chronicles

By Nemanja Moravic Balkanski & various (the Publishing Eye)
ISBN: 978-0-9868440-0-3

Some creators seduce and beguile but others choose to inform and affect with confrontational shock tacticsâ€¦

The most wonderful thing about the comics medium is the limitless ways stories and art can be combined to educate, elucidate and entertain. For every HergÃ© there’s a Harvey Pekar, for every Alfred Bestall a Johnny Ryan (and John Ryan too) and so on, and there are comic strips to suit literally every age and temperament.

Some of the most evocative and addictively uncompromising efforts that I’ve seen in quite a while appear in this collection from Belgrade Ã©migrÃ© Nemanja Moravic Balkanski, whose stunningly disturbing spoofs and edgy cultural pastiches have been gathered into a magnificent oversized full-colour hardback FIB Chronicles.

Balkanski was born in Belgrade in 1975 and, after mastering a multitude of artistic disciplines from comics to graphic design, theatre arts to film-making, and poetry to performance, emigrated to Vancouver 2007. Much of this vintage material contained here (also available as an app) come from his Balkan days, represented in this disquietingly substantial and blackly comic tome under the guiding conceit that the individual escapades of a nightmarish cast of distressing ne’er-do-wells and uncanny outcasts have been gathered into a damning dossier thanks to the scurrilous non-efforts of the far-from-intrepid clandestine agents of the Fabulous Investigation Bureau.

The result is a selection of their most atypical observations – presumably leaked here as a wake-up call to unwitting and complacent humanityâ€¦

The iconoclastic strips gathered here date from 1998-2005 and, supplemented by new bridging material in a staggering variety of artistic styles, describe a dark and disturbing underworld of barely perceived and unwisely ignored peril and surreal threat wrapped up in careful pastiche and savage parodyâ€¦

US cop dramas come under the cosh when corruptly hip detective Cash Money experiences ‘Hair Fear’ and tackles feminist terror in ‘W.T.N. Griffit’ whilst tragic, plucky waif Boy Lyndo gets his shot at a happy ever after in ‘The Final Episode’ and the bizarre habits of a cult of Mel Gibson impersonators is exposed in ‘Gipsons vs Graduates’ after which gay lovers walk hand-in-hand down the wrong street in the weird war story ‘Jelly & Butter’ – a yarn conceived by Balkanski’s long-time collaborator Vladimir Protic.

A theatrical slasher-killer appears in ‘Space (the Final Frontier)’ and scatological stoner anthropomorph ‘Bud Bunny’ plays not-so-nice games with the other animals before fashion-plate Eau de Cologne falls foul of the harpy-ish harridans known as the BigDos in ‘Trigger’ and we are exposed to ‘Johnny McWire Getting the Beating of his Life’ and ‘Mr. Friday Night’ goes home alone yet againâ€¦

Booze and Balkan warriors come under the microscope one more in ‘Galactica, the Space Bottlesip’ (based on Branimir “Johnny” Å tuliÄ‡‘s poem â€œSons of Bitchesâ€) after which the file devotes a lot of crazed and crucial pages to cybernetic dreamer Digital Standstill‘s climactic confrontation with ‘BigDo’s’ before we observe a salutary encounter with the ‘Psycho from 134^th Street’ (scripted by Protic).

The battle against creeping communism is examined in the uplifting tale of ‘Little Mexico: El Dentista’, the nature of modern relationships in ‘It is My Friend’ and the value of introspection in ‘Sam Lr. Stag: His Life was a Drag’ before the life of a fascist monster is dissected in ‘Shalken RÃ¶sse’ and we are treated, in conclusion, to the meteoric rise and political acumen of the transcendent of ‘Melon Pig’, courtesy of Protic and Balkanskiâ€¦

With additional articles, ‘Declassification Files’, a glossary of new words and expressions and even a few game-pages for the strong-stomached, this tainted love-affair with life’s moist and fetid underbelly is a dank graphic delight that not even every mature and cosmopolitan reader will enjoy: but for those with just the right blend of world-weary insouciance and malignant, undemanding innocence the words and pictures married together here will strike an unforgettable chord.

Strident, cruel, sardonically whimsical, overwhelmingly clever and bleakly hilarious in a Kafka meets Steven Wright channelling Bill Hicks kind of way, this absurdist, hauntingly affecting and astonishingly illustrated book is a uniquely entertaining read the brave and bold and reasonably old won’t dare to missâ€¦
All comics Â© 2011 Nemanja Moravic Balkanski. Everything else All comics Â© 2011 Nemanja Moravic Balkanski and The Publishing Eye. All rights reserved.

April 10, 2012April 9, 2012

The Desert Peach book 3: Foreign Relations

By Donna Barr (Aeon)
ISBN: 1-883847-04-4

The Desert Peach is the supremely self-assured and eminently accomplished gay brother of the legendary â€œDesert Foxâ€ and one of the most perfectly realised characters in comics.

Set in World War II Africa and effortlessly combining hilarity, absurdity, profound sensitivity and glittering spontaneity, the stories describe the daily grind of Oberst Manfred Pfirsich Marie Rommel; a dutiful if unwilling cog in the German War Machine and his efforts to remain a perfect gentleman under the most adverse and unkind conditions.

As formidable as his beloved elder sibling Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the gracious and genteel Peach is a man of breeding who loathes causing harm or giving offence and thus spends his dry and dusty days commanding the ever-so-motley crew of the 469th Halftrack, Gravedigging & Support Unit of the Afrika Korps, trying to remain stylish, elegant, civil and gracious to the men under his command, the enemy forces opposite him and all the unfortunate natives whose countries both Allied and Axis powers are currently running riot within.

It’s a lot of work: the 469^th houses the worst dregs of the Wehrmacht, from malingerers and malcontents to useless wounded, sharpers, screw-ups and outright maniacs.

Pfirsich applies the same genteel courtesies and rule of well-manicured thumb to the sundry indigenes populating the area surrounding the camp and the rather tiresome British – not all of whom are party to a clandestine non-aggression pact Pfirsich has agreed with his opposite number in the opposing British Forces.

The romantic fool is passionately in love with and engaged to Rosen Kavalier: handsome Aryan warrior and outrageously manly Luftwaffe Ace: in fact the only people the Peach really has no time for are boors, bigots and card-carrying Blackshirtsâ€¦

Arguably the real star of these fabulous frothy epics is the Peach’s long-suffering, unkempt, crafty, ill-mannered, bilious and lazily scrofulous orderly Udo Schmidt, a man of many secrets and non-existent morals whose one redeeming virtue is his uncompromising loyalty and devotion to the only decent man and tolerable officer in the entire German army.

This hard to find but supremely superb third monochrome compendium reprints issues #7-9 and includes an all-new tale too.

Battle commences with ‘The Spoiled Fruit’ as the mild mannered and utterly urbane Peach is accidentally dosed with shell-shocked veteran Corporal Doberman‘s anti-psychotic medication. The ghastly experimental brew acts like Angel Dust on the sweet lad and turns Pfirsich into a raging warmongering lunatic, who goes on a three day battle-jag, dragging the 469^th with by sheer rampaging willpower and almost winning the desert war single-handedâ€¦ until the drugs stop working.

Even more embarrassing than the death and bloodshed he caused and certainly more painful than the bullet wound in his posterior is brother Erwin awarding him a medalâ€¦

This is followed by international adventure and intrigue in ‘Dressing Down’ as an old-fashioned army concert-party leads to one of the most ludicrous espionage missions of the war.

In an attempt to raise morale Udo organises a show where he and a few other ranks dress up in drag. Although a little unhappy at the sordid and distasteful turn of events, Pfirsich lets it go but is horrified when an intelligence officer from his brother’s staff claims that Udo-as-a girl looks just like Hannah Mardi, a German agent currently missing in England.

She and her sister were the only hope of recovering the stolen plans for Rommel’s latest tank but for such a mission to succeed Hannah should be accompanied by her usual partner. What a happy coincidence that Pfirsich looks so much like the equally absent â€œPortia Sophiâ€: the Peach could pass for her with almost no make-up at allâ€¦

Arriving at the last known address of the missing spies in London, the terrified and mutinously reluctant Pfirsich and Udo are horrified to discover something very peculiar is going on in the agents’ old lodgings and things become surreal, hilarious and quite, quite tricky when the Peach realises that the landlady’s son Willie is the same delightful boy who befriended him in those carefree days before the war..

The reprints end with ‘Scourge of Love’ as the ever-horny Udo unwittingly turns a bargaining session for fresh rations with Tuareg traders into an accidentally proposal to the Chieftain’s beautiful daughter Falila.

He thought he was getting a â€œquickieâ€ from a easy trollop but too soon Udo realises he was not only betrothed to the proud princess of a people who have turned avenging insults into an art-form and spectator blood-sport, but that to prove himself worthy he would have to steal a herd of camels from the Arabs’ greatest and most ancient enemies.

With a tribal revolt threatening to interfere with the smooth course of the war, Udo’s tenderest and most cherished organs at risk and, most importantly, the honour and happiness of a lady at stake, the Desert Peach has no choice but to step in and settle matters in his own uniquely sensitive and refined mannerâ€¦

The new epilogue ‘Home is Whereâ€¦’ is set in the Peach’s declining years, wherein Pfirsich and his adult son Mani play host to a reunion of the 469th few survivors: a bittersweet vignette which delights and fearfully foreshadows tragedies yet to come. This moving vignette also appears in Book 4 Baby Games.

These fabulously weird war stories were some of the very best comics of the 1990s and still pack the comedic kick of a floral-scented howitzer, liberally leavened with situational jocularity, accent humour and lots of footnoted Deutsche cuss-words for the kids to learn.

Pfirsich’s further exploits continue as part of the Modern Tales webcomics collectiveâ€¦

Illustrated in Barr’s fluidly seductive wood-cut and loose-line style, this book is a must-have for any history-loving, war-hating lover of wit, slapstick, romance and belly-laughs. All the Desert Peach books are pretty hard to find these days but if you have a Kindle, Robot Comics have just begun to release individual comicbook issues for anybody who can make their way around Das Ferslugginer Internetten â€¦
Â© 1990-1994 Donna Barr. All rights reserved. The Desert Peach is â„¢ Donna Barr.

March 23, 2012March 22, 2012

The Desert Peach book 5: Belief Systems

By Donna Barr (Aeon)
ISBN: 1-883847-07-9

The Desert Peach is the supremely self-assured and eminently capable gay brother of the legendary German soldier hailed as â€œthe Desert Foxâ€ and one of the most perfectly realised characters in comics.

Set in World War II Africa and effortlessly combining hilarity, absurdity, profound sensitivity and glittering spontaneity, the stories describe the daily grind of Oberst Manfred Pfirsich Marie Rommel; a dutiful if unwilling cog in the German War Machine and his efforts to remain a civilised gentleman under the most adverse and unkind conditions.

However, although as formidable as his beloved elder sibling Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the gracious and genteel Peach is a man who loathes causing harm or giving offence and thus spends his dry and dusty days with the ever-so-motley crew of the 469th Halftrack, Gravedigging & Support Unit of the Afrika Korps, trying to remain stylish, elegant, civil and gracious to the men under his command and the enemy forces around him.

It’s a lot of work: the 469^th houses the worst dregs of the Wehrmacht, from malingerers and malcontents to useless wounded, sharpers, screw-ups and outright maniacs.

Pfirsich unilaterally applies the same decorous courtesies to the sundry natives inhabiting the area and the rather tiresome British – not all of whom are party to a clandestine non-aggression pact Pfirsich has agreed with his opposite numbers in the amassed Allied Forces. The only people the Peach really has no time for are boors, bigots, bullies and card-carrying Blackshirtsâ€¦

The romantic fool is also passionately in love with and engaged to Rosen Kavalier: handsome Aryan warrior and wildly manly Luftwaffe Aceâ€¦

This tragically rare fifth softcover collection reprints issues #13-15 and starts with an enchanting comic introduction from the captivatingly clever Roberta Gregory after which the sagacious star yields focus to the tragically bewildered Doberman in ‘Nobody’ wherein the pitifully shell-shocked Corporal finally blows himself up with his pet landmine and is evacuated home.

Dobi unexpectedly returns some time later with tales of his nightmarish detour to the hidden Jewish concentration camps where all the undesirables are being dealt with: systematically and efficiently eradicating Jews and other â€œsub-humansâ€…

Pfirsich is appalled and refuses to believe the stories: surely no sane human beings could perpetrate such atrocities? Udo however, has also heard stories of how Hitler and his hierarchy are dealing with Jews and shares them with his commander. In a rage the Peach rushes off to tell his brother, knowing the Field Marshal can do something about it.

The noble Desert Fox also explodes in fury and determines to return to Berlin to stop the program. His plan is simple – since Hitler is a good man and cannot possibly know of these atrocities, all Erwin has to do is inform Adolf and the Fuhrer will put a stop to the horrorsâ€¦

Pfirsich, knowing Hitler’s hierarchy far better than that, is faced with an impossible choice: allow his brother to sign his own death warrant or withdraw the allegations and become complicit in genocideâ€¦

This bleakly chilling and tortured black comedy is followed by ‘Surprise, Surprise’ with Udo griping and trying to weasel his way out of his impending, unwanted but necessarily pragmatic wedding to Bedouin princess Falila. The swarthy little scoundrel wants sex not commitment, but as Pfirsich urges his subordinate to honour his word and live up to his responsibilities another secret slips out.

Udo Schmidt used to have another name: the only card-carry Nazi Party member in the entire 469^th was born Isador GÃ¼lphsteinâ€¦

â€œUdoâ€ is the scion of a venerable line of soldiers who have served the Fatherland and the long-suffering son of a proud German Jewish veteran of the Great War who changed the family name so that his sons could join the army tooâ€¦ whether they wanted to or not.

Now, with The Peach fully aware of the fate Jews are facing, how can he risk Schmidt’s secret getting out? Moreover how can he risk antagonising the desert tribes or disappointing the clearly addled girl who wants to marry Udo? After all, fanatic camp political officer Kjars Winzig already suspects something isn’t – or rather is – Kosher about Udoâ€¦

The troubles only really begin when eavesdropping boyfriend Rosen Kavalier takes charge and offers a drastic and outrageous solutionâ€¦

This darker-than-usual volume concludes with ‘The Triangle Trade’ (from a suggestion by cartoonist Steve Gallacci) as The Peach encounters by-the-book soldier Oberst Quark, herding a supply column directly towards an Allied tank unit.

Keen to avoid any bloodshed Pfirsich intercepts the column and lends the commander his spotter plane, determined to keep the Germans out of trouble whilst their war-mongering commander is safely up in the air.

Deprived of glorious battle Quark conceives a subtle vengeance and transfers the two biggest troublemakers in his command to the 469^th.

Sadly the younger Rommel has never encountered the average fighting man and sorely overestimates his ability to control the greedy, vicious and cunningly duplicitous thugs Leutnants Hecht and Horowitzâ€¦

With the camp quickly dissolving into a hotbed of criminality and black marketeering harsh measures are called and this time even Rosen has met his match. Seizing the nettle Pfirsich is forced to fall back upon his own unique strengths to solve this thorny dilemma effectively and with unmistakable styleâ€¦

Fabulously following the same anti-war path as Sgt. Bilko, Hogan’s Heroes, Oh, What a Lovely War! and Catch 22, as well as such tangential films as Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and The Birdcage, these Desert Peach adventures are always bawdy, raucous, clever, authentically madcap and immensely engaging.

These gloriously baroque yarns were some of the very best comics of the 1990s and still pack the comedic kick of a silken howitzer or chartreuse flamethrower, liberally leavened with situational jocularity, accent humour and lots of footnoted Deutsche cuss-words for the kids to learn. Moreover, with this volume the dark bitter edges and cold iron underlying these fabulous characters and their horrific, doomed situation become ever more poignant and powerful.

The Desert Peach ran for 32 intermittent issues via a number of publishers and was subsequently collected as eight graphic novel collections (1988-2005). A prose novel, Bread and Swans, a musical and an invitational collection by other artists entitled Ersatz Peach were also created during the strip’s heyday. A larger compendium, Seven Peaches, collected issues #1-7 and Pfirsich’s further exploits continue as part of the Modern Tales webcomics collectiveâ€¦

Illustrated in Barr’s fluidly seductive wood-cut and loose-line style, this book is a must-have for any lover of wit, slapstick, high drama and belly-laughs and grown-up comics in general. All the collections are pretty hard to find these days but if you have a Kindle, Robot Comics have started releasing individual comicbook issues for anybody with internet access and mature tastesâ€¦
Â© 1991-1994 Donna Barr. Introduction Â© 1994 Roberta Gregory. All rights reserved. The Desert Peach is â„¢ Donna Barr.

February 22, 2012February 22, 2012

Kramers Ergot volume 8

By various, edited by Sammy Harkham (PictureBox)
ISBN: 978-0-98458-927-2

Since the 1980s when â€œUndergroundâ€ creators and cartoonists of adult and mature English-language comics first began to find mainstream and popular acceptance by re-branding themselves as alternative or Avant Garde, there have periodically emerged groundbreaking anthologies which served to disseminate the best of the best in challenging sequential art. Following on the groundbreaking heels of Raw and its descendants, Kramers Ergot launched as a 48-page mini-comic in 2000 and grew into a vari-format, anything goes visual and intellectual banquet before suspending publication with #7 in 2008 with a hugely proportioned (536x414mm) 96-page deluxe hardback starring sixty of the art form’s most beguiling pantheon of stars.

Now founding father Sammy Harkham returns with another stunning array of top-notch new creations and a smattering of sublime vintage material in a gloriously accessible 240-page clothbound B-format hardback that once more brandishes the sharpest of cutting edges at fans of the medium at its most uncompromisingâ€¦

The magic begins with the abstract and glittering Overture by Robert Beatty, after which Washington Punk musician Ian F. Svenonius (Nation of Ulysses, Weird War and Chain and The Gang) contributes a fascination and informative essay on the shape of American arts with Notes on Camp part 2.

Alternative star and social commentator ‘Jimbo’ returns in a trek across tomorrow’s wastelands in a sharp monochrome yarn from Gary Panter after which C.F. explores isolation and human relationships in the placidly eerie ‘Warm Genetic House-Test Pattern’ whilst Kevin Huizenga redraws an old Charlton Comics fantasy tale (â€œThe Half Menâ€ by Bill Molno & Sal Trapani and possibly scripted by the prolific Joe Gill) in the quirkily disturbing ‘Mysteries of Unexplained Worlds’â€¦

Leon Sadler produces the first of two contributions in the colourfully pensive ‘Friendship Comic’ whilst the muted hues and jolly style of Gabrielle Bell’s ‘Cody’ successfully belies the tale’s violent underpinnings and Frank Santoro & Dash Shaw shock and stun with their chilling ‘Childhood Predators’.

‘Ain’t it So?’ is a smart cartoon by Tim Hensley and ‘Get Your Ass to Mars’ is a set of stunning art photo pieces from Takeshi Murata, whilst ‘Mining Colony X7170’ is a typically dark and savage sci fi shocker from anti-art iconoclast Johnny Ryan before

Leon Sadler returns with the expansive and picaresque ‘Goblins Orbit the Earth (I’m Here! It’s Me!)’.

Chris Cilla takes a different look at love in ‘Secret Tourist’ and ‘Barbarian Bitch’ by Anya Davidson joyously screws with all the traditions of the hoary old genre and Ben Jones plays cunning mind-games and perpetrates dire puns in his shaggy doggish and charmingly primitivist ‘The Ultimate Character 2002’ after which Editor Sammy Harkham picks up his own pens to describe the silent horror and driving melodrama of ‘A Husband and a Wife’.

‘Epilogue’ is another visual voyage from painter Robert Beatty and this tome concludes with a long lost delight.

The last contribution is a true joy for me reprinting as it does a selection from what I believe to be one of the most delicious and clever British strips ever created. ‘Oh, Wicked Wanda (Select Excerpts)’ reprints in sublime full glossy colour Ron Embleton & Frederick Mullalley’s brilliant socio-sexual satire which ran in Penthouse magazine between 1973-1980.

Journalist, editor (of left-wing magazine Tribune), columnist, novelist and political writer Mullally was hired to script the exotic, erotic adventures of Wanda Von Kreesus, the richest woman in the world, Candyfloss, her insatiable jailbait paramour and an outrageous coterie of faithful employees including an all-girl army, a mad scientist and a brutal looking thug with the soul of a poet. To illustrate he secured the talents of oil painter and comic strip veteran Ron Embleton who had astounded comic readers with his lush and vibrant strip Wulf the Briton in Express Weekly and his illustrations in Look and Learn.

Oh, Wicked Wanda! was originally a prose serial illustrated by Bryan Forbes, beginning in 1969 before becoming, in 1973, the unbelievably lavish and torrid strip reprinted here, continuing until 1980 when it was replaced by Sweet Chastity, also painted by Embleton, and scripted by Penthouse proprietor Bob Guccione.

The bored and mischievous hellion is a sexually adventurous woman from a time when sexual politics and liberation were huge issues, and therefore prime targets for low comedy and high satire. Mullally peppered his scripts with topical references (many, sadly which would escape today’s casual reader, I’m sure) and the phenomenal Embleton would depict them with hyper-realistic accuracy. Harold Wilson, Edward Heath, Ted Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Fidel Castro, Lyndon Johnson, Spiro Agnew, Mao Tse-tung, John Wayne, Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and even comic-strip greats like Pogo, Mutt and Jeff or Krazy Kat, all meandered through the glossy pages, a cross between a Greek Chorus and pictorial ad-libs.

Many celebrities were actively parodied, participants and classical and contemporary erotic allusions abounded; ranging from a little nymphette lounging about reading William Burroughs’s Naked Lunch to visual and verbal references to Shelley’s Leda and the Swan.

Here some of the earliest adventures are re-presented as Wanda destroys, debases, abducts and mounts (no, not necessarily that way) the obnoxiously rich and famous for her Museum of Misfits and Deviancy; consequently taking on the Mafia, the CIA and South American Nazi war criminal Martin Boorman. Her personal Mad Scientist Homer Sapiens also reveals his sordid connections to some of the 20^th century’s nastiest personagesâ€¦

Oh, Wicked Wanda! is still a funny, sexy read and inarguably one of the most beautiful British strips ever crafted. Hopefully this selection will lead to a new audience and a comprehensive reprinting â€¦

As well as being a comics-lovers dream, Kramers Ergot is a book-lovers delight with excellent design and a reassuringly high-class print values. This package is something no lover of the medium can afford to miss.

January 26, 2012January 25, 2012

The Desert Peach volume 4: Baby Games

By Donna Barr (Mu Press/Aeon Pubs)
ISBN: 1-883847-05-2

Donna Barr is one of the comic world’s most singular graphic raconteurs. She always constructs impeccable, fully realised worldscapes to house her stories and tells them with a style and voice that are definitely one-of-a-kind. Her most perfect creations are the Half-Horse Stinz LÃ¶whard, and The Desert Peach, perfectly self-assured and eminently capable gay brother of the legendary â€œDesert Foxâ€ and the scintillating star of this effervescent assemblage of sly, dry wit, raucous drollery and way out military madness.

However, although as capable as his beloved elder sibling Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the gracious and genteel Peach is a man who loathes causing harm or giving offence and thus spends his dry and dusty days with the ever-so-motley crew of the 469th Halftrack, Gravedigging & Support Unit of the Afrika Korps, trying to remain stylish, elegant and non-threatening to the men under his command and the enemy forces around him.

The only people he really dislikes are boors, bigots and card-carrying Blackshirtsâ€¦

He applies the same genteel courtesies to the sundry natives inhabiting the area and the rather tiresome British – not all of whom are party to a clandestine non-aggression pact Pfirsich has agreed with his opposite numbers in the amassed Allied Forcesâ€¦

The romantic fool is also passionately in love with and engaged to Rosen Kavalier: handsome Aryan warrior and wildly manly Luftwaffe Aceâ€¦

The Desert Peach ran for 32 intermittent issues via a number of publishers and was subsequently collected as eight graphic novel collections (1988-2005). A prose novel, Bread and Swans, a musical and an invitational collection by other artists entitled Ersatz Peach were also created during the strip’s heyday. A larger compendium, Seven Peaches, collects issues #1-7 and Pfirsich’s further exploits continue as part of the Modern Tales webcomics collectiveâ€¦

This terrifyingly scarce fourth softcover collection reprints issues #10-12, and starts the ball rolling with ‘Two-Timers’ wherein the fiercely protective Pfirsich infiltrates the British positions as history’s least believable English Officer to ferret out a spy targeting his brother Erwin.

Of course to carry off the mission somebody has to be prominently visible in the German camp as the ever-so-unmissable and wickedly froufrou Desert Peach. Ein step vorwarts, (or elseâ€¦) patriotic he-man and self-appointed Nazi political officer Leutnant Kjars Winzigâ€¦

Meanwhile, as the entire 469^th kvetch over the Leutnant’s unlikely and unhappy performance, Pfirsich’s impossible imposture is going inconceivably well until he confronts the undercover agent over drinks in the NAAFI. Although the bold Boche succeeds in reasoning with the master-spy, a couple of Anzac non-coms (who hate Poms as much as Krauts) are not fooled, leading to a spectacular chase and frantically thrilling conclusionâ€¦

That hilarious comedy of terrors was quickly topped by a superbly delightful and trenchantly wicked adult farce in ‘Straight and Narrow’ wherein Udo, disgusted with the mockery his effeminate boss engenders amongst other German units, determines to get his boss laid by a woman – specifically the very willing and professional ladies of local bordello â€œThe Cedarsâ€.

Aiding and abetting this appalling scheme is Pfirsich’s one true love, wild man Luftwaffe pilot and airborne inamorata Rosen Kavalier. Even with the more than willing demimondaine Babette in on the scheme and exerting all her professional wiles it takes a chemical â€œadditiveâ€ to finally get the ball rollingâ€¦

Of course the entire vile scheme ends badly and the Peach, crushed, disgusted and humiliated storms off. Soon after however, Babette realises that she’s now eating for twoâ€¦

The reprinted material ends here with the inevitable conclusion in ‘Menschenkind – Child of the World’ as nine months after that epic night Pfirsich – still distant with his staff and boyfriend – drives away the unrepentant Ace. Kavalier storms off and visits The Cedars again, discovering a fascinating piece of newsâ€¦

Although the Peach refuses to listen to his true love, cunning Udo, in on the secret, inveigles his boss into returning to his place of shame, where after another farcical misapprehension of events the Peach is finally introduced to his newborn sonâ€¦

But of course even this joy is tempered by incredible problemsâ€¦

To augment and complete this fabulous triptych of torrid tales there’s a new epilogue ‘Home is Whereâ€¦’ set in the Peach’s declining years, wherein Pfirsich and his adult son Mani play host to a reunion of the 469^th few survivors: a bittersweet vignette which delights and fearfully foreshadows tragedies yet to comeâ€¦

Referencing the same vast story potential as Sgt. Bilko, Hogan’s Heroes, Oh, What a Lovely War! and Catch 22, as well as such tangential films as Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and The Birdcage, the Desert Peach is bawdy, raucous, clever, authentically madcap and immensely engaging. These fabulous combat fruit cocktails were some of the very best comics of the 1990s and still pack the comedic kick of an embroidered landmine, liberally leavened with situational jocularity, accent humour and lots of footnoted Deutsche cuss-words for the kids to learn. Moreover, with this volume the dark bitter edges and cold iron underlying these fabulous characters and their horrific, doomed situation become increasingly apparent.

Illustrated in Barr’s fluidly seductive wood-cut and loose-line style, this book is a must-have for any history-loving, war-hating lover of wit, slapstick, high drama and belly-laughs. All the Desert Peach books are pretty hard to find these days but if you have a Kindle, Robot Comics have just begun to release individual comicbook issues for anybody who can get the hang of all this verfluchte technical tsurisâ€¦
Â© 1991-1994 Donna Barr. All rights reserved. The Desert Peach is â„¢ Donna Barr.

January 21, 2012January 18, 2012

The Complete Crumb Comics volume 3: Starring Fritz the Cat

By Robert Crumb (Fantagraphics Books)
ISBN: 978-0-93019-375-1

Robert Crumb is a unique creative force in the world of cartooning with as many detractors as devotees. His uncompromising, excoriating, neurotic introspections, pictorial rants and invectives unceasingly picked away at societal scabs and peeked behind forbidden curtains for his own benefit, but he has always happily shared his unwholesome discoveries with anybody who takes the time to lookâ€¦

In 1987 Fantagraphics Books began the nigh-impossible task of collating, collecting and publishing the chronological totality of the artist’s vast output and many of those engrossing compendia are now being reissued.

With the material in this third volume the isolated and secretive artist began to break into the wider world as his first great creation escaped from Crumb’s self-published minicomics and into regular paying venuesâ€¦

Once again, if intemperate language, putative blasphemy, cartoon nudity, fetishism and comedic fornication are liable to upset you or those legally responsible for you, stop reading this review right here and don’t buy the book.

The son of a career soldier, Robert Dennis Crumb was born in Philadelphia in 1943 into a functionally broken family. He was one of five kids who all found different ways to escape their parents’ shattering problems and comics were always paramount amongst them.

As had his older brother Charles, Robert immersed himself in the strips and cartoons of the day; not simply reading but feverishly creating his own. Harvey Kurtzman, Carl Barks and John Stanley were particularly influential, but also newspaper artists like E.C. Segar, Gene Ahern, Rube Goldberg, Bud (Mutt and Jeff) Fisher, Billy (Barney Google), De Beck, George (Sad Sack) Baker and Sidney (The Gumps) Smith as well as illustrators like C.E. Brock and the wildly imaginative and surreal 1930’s Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies animated shorts.

Defensive and introspective, young Robert pursued art and slavish self-control through religion with equal desperation. His early spiritual repression and flagrant, hubristic celibacy constantly warred with his body’s growing needsâ€¦

Escaping his stormy early life, he married young and began working in-house at the American Greeting Cards Company. He discovered like minds in the growing counterculture movement and discovered LSD. In 1967 Crumb relocated to California and became an early star of Underground Commix. As such he found plenty of willing hippie chicks to assuage his fevered mind and hormonal body whilst reinventing the very nature of cartooning with such creations as Mr. Natural, Devil Girl and the star of this particular show, the utterly amoral, unpredictable, almost human Fritz the Catâ€¦

The rest is historyâ€¦

From this point onwards the varied and exponentially impressive breadth of Crumb’s output becomes increasingly riddled with his often hard-to-embrace themes and declamatory, potentially offensive visual vocabulary as his strips grope towards the creator’s long-sought personal artistic apotheosis and this third volume covers material created and published between 1960-1966 as the self-tormented artist began to find a popular following in a strangely changing world.

The mercurial pictorial parade is preceded by another fascinating reminiscence from life-long friend Marty Pahls describing ‘The First Girl That Came Along’â€¦

Crumb’s early artistic style was utterly transformed by the introduction of Rapidograph mapping pens and ‘Fritz the Cat, Ace Salesman’ (August 1964) has a raw, mesmerising scratchy linearity that belies the subversive sexual undercurrent of the piece, after which the feline philanderer went hard-core in ‘Fritz Comes on Strong’ (published in satire magazine Help! #22, January 1965). From the same issue ‘Harlem: a Sketchbook Report’ displayed the artist’s gift for visual reportage.

Fritz appeared in the silent and extremely trenchant bobbysoxer strip ‘Fred, the Teen-age Girl Pigeon’ (Help! #24, May 1965), whilst ‘Fritz Bugs Out’ (Cavalier, October 1964-February 1965) found the cat misbehaving in a Bohemian college setting before setting out on an extended hippie-style vision-quest whilst three dumb-show episodes of ‘The Silly Pigeons’ (November 1964-March 1965) perfectly display the creator’s hardwired slapstick roots.

‘Bulgaria: a Sketchbook Report’ (Help! #25, July 1965) saw the artist turn his probing pens on a Cold-War alien culture after which ‘Fritz the Cat, Special Agent for the CIA’ (March-May 1965) perfectly parodied the political scene and the planet’s fascination with suave super-spies. Next up are three more, increasingly surreal, snippets from ‘The Silly Pigeons’ (Spring 1965) and a swift swipe at the modern working woman in ‘Roberta’ (Spring 1965). Working in the production department of a vast greetings card company gave the insular Crumb access to new toys and new inspiration and he would return repeatedly to the white-collar world to for inspiration and pictorial spleen-ventingâ€¦

‘Fritz the Cat, Magician’ (Summer 1965, and published in Promethean Enterprises #3, 1971) is a sweetly seductive puff-piece whilst the exigencies of earning a little extra cash clearly influenced the speculative pieces ‘Guitar Models of the Future’ (Yell #3, September 1965), Topps Promotional Booklet ‘The Road to Success’ (Fall 1965), ‘Illustrations for Nostalgia Enterprises’ (Fall 1965), ‘The Heap Years of the Auto’ (intended for Nostalgia Illustrated, Fall 1965) and ‘The Small Small Businessman’ (again intended for Nostalgia Illustrated, Fall 1965): all showing Crumb’s versatility, passion for the past and imagination.

‘Punchlines for Color Cards’ features the interior messages for the artworks amongst the large Colour Section which opens here with a spectacular succession of sketches designated ‘Letter to Marty Pahls’ (covering April 4^th, June 3^rd, October 30^th 1960, May 28^thand November 5^th 1961), after which two ‘Cards to Mike Britt’ (December 1963-January 1964) are followed by the wonderful covers for ‘Fritz Bugs Out’ (February 1965), ‘Agent of the CIA’ (March 1965) and ‘Roberta’ (Spring 1965).

Swiftly following are the aforementioned ‘Selected Topps Monster Greetings Cards’ (Fall 1965) and general ‘Cards for American Greetings’ (1964-1966) which close the rainbow section. Back in black and white another ‘Card to Mike Britt’ precedes the ‘Cover for Fug #1’ (Fall 1965) and the untitled group sex-romp ‘Fritz the Cat’ intended for that debut Fug, before a copious collection of ‘Greetings Cards for American Greetings’ (1964-1966) and the ‘Cover for Gooseberry’ #2 (Fall 1965) complete this meander through the Master’s formative years.

If Crumb had been able to suppress his creative questing he could easily have settled for a lucrative career in any one of a number of graphic disciplines from illustrator to animator to jobbing comic book hack, but as this pivotal collection readily proves, the artist was haunted by the dream of something else – he just didn’t yet know what that wasâ€¦

Crumb’s subtle mastery of his art-form and obsessive need to reveal his most hidden depths and every perceived defect – in himself and the world around him – has always been an unquenchable fire of challenging comedy and riotous rumination and this chronicle begins to show his growing awareness of where to look.

This superb series charting the perplexing pen-and-ink pilgrim’s progress is the perfect vehicle to introduce any (over 18) newcomers to the world of grown up comics. And if you need a way in yourself, seek out these books and the other fifteen as soon as conceivably possibleâ€¦
Introduction Â© 1988 Marty Pahls. Greetings cards Â© 1964, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1988 American Greetings Corporation. Monster Greetings trading cards Â© 1965 Topps Bubble Gum, Inc. All other contents Â© 1964, 1965, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1974, 1988 Robert Crumb. All rights reserved.

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