Graffic Traffic
by Ryk McIntyre
The unarguable down-side to First Amendment rights is that, logically, the benefits must extend to everyone. Not just to our avant-confrontational performance artist friends, but also the Nazi down the street. To protect our rights is to protect all rights. It’s just that sometimes it’s not pretty.
Which brings us to the self-published Boiled Angel (Michael Hunt Publishing/P.O. Box 226, Bensenville, IL/60106) and the woeful ballad of Mike Diana. A few years back, Boiled Angel so enraged local officials that they brought up Mr. Diana on three counts of publishing, distributing, and advertising obscene materials. After the media circus that ensued, Mike found himself fined $3000, ordered to do 1300 hours community service, to stay at least 10 ft. away from anyone under 18, (there’s the drumroll, but here’s the crash symbol) and not allowed to draw anything that could be deemed offensive. But it gets worse, because to enforce that bit of creative house arrest, Police were given the right to search his house, at anytime, without consent, warrant, or prior notice. So was it worth it? Is the creation deserving of his martyrdom? Don’t ask me – I couldn’t stomach the stuff, mostly. Not that the mutilations are too graphic (they are…), or the humor too cruel (it is…), it’s simply juvenile for the most part. Sledgehammer satire, tactless cruelty of a disturbingly accurate nature, bathroom sensibility; all that and pornographic re-writes of Christmas Carols. Sort of Andrew Dice Clay meets G.G. Allin. But it’s not a total loss of $16.95, the appropriately sealed in plastic trade paperback comes with a free 17 song CD of music to read Boiled Angel by, a bonus by anyone’s measure. Or maybe just one more swing o’ the sledgehammer.
That out of the way, I excitedly perused Fleener #1 (Zongo/Mary Fleener – words, pictures/$2.95) For years, Mary’s Slutburger was one of the best books done by any of the “self-published stories about me” school of comic artists. While her stuff had a delightful cubism to it, she was also capable of many senses of design. One, which first appeared as a framed piece of gallery art is Slutburger #5, here is expanded upon in 29 straight pages of incredible wordless entertainment. It involves Tiki-looking natives of Kookamonga, a Wish Fish, wild boars, the power of music, visionquests, and a neat boardgame in the centerfold page. Top rate stuff.
More on the cutesy end of the scale is the first collection of Patrick McDonnell’s Mutts, a comic strip that locally appears in the Boston Herald. Goofy and unselfconscious, this is actually an animal strip done right, without the slavish devotion of Fred Bassett or the fey self-awareness of Garfield. Not knowing why they should be natural enemies, Earl (the dog) and Mooch (the cat) simply continue their friendship, trading notes on how to run their humans.
The style is so simple it takes awhile for the fresh expressions and daring line drawings to show what elevates this strip over anything else involving talking, non-anthropomorphic animals.
Lastly this month, DC seems to finally do a good Joker story. I picked up The Joker: Devil’s Advocate, the soft cover edition. Chuck Dixon weaves a story that makes sense, holds together, and more incredibly, actually adds to the Joker persona and to the on-going Joker-Batman entanglement. The story is that, arrested again, the Joker seems to be poisoning people still with Joker venom on postage stamps. Taken to trial, and get this, sentenced to death, it looks like finally all will be finally done with this serial murderer and all around laugh monger. But the Batman believes the Joker is being framed, and as tempted as he is to let the clown fry, his singular sense of Justice won’t allow the Joker to be executed for the one crime he didn’t commit. Taut courtroom and electric chair chamber scenes, authentic mixed feelings amongst all those involved, with the art of Graham Nolan brought out shining by Scott Hana’s inks, and a little twist at the end that makes a sense of Justice tangible.
