Slab Comix #1
Created by and available for $3.00 from John Miers (plot assist from Jon McLean)
I get the weirdest stuff in the mail. Not that this is always a bad thing.
Slab Comix will not knock you out with its dazzling production values, profound creative innovation, or insightful, penetrating commentary on what it is to be human in the early part of the 21st Century.
Slab Comix will not remind you of the work of Harvey Kurtzman, Frank Miller, James Kochalka, Paul Hornschemeier, or Drew Weing. Well, all right, maybe Weing, but only just a tiny bit.
What Slab Comix is, and I know you're dying to know by now, is a 32-page magazine-sized small press effort created with Microsoft Word and Paint and focusing primarily on jokes about farting, sex, and a large bowel movement that comes back to haunt its creator.
So no, you're not going to be thinking that John Miers is following in the footsteps of other British greats like Alan Moore, Warren Ellis and Garth Ennis. Well, all right, maybe Ennis, but only just a tiny bit.
Honestly, the primative approach Miers employs here to tell this little story almost kept me from reading past the cover. But, you know, I've used Paint to do bizarre shit sometimes, and I was curious what Miers was capable of given the limitations of the program. Turns out, it's a pretty funny story.
The key, I think, is the way in which the Slab-people of the tale communicate. This is a wordless tale, but there are speech balloons, filled with iconic images. When the lead character tells someone that his boss is a dickhead, in the speech balloon is a Slab-person with a dick coming out of his head. Crude, but effective. It made me laugh, anyway. It's funnier than if told more straightforwardly with words, because somewhere in the micro-second it takes to translate the icons, there's that moment of surprise and delight. Miers pulls this off on virtually every page.
There's no one, probably not even Miers, that will tell you this is Great Art, or even Great Comics. But you know, I get a lot of weird stuff in the mail, and usually the funny ones aren't very funny. This one is. E-mail Myers at the link above and get in on the joke. Grade: 3.5/5.