Comic Update, May 11, 1995 (Matt Feazell, Wilson the Bum)
ROLLER 666
C O M I C U P D A T E
FREE! Internet Edition May 11, 1995
R E V I E W S
conducted by h0ly joe
Board of Superheros 1, 50c. Minicomic, 8 pgs. Matt Feazell, 3867
Bristow, Detroit MI 48212.
I first was introduced to Matt Feazell back in the '80's, as I trudged
down a windblown street. I saw a minicomic lying in the gutter. At first
I thought it was just another one of Roller's pubs, as I am always seeing
those in the gutter (where they belong!)...or jammed into toilets in
public restrooms...or sometimes I'll come across one of Roller's pubs in
the little girl's lavatory at the school where I work as a janitor.
(Don't ask me how it got in there.)
Anyway, it turns out this particular pub was one of those rare gems put
out by Matt Feazell. Unlike one of Roller's pubs, this one had been
carefully preserved in a hermetically sealed plastic bag, complete with
acid-free backer board. Obviously, some unfortunate collector had lost
part of his prized collection. I picked the zine up. I thought about
advertising it in the lost and found section of our local paper, but lust
and greed quickly possessed my mind! I tore the comic out of its plastic
bag and quickly devoured its contents. Then I took it to the bank, where
I was able to exchange it for a crisp $100.00 bill! I spent the night at
the Holiday Inn, masturbating over the Playboy channel. Ah, life!
Board of Superheros is yet another of Matt's beautifully rendered
minicomics. He's always been the best mini-maker of the genre. In the
mid-80's his books had a clean but punk rock "sketchpad" feel to them.
Then, in the late 80's, as he picked up work selling stickmen to the
mainstream press, his work became downright beautiful. The beauty
remains.
Board's story is a fairly clever "corporate politics" tale. Boardman
goes on sabbatical and leaves Stickboy in charge, who quickly mires his
superhero employees in mindless paperwork. With regard to the final
panel, I would have written "No Smoking Breaks," instead of "No Smoking On
Breaks." I don't understand why Mr. Stickboy would want to prohibit
smoking on breaks. However, prohibiting smoking breaks seems an excellent
idea, since that is when his employees spoke unkindly of him.
Comic Update 140, 141, 55c each. Minicomic, 8 pages. Frank G. Lloyd Jr.,
P.O. Box 486, Richwood, W.V. 26261-0486. [The current issue of Comic
Update is number 178. It is available from Jim Corrigan, P.O. Box 3663,
Phenix City AL 36868. It is free for a SASE.]
Comic Update is the oldest living small press reviewzine. Begun in
August 1986 by the immortal Andrew Roller, Update has struggled through
various publishers over the years and, amazingly, has been published on a
rigorously consistent basis. These are statements that can be made of no
other zine in the comics small press. Yet, for all its fortitude, Update
has continually been subscribed to by less people than almost any other
reviewzine. It's probably had more publishers in its lifetime than
subscribers.
This is not to say that Update has passed unnoticed through the comics
world. Nearly everyone in small press has written at least one nasty
letter to Update (all published, with spelling errors pointed out by
Roller's remorseless sic). Both the mighty and the unknown have been
excoriated in Update's pages. Update was even investigated in a
face-to-face confrontation by the F.B.I.
The Update tradition of potent, even toxic commentary on the small press
continues in this latest pair of issues. Lynn Hansen takes Andrew
Roller's Naughty Naked Dreamgirls #11 to task for "not set[ting] a good
example for younger readers...who may practice sex indiscriminately...and
so get AIDS." Lloyd delivers a short but devastatingly humorous editorial
against Comics F/X, and even manages to liken Ian Shires to Jeffrey
Dahlmer.
Dockery provides insight to the life and recent death of Freddy Mercury
as a part of his regular "Like a Monkey on My Back" column in Update.
Whether you knew or cared about this singer, Dockery's writing
(particularly in this installment of his column) struck me as absolutely
fascinating. Mike Taylor is present with his prickly review column in
Update #140. Taylor is an excellent addition to the Update team, still a
relative newcomer, having been with this zine for only about 35 issues.
The mainstay of Update, of course, is Lynn Hansen, with his educated,
well-rounded reviews of both small press and independent comics. I would
suggest to Brooks, Dockery, Roller, and whoever else is involved in
Fugitive Factsheet that they get Hansen on their team. His prescient
reviews of independent comics are just what Fugitive Factsheet needs to
get into mainstream comics stores. But then, I'm just a newcomer. For a
cup of coffee I'll review anything, even a comic by William Dockery.
Green Ringlets, 50c. Minicomic, eight pages. William Dockery, P.O. Box
3663, Phenix City, AL 36868.
A chapbook, from whence the first poem provides the title. Each book
apparently comes with a free coffee stain. (Mine did, anyway.)
Care for some disjointed images, rendered with varying degrees of
proficiency, complete with a bizarre, Egyptian pharaoh cover? This is the
book for you. There's a poem about the south and several about females.
I could write this thing up really good, but I'm full. I had to feed the
hamburger Dockery threw over the bridge to me to a cat. It was lukewarm,
anyway. If I'm to work for food, Dockery, it has to be hot. Anyway, the
onion rings were good. For those I'll quoth several of his better lines:
"Answers like seeds being dispersed into
"the breeze...
"...We stood in the marsh of reeds...
"...The Science Ladies
"wandering inside my soul (pg. 5)."
There ya go. Thank God Wilson quit publishing.
felt, 50c postpaid. Minicomic, eight pages. William Dockery, P.O. Box
3663, Phenix City, AL 36868.
On the back cover of this tome is written the words, "Second Printing."
I was going to joke that with Dockery, this means my copy is not only the
second printing but the second copy. However, this damn thing is actually
very well written. Maybe he did actually print more than one copy in the
first printing, and sold out!
felt begins poorly, but picks up at the top of page four. Then things
really get going at the bottom of page four, and the lines roll on through
thunderous poetic crescendoes right to the end. There are amazing images
here; Tatumville park, the memory of Tracy, the father who's "a grey cat,"
even a lake of disappearing paths.
I highly recommend this chapbook on two counts, as a stunning book of
poems and as a sample of the best the comics small press has to offer.
C O M I C U P D A T E S T O R I E S
The Fading Universe
Part One
by Andrew Roller
Chapter One
"Well, I think it's immoral," the fat boy said.
"We did it anyway."
"Yeah, Marv; but, I mean, think of all the innocent little children we
killed. And we didn't even get her."
Marvin yawned.
The steel girder jutted awkwardly out over the bice blue pool. The two
boys sat perched atop it, fishing.
"How could Perry have known the police chief's daughter would be playing
hooky the day we blew up the elementary school?" Marvin asked defensively.
"You ought to be our boss instead of Perry."
Marvin shook his head. "No, Flaherty. Perry may have syphilis, but he's
still the best strategist the tunnels have ever seen. Do you think I
could have mapped out that escape route we took after we blew up the
school?"
"People bomb buildings all the time."
"Yeah, but they don't sit across the street on lawn chairs and watch,"
Marvin protested. "They watch it on the evening news. Or read about it
in the paper."
"I've got one," Flaherty announced, suddenly distracted from the
discussion. The chubby youth shifted to his knees and reeled in the line.
"Feels pretty big."
Suddenly the line snapped. Flaherty let out a yelp as he toppled
forward. Marvin grabbed the back of his checked shirt and, straining,
pulled the chubby boy upright.
"Damn. Fuck! What a cheap line." Flaherty glared at the water.
Marvin reeled in his own line and cast it out farther. He chewed
absently on a wad of gum as he slowly drew the line back toward shore.
It was hard to tell Marvin's age. His face had been charred in a fire
when he was 12. He appeared to have a receding hair line; thin patches of
hair were all that had ever grown back through the portion of his scalp
that crowned his forehead. Only the hairless, sculpted chest between the
unzipped halves of his tattered mulatto vest hinted that he was a teen.
"Hey! She's gone!"
Marvin and Flaherty glanced over their shoulders at Perry; a skinny boy
running in frantic circles amidst the banks of equipment that stood in
silent clumps, their glowing frames stretching to the ceiling that arched
over the lake.
"What I don't understand," Flaherty continued, "is how someone who
dotes on little girls, like Perry, could bear to blow up an elementary
school? I mean, there must have been dozens of pretty little things who
attended that institution."
"I believe you're turning into a pedophile, Flaherty."
"No I'm not, Marv. But I am empathetic."
A girl with luxurious shoulder-length hair and sunglasses stepped down
out of a battered delivery truck.
"I'm glad your little girlfriend ran away. You shouldn't be fucking
5-year-olds," the 15-year-old brunette snapped at Perry.
"She's not 5, she's 8," Perry, his own eyes hidden behind a pair of
shades, retorted.
"If you ask me, she's run away for good," Marvin called out.
Perry spun on his heels and stomped off between the racks. His
retreating figure carried with it an air of the ridiculous. He wore the
threadbare remains of what had once been a splendid suit; and he had run
outside without first pulling on his trousers. His bony legs were white
and hairy, his black dress socks sagged beneath his ankles.
Marvin laughed to himself. The shadowed recesses of the metal cavern
echoed as Perry took out his frustration on the stoic columns of
machinery. Auxiliary lines cut in automatically, bypassing the damaged
circuits. A few shafts flickered and died.
Countless generations had abused the corridors and their contents.
Doubtless many more would. Perhaps they had a right to. After all, it
was man himself who, ever increasing the number of his species, filled the
universe with a latticework of metal tunnels; fenced in the stars and
harnessed their power to feed the inhabitants of billions upon billions of
tiny apartments all bursting with happy, productive people. Or so the
story went. The one Marvin had read once in a book. Today nobody really
knew anything about life before the War. During the dim centuries since
that cataclysm the ancients' only legacy had become the metal catacombs;
glowing with the feeble incandescence of emergency power.
"Ouch! I cut my foot," Perry whined. He hobbled out from behind a rack,
his sock torn and dripping blood.
Elsa glanced at him contemptuously, tossed back her hair, and strode over
to the beam that held Marvin and Flaherty above the deep pond.
"Let's get out of here," Elsa said to Marvin. "If Perry's little squeeze
finds her way back to the city she'll lead the cops straight to this
lake."
"Perry," Marvin called. "Let's get going."
"Can't," Perry said. "Harrigan and Frankie are still off somewhere
frigging."
"Fags," Flaherty scoffed.
"We'd better find 'em, then," Marvin said. "I'd rather see those two die
from AIDS than from the electric chair."
Ten minutes later Frankie and Harrigan were led stumbling out of a nook
between the racks. Harrigan was clumsily divesting himself of the bondage
gear which had restrained his six foot figure while Frankie, still
playing, nipped the man's ankles with a riding crop.
"You've got a semen stain on your pants," Elsa remarked to Harrigan.
"Is that out of fashion, dearie?" Harrigan asked Elsa. His voice was
deceptively deep for a homosexual. But it matched his bald pate, puffy
cheeks, and gap-toothed smile. Harrigan was always smiling, in a stupid
sort of way, his eyes squinting behind his smeared, circular, gold-rimmed
spectacles.
Marvin grinned at Harrigan. "You think you could loan that get-up to
Elsa this evening?"
"No way," Elsa said.
"Can't lend it," Frankie piped up. "Harrigan's been powerfully naughty
and I must punish him all night tonight." Frankie was quite forward for
his size. A dwarf, he stood only three and a half feet tall, and the
oversized red wool ski cap atop his head only emphasized his childlike
aspect. The sleeves of his pullover sweater were rolled up to the elbow
of the fabric, but Frankie's fingers barely managed to clear the cuff.
Frankie continued to cavort about Harrigan as the man seated himself
behind the wheel of the van and started the engine, wrapping a cord around
Harrigan's thick neck in a playful attempt to strangle him. Marvin sat
nonchalantly in the seat beside Harrigan. He gazed through the cracked
windshield at the chromium walls that snaked away into eternal twilight.
Behind him Perry was quoting to Elsa from St. Jerome. Flaherty popped
open a can of beer and gulped down its contents as he rummaged through a
set of makeshift wooden cabinets for a snack.
C O M I C U P D A T E N E W S
presented by holy joe
WILSON THE BUM
There are three types of homeless people in this world. There is the
Hobo, which is a migratory worker. Then there is the Tramp, which is a
migratory non-worker. Finally, there is the Bum, which is a non-migratory
non-worker. This I learned recently from my researches at the Phenix City
library. Learning this, I decided to investigate certain personalities of
the small press, to see which category they fit into (and to justify
peeking into Carol Horny's window!)
Rick Howe - a Hobo. Migrating from South Carolina to Columbus, with
plans to move on to Sacramento, but working at McDonald's.
John Jones - a Tramp. Migrating from Philly to a trailer park in Phenix
City, never gainfully employed (except by the government), and always one
step ahead of the law due to his "art" photos.
p.d. Wilson - a Bum. Never going anyplace, and never working either. (I
think he accidentally wired himself to his junkyard computer and can't get
loose, but that's no excuse.)
Carol Horny - Welfare Queen, and purveyor of living room performance art
porno shows, which she doesn't know has a nationwide audience, thanks to
my VHS Handicam.
A. Holer - I was going to list this AOL a-hole as a Bum, but recently he
threw away all his Penthouses and became gainfully employed! (As the
Regional Coordinator of the Boy Love Society.)
NOTE: The premier issue of Comic Update is posted on
alt.comics.alternative. It is the issue for May 10th. It consists of
three parts: COMIC UPDATE (Part One), COMIC UPDATE (PART TWO), and COMIC
UPDATE (PART THREE OF THREE).
ROLLER PUBLICATIONS Founded 1972. Continuously publishing since 1986.
Send a stamped, self-addressed return envelope (preferably a greeting
card-type envelope) to us for the latest FREE hardcopy issues. (Including
material never seen on the Internet!)
Or send $1.00 cash and we will supply the envelope. Order from: Jim
Corrigan, P.O. Box 3663, Phenix City, AL 36868.
Send comix, news, letters, and poems to Jim Corrigan.
Our titles:
COMIC UPDATE The latest small press comix news and reviews.
NAUGHTY NAKED DREAMGIRLS Sex kittens in compromising positions.
(Include an age statement-18 or over.)
DREAMGIRLS WITH SHAMAN America's most popular poetry zine. ALL poets
are urged to contribute frequently!
THE ORATOR Militant views by misguided mortals.
END OF TRANSMISSION
Will Dockery
> Andrew Roller Presents
> C O M I C U P D A T E
> FREE! Internet Edition May 11, 1995
>
> R E V I E W S
> conducted by h0ly joe
Early Usenet appearance of Will Dockery:
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rec.arts.comics.marketplace/TbaNE0W5xPU/oNIVxNMLFasJ
> Dockery provides insight to the life and recent death of Freddy Mercury
> as a part of his regular "Like a Monkey on My Back" column in Update.
> Whether you knew or cared about this singer, Dockery's writing
> (particularly in this installment of his column) struck me as absolutely
> fascinating.
> But then, I'm just a newcomer. For a
> cup of coffee I'll review anything, even a comic by William Dockery.
>
> Green Ringlets, 50c. Minicomic, eight pages. William Dockery, P.O. Box
> apparently comes with a free coffee stain. (Mine did, anyway.)
> Care for some disjointed images, rendered with varying degrees of
> proficiency, complete with a bizarre, Egyptian pharaoh cover? This is the
> book for you. There's a poem about the south and several about females.
> I could write this thing up really good, but I'm full. I had to feed the
> hamburger Dockery threw over the bridge to me to a cat. It was lukewarm,
> anyway. If I'm to work for food, Dockery, it has to be hot. Anyway, the
> onion rings were good. For those I'll quoth several of his better lines:
>
> "Answers like seeds being dispersed into
> "the breeze...
> "...We stood in the marsh of reeds...
> "...The Science Ladies
> "wandering inside my soul (pg. 5)."
>
> There ya go. Thank God Wilson quit publishing.
>
> felt, 50c postpaid. Minicomic, eight pages. William Dockery, P.O. Box
> I was going to joke that with Dockery, this means my copy is not only the
> second printing but the second copy. However, this damn thing is actually
> very well written. Maybe he did actually print more than one copy in the
> first printing, and sold out!
> felt begins poorly, but picks up at the top of page four. Then things
> really get going at the bottom of page four, and the lines roll on through
> thunderous poetic crescendoes right to the end. There are amazing images
> here; Tatumville park, the memory of Tracy, the father who's "a grey cat,"
> even a lake of disappearing paths.
> I highly recommend this chapbook on two counts, as a stunning book of
> poems and as a sample of the best the comics small press has to offer.
Also included were "scandal sheet" style news items on local real life celebrities in the Columbus-Phenix City music/art/poetry scene of the 1990s.
> C O M I C U P D A T E N E W S
> presented by holy joe
>
> WILSON THE BUM
>
> There are three types of homeless people in this world. There is the
> Hobo, which is a migratory worker. Then there is the Tramp, which is a
> migratory non-worker. Finally, there is the Bum, which is a non-migratory
> non-worker. This I learned recently from my researches at the Phenix City
> library. Learning this, I decided to investigate certain personalities of
> the small press, to see which category they fit into (and to justify
> peeking into Carol Horny's window!)
> Rick Howe - a Hobo. Migrating from South Carolina to Columbus, with
> plans to move on to Sacramento, but working at McDonald's.
> John Jones - a Tramp. Migrating from Philly to a trailer park in Phenix
> City, never gainfully employed (except by the government), and always one
> step ahead of the law due to his "art" photos.
> p.d. Wilson - a Bum. Never going anyplace, and never working either. (I
> think he accidentally wired himself to his junkyard computer and can't get
> loose, but that's no excuse.)
> my VHS Handicam.
> A. Holer - I was going to list this AOL a-hole as a Bum, but recently he
> threw away all his Penthouses and became gainfully employed! (As the
> Regional Coordinator of the Boy Love Society.)
>
> NOTE: The premier issue of Comic Update is posted on
> alt.comics.alternative. It is the issue for May 10th. It consists of
> three parts: COMIC UPDATE (Part One), COMIC UPDATE (PART TWO), and COMIC
> UPDATE (PART THREE OF THREE).
>
> ROLLER PUBLICATIONS Founded 1972. Continuously publishing since 1986.
>
--
Music & poetry from Will Dockery & Friends:
http://www.reverbnation.com/willdockery
--