Comics / Comic Reviews / Comic Strips

Rick Altergott's The Doofus Omnibus

By Leroy Douresseaux
January 31, 2004 - 14:07

For nearly two decades, Rick Altergott has been entertaining select comics enthusiasts with his character Doofus, a short, pudgy, weirdo and jerk who lives in Flowertown, U.S.A. and hangs around with a group of retarded friends who are almost as despicable as he is. THE DOOFUS OMNIBUS is the first book collection of the mostly one-page strips that have appeared in the STRANGER (a Seattle weekly newspaper), Peter Bagge’s HATE, and several comics anthologies. Altergott is the cartoonists’ cartoonist, and has earned many admirers with his alluring comic art – a realist cartooning style that combines 1950’s advertising art with Mort Drucker and the masterful Wally Wood. Any cartoonist whose list of fans includes Daniel Clowes, R. Crumb, Jim Woodring, and Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez is worth noticing.

Doofus, as a character, is hard to take in large does, and at over 100 pages, this book is too much Doofus. Still, it’s hard to stop looking at this fabulous little trade paperback. Doofus is like the car wreck that you have to stop and admire, and Altergott’s work is funny in the vein of work by R. Crumb, such animated TV series as “Family Guy” and “The Simpson,” and the crude but cogent humor of Dave Chappelle. I sincerely hope that I don’t have to wait another 20 years for the second omnibus of Doofus and Altergott.
[DRECK, DULL, READABLE, VERY GOOD, EXCELLENT]

Editor: Kim Thompson

Leroy Douresseaux is a comic book writer and critic based in Louisiana.

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12