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Showing posts from January, 2012

Tim Hensley: Wally Gropius

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Fantagraphics - 2011 Forgive the "Look Inside" via Amazon.  But perhaps if you can overlook wandering graphics, you can fully appreciate the latest in misappropriated visual language which is "Wally Gropius."  A mutation of the Herge' style and Richie Rich idiom, we are taken to the highest absurdities of upper-class living, which ends up being a cutting insight into upper-middle class meandering in America.  Its printing coincides with the CG film adaptation of Tintin--  perhaps not a coincidence, seeing as Hensley hails from the belly of the beast, Los Angeles. We see our leading man bear the cross of housing foreclosure conspirator, stock market cry-baby, and Illuminati vampire.  He is paired with a terrible band while during practice he casually ponders, "how much money will it lose?"  The humor stems thematically from excess and its applications.  We are challenged with overgrown subject matter in a style designed for children.  I was actually

Aapo Rapi - Naaburger

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Huuda Huuda - 2009 This little gem was a small, oblong, glossy zine presented in glorious post Fritz-The-Cat trip glow, by an artist from Finland.  Huuda Huuda, a great publisher of rugged illustration and psychedelic exploration stories, does their work mostly in their obscure native language but translates a few stories in English.  I decided to do a review of this work because it touches on my favorite themes: ennui, existential decay, and desolation through humorous idiom. Our main character resembles Homer Simpson, with the same jelly-like physique and primatial facial structure.  There is something pathologically dense in his conduct.  The first dozen or so scenes involve him wandering from one meat-pie truck to another along a deserted forest road, striking up banal conversations with the cooks and eventually getting punched in the face. Speaking of which, I don't know what a meat-pie is, but I assume it's your typical blue-collar meat/gruel/slop.  Pe