MEAT CAKE #15

FANTAGRAPHICS BOOKS

CARTOONIST: Dame Darcy

32 pp., B&W, $3.95

Published by Fantagraphics Books since 1993, Dame Darcy’s comic book series, MEAT CAKE, reflects both the diversity and eclecticism of Fantagraphics’ line of comic books, graphic novels, and reference books and the cartoonist herself.  Meat Cake #15 personifies everything that makes the series so distinct and uncommon.

Darcy, who is also a musician, performer, and filmmaker, is a storyteller who mixes whimsy with poignancy, but nearly ever page of her comix has a tongue-in-cheek, offbeat sensibility.  It’s as if while she wows us with the sheer scope of her ideas and the genres her work encompasses, Darcy doesn’t think we should take it too seriously.  Her work is like a mixture of Edward Gorey and Ed Wood and a combination of Charles Addams and Charlie Kaufman.

Issue #15 opens with a story featuring two of Darcy’s regulars, Richard Dirt and Friend the Girl (both are women), partaking in a whacky contest in, “The Zombie Survival Test.”  In “The Red Bird,” a woman uses a self-induced dream state to relieve herself of the fear she’s felt since being sexually assaulted.  There is also an excerpt, entitled “Gasoline,” from what is apparently a graphic novel in progress.

Darcy also gives us four pages of raw food recipes (“Raw food is fairy food” she informs us) and assorted add-ons.  Every page, including the indicia on the inside front cover, “Letters” page, and products page on the inside back cover, Darcy letters herself in her decorative and lavish script.  It truly makes Meat Cake seem like a hand-made affair, giving it the kind of personal touch Dame Darcy devotees surely dig.

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