By:
Herb Mallette, Ben Dunn, Bavaria Radio, James Hanrahan, Mike
Cogliandro
Occasionally,
you encounter a work of unrecognized brilliance, a story who’s true
quality went unnoticed, a tale resigned to lurk amidst the dusty,
unkempt corners of a book shop until--oh rapture!--the gentle hand of
gossamer fate directs you to the slighted title, and
voila:
you discover the unjustly unnoticed volume and introduce it to a
world waiting to be inspired.
Now
is not one of those times.
Extremely
Silly Comics is like every movie ever made by the staff of Saturday
Night Live. It seems funny on the outside, but boredom lurks within.
I found ESC on the bargain table at the local comics shop and
couldn’t resist. It seemed so promising, so deliciously indie, so
underground. The cover guaranteed a rash of humorous yarns, and while
the book didn’t make me laugh, the cheap ink did make my hands
swell up.
ESC
#1 was made in 1986, and it shows. There are references to
Aliens
and a caricature of Ronald Reagan on the back cover. There are also a
number of stories about giant rats, a duel between household
cleaners, and a very uncomfortable prostate exam administered by the
Grim Reaper. I know what you’re thinking: with ideas like these,
how could they go wrong? Again, like Saturday Night Live, a funny
concept doesn’t always entail funny execution.
The
issue’s two best vignettes, “Machine Gun Belly” and “Mr Clean
Goes Berserk,” should have been better. “Machine Gun Belly”
tells the story of an overweight gangster who accidentally freezes to
death in a warehouse full of Bacon flavored ice cream. Mixing
hilariously outdated 1920s vocabulary with fat jokes could have been
funny. Instead, the gags are uniformly tired, and the pencils fail to
carry any comedic weight (no pun intended). “Mr. Clean Goes
Berserk” is better, thanks to the mixture of concept
(obsessive-compulsive cleaning mascot) and art. The pencils, by
Bavaria Radio and Ben Dunn, are brilliantly manic, and funnier if you
don’t read the accompanying dialogue.
Do
I regret having purchased Extremely Silly Comics? No, dear reader,
because it was a mere 25 cents. It was also an interesting trip to a
different era of comics when underground, I suspect, was much more…
undergroundy… than it is today. That said, the next time fate tries
to drag me to the bargain table, I’m going to kick her in the
pants.
Worth
the money? You’re probably not going to find it anywhere, so no
real point in addressing this…