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STRIPBURGER #36
Various
(Stripburger c/o Stripcore / Forum Ljubljana / Metelkova 6/I / SI - 1000 Ljubljana / SLOVENIA. Web:
www.ljudmila.org/stripcore/com.htm. Distributed through
Top Shelf in the US and
others elsewhere)
Review by Mark Campos
After compiling last year's massive
Warburger anthology, the editors of
Stripburger pronounced themselves "dehydrated and poor", yet have returned with another mindbending collection. This one leads off with the third installment of "Bosnian Flat Dog" by Lars Sjunnsson and Max Andersson, which ranges across a bizarre postwar Bosnian landscape cluttered with the eponymous dogs, Marshall Tito's genetic code, ice cream missles, and the Eurovision Song Contest. There's an interview with M.S. Bastien (which is helpfully translated in an English language enclosure/catalog); also a Bastien story wherein his trademark inky people brandish handguns and McDonald's drink cups: a nightmare vision of New York City.
And, speaking of NYC, Helge Neumann's nod to Gary Panter places a Jimbo-like guy in a speeding bus which crashes into a double tower, mobilizing its prayer and rifle obsessed occupants to war. It's a surprisingly effective allegory.
There is non-political fun from Xavier Robel, Mahler, Malin Biller, and others. Add a fine silkscreen cover by Nadia Raviscioni, and whimsical endpapers by Thomas Ott (one's even a variant on the "angry housewife with rolling pin" gag!), and you're set.
Not only will your purchase of the latest
Stripburger nab you a satisfying wedge of the latest art from Eastern Europe and elsewhere, you'll help the editors enrich themselves, or at the very least rehydrate.
[ Link to this review ]
