The Graves Brothers Deluxe "San Malo"

(Green Cookie Records) Brilliant bad-attitude rock expertly produced by L.A. legends Geza X and Paul Roessler.  World-weary in a totally pissed-off way that’s also very funny, with some of the tastiest slide guitar to slide my way in years.  BONUS: Features PCR ace DJ STOO ODUM on stringed instruments, vocals, and way-offbeat songwriting.

Hot Wire Comics #3

 (Fantagraphics) GUEST REVIEW by Robert Dayton

Ever wonder what happened to all those 90s alt cartoonists? Where did they go? A load of em are in issue 3 of Hotwire Comics, a graphic novel compilation edited by Glenn Head. Have comics improved since the 90s? Or do many of these cartoonists just not seem quite as good as I remember them in my naïve youth? The old ‘revisionism for shock value’-tropes of clowns, hillbillys, and hobos abound in this issue of Hot Wire Comics. There seems to be a lot of aiming for seedy yuks. Lemme dig back through my comic boxes. Ahh. Ya know, some-some, not all- of the artists included here really have a very impressive body of work. What they delver here is slight, even the great and mighty Rick Altergott falls flat with his story of clown lust (tho the art is top drawer as always). The odd tarnished gem peeks through: it’s great to see Mary Fleener’s work again with her autobiographical tale of gun purchasing and Matso ‘s zip-a-tone coloured full-page panels of fanged psychosexuality have a cartoony, nasty sheen that’s a right pleasure to look at.

Night Business issues 1-3, Gangsta Rap Posse by Benjamin Marra

(Traditional Comics) GUEST REVIEW by ROBERT DAYTON

This is 80s. Very 80s. Very 1980s. The covers and interiors have more squiggles and triangles than a Ford Fiesta. Altho it’s a pretty brand spanking new comic book, this is 80s for a coupla reasons.

“Night Business” satisfies where Abel Ferrara’s movie “Fear City” doesn’t. Like that movie, this comic book is about a mysterious psycho murdering strippers in 1980s New York City. “Fear City” –unlike Ferrara’s movies before and after-plays out like a pedestrian compromise. “Night Business” reads like the movies that “Fear City” seemed to want to be: “Maniac”, “New York Ripper”, and “Vice Squad.” Lurid exploitation, pre-Guiliani sleaze, extreme violence mixed with sex, stylized grimy Yanqui Grand Guignol. Street fights and bloody knives. Straight-ahead plots aiming for the gut.

Benjamin Marra has a real sense of knowledge for this specific type of cinema. “Night Business” never lets on, it never winks, total poker face. Tongue covertly in cheek, one can see smoke casually flare out of the nostrils of the unseen caption box narrator. That this is a comic book and not a movie suffices enough to make it more absurd.

There’s another reason why this feels 80s. It could have easily have come out of the black and white comic book glut where everyone was putting out comics trying to cash-in on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle frenzy, some real oddball comics came out of that and this could easily have been one of them. But it is certainly accomplished. There is a deceptive stiffness that works for it giving the comic a crackle of intensity/removal play. The grid form gives the panels a voyeuristic quality. Yet these panels have a rhythmic staccato flow. They occasionally open up for wide shots, such as the sequence of one of the strippers in the ballet studio. All through each of her sweeping movements she looks like a hood ornament. All of the characters themselves seem to be composed of taut, molded clay with faces that look like grinning skulls.

            Issue three of “Night Business” is the best, a real delivery of the goods with extra anchovies as it gets into the satisfying delirium of revenge. A masked lingerie lady zooms around on her motorbike helping strippers by running over their attacker’s heads and leaving a well wrought trail of blood. Gunfire, explosions, pills, heroin. The detective gets deeper into the case. Pimp Donny applies his fingernail ripping torture technique. In terms of pacing, this issue is more advanced. Different vantage points and perspectives for the choreographed action scenes are applied, occasionally breaking it up with some emotional downtime. And a cliffhanger that gets us juiced for issue four. These comics aren’t distributed by Diamond. Diamond pisses me off. Order direct from the artist.

            “Gangsta Rap Posse” is a comic book about a nasty rap group that lives what they rap about to total excess, gun wielding, crack selling, pimping. It takes place in 1991 and -like the 1983 of “Night Business”- Marra gives it the feel of the time.  I pause to ponder, “What would a comic of his set in the present day be like?” (www.traditionalcomics.com)

Dodgem Logic #1

(Dodgem Logic) GUEST REVIEW BY ROBERT DAYTON
Here’s something that should appeal to Roctober readers, a new mag headed by beardickal comick and magick creator Alan Moore that is underground to the core and charmingly so. Agenda: “Clearly what the world needs is a trippy-looking underground mag with a self-confessed agenda of aggressive randomness.”  Priced not to be a money-maker, it‘s a grab-bag of such items as urban gardening tips, recipes, loads and loads of self-expression and community, comics by the likes of Savage Pencil, a history of underground mags, and a history of Northampton music with an accompanying free CD!

This Moment in Black History "Public Square"

(Smog Veil) Heavy, garage-y, noisy, with a good dose of bad attitude and ‘70s rock-isms thrown into the insanity.  About as far from happy hippie music as I can imagine, in the finest bad-ass Midwestern tradition.  This pure distorted adrenaline rush is momentously historical!

My Life in Black and White "Hold the Line"

(Castaway Records) Yee-haw! Sure it’s basic cowpunk (with nicely gravelly vocals) and doesn’t rope every steer on the ballads, but on the faster tunes this really brands my steers.  If you have a hankerin’ for fist-pumping during your do-si-dos, this do-si-does the trick!

TRICLOPS! "Helpers On The Other Side"

(Alternative Tentacles) Hearkens back to those too often forgotten Touch And Go bands from the late ‘80s/early ‘90s, trying to make prog rock safe for the world again.  Being a secret fan of Rush and Yes, I secretly saw nothing wrong with this at all.  This is quirky and original, and filled with crazy energy that never quits. “Tri” it, you’ll like it!

GITAR / Stuffed CD /

(Seeland Records) Mashup insanity on a variety of themes and topics.  Controlled sonic anarchy, in the best sense of that term that I just made up.  One of the most complete and scathing commentaries on the nonsensical detritus that passes for pop culture in this country. Awesome.

Cassette "Shining Like A New Dime"

(Bakery Outlet Records)

 Light but moody cello music that goes from country to folky to quasi-goth-y in ways that hits the spot during those moments when your soul needs the soothing that can only be achieved via mellow cello injection. There’s always room for cello.

You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation: More Comics By Fletcher Hanks

(Fantagraphics) GUEST REVIEW by ROBERT DAYTON

Everybody’s talking Fletcher Hanks, the formerly unknown   golden-age creator of oddball comics. The first collection of the late Hanks’ work, “I Shall Destroy All Civilized Planets”, made a great many top comics  lists when it was released in 2007. This particular volume, “You Shall Die By Your Own Evil Creation”, collects apparently everything else that he did. I naturally expected this book to be less satisfying, unless one is indebted to completism. I was wrong. Being proven wrong can be a tremendous feeling. We certainly get more variations on his main theme: hero steps in to deliver some peculiar sense of vengeance to a mad villain after he has already killed a great many people. There is also a repetition of postures, poses, and expressions. Many characters are variations: both Space Smith and Whirlwind Carter could be the same character, Tabu is the wizard of the jungle while Fantomah is the mystery woman of the jungle. Hanks even signed his work with a variety of interchangeable pseudonyms: Hank Christy, Barclay Flagg, Charles Netcher. But I think this repetition makes for fascinating reading and it may be where the numerous comparisons to Henry Darger actually ring true, as it is kin to traced and collaged pieces incorporated into a unique framework. In the comparison game, Gould and Wolverton also pop-up, partly due to their cartoony infusions in the adventure genre.

            I quite prefer this second volume because it contains the adventures of Big Red McLane, King of The Northwoods. This lumberjack appears from nowhere to commit acts of valour in the corrupt world of logging! Fistfights get rewarded with flapjacks and career advancement. Also included is Hanks’ only Medieval-styled adventure, Tiger Hart of Crossbone Castle, which is more of a jarring anti-climax with some nicely rendered horses. My fave Fantomah adventure is here; a kind, white boy turns evil after eating mysterious drug berries, he grows up to use his giant constrictor to topple buildings, as a result Fantomah’s floating and disembodied pretty-lady/scowling skull-head steps in. In the later Stardust adventures, reprinted here, he recruits an army of young boys clad in skintight outfits just like his own. And the black cover fits quite nicely on the bookshelf next to the white cover of the previous volume.