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CHAOS #19 & 20
by Dave Gilbert
(
members.cox.net/usurptoe)
Reviewed by Mark CamposDavey Oil, project coordinator at Seattle's Zine Archive & Publishing Project (
ZAPP) sighed a little when he noticed the art in these comics had that greyscale dotting around the line art – the art had been scanned before printing. The romance of copier and glue has given way to the scanner and the laserprinter.
Which is significant, because if you changed the topical references, changed the caricature of the President from Bush to Reagan, these pages would not have seemed out of place in, say, one of George DiCaprio's minicomics of the Eighties – it's a style that has always been around, and one day we'll be reading this sort of story via micro-optic methane laser. Broad political satire, at its best drawn by Fly and Peter Kuper and at its worst by every kid who drew Bush in a Nazi military uniform with pointy teeth.
The balance of these pages are concerned with Chuckles, an evil clown who gets declared an Iraq war hero or something and goes on Jay Leno's show. (George's son Leonardo makes an appearance.) The anarchic Chuckles revels in post-Milk and Cheese mayhem but his adventures are too talky for my tastes. "To Kill a Slot Jockey" and "Titty Vision" (God help me) were pretty funny though.
I read this through once, then off it went to the ZAPP Library, where future scholars of the craft of zining will find it if they want to.
[ Link to this review ]
