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COCO PUMPERNICKEL
($2-3.00 ppd from Kat Meow (Aherza) / 20 Jamieson Cres. / Brampton, Ontario / L6S 3W3 / CANADA)
Review by Mark Campos
The reviewer is conflicted. On the one hand, he would like to say nice things about this book, as it seems to be Kat's first, and one wants to encourage new talent. On the other hand, he was deeply disturbed by the thing.
The story's a rambling tale of a guy forced at gunpoint to marry an ugly, blobby girl by her incestuous father; the guy dresses in the girl's clothes and escapes, is picked up by some serial murderers. Necrophilia, crucifixions, Oedipal foot wounds, suicides, and chainsaws occur: all odds and sods from the Grand Guignol array, down to the crucifix hanging from the serial killer's rear view mirror.
All this is detailed in a Pentel-etched style that is so hyperrendered it's like woodgrain. I think she's drawing a capella, that is without pencilling first, like Jennifer Daydreamer; and like early Daydreamer her writing is unique but her art is not there yet. What happens at the end is unclear to me, and there are a few panels where I can't figure out what the hell is going on. Still, in no other comic are you going to hear a guy begging his would-be assassin, "Please, please don't shoot my pastry ass." 32 pages from any newcomer is noteworthy, so check it out if you don't offend easily, and keep tabs on Kat's work – with the burnishment of time, she could wind up in the pantheon.
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