UTTER TRASH

UTTER TRASH

by Mike Baron

Krupp, Skull And Crumb: Gore Galore And Fritz, Too_

A certain animosity seems to have grown between the West Coast underground publishers and Krupp Comics Works in Milwaukee, with the former accusing the latter of being the (shudder) Charlton of underground comics. But this bad blood is generated in part by great distances and lack of understanding, plus Krupp’s dogged determination to publish certain stinkers, such as the adolescent wet-dreams of Richard “Grass” Green. There’s nothing wrong with adolescent wet dreams if they show a little imagination and cunning foreplay, but Green’s “Good Jive,” “Super Soul,” and his work for “Shangri-La” are forced and vulgar and the drawings look like the work of Richard Love Longtree, an Ogalala Sioux who used to sit in front of me in the fourth grade in Mitchell, South Dakota, and fill the margins of his social studies book with renderings of Custer’s Last Stand. Richard’s heart was aptlyplaced but his pencilling skill was discouraging.

But Krupp Comics must be allowed their lapses of taste, for in their considerable output they have released much of interest and provided a showcase for a whole bunch of great cartoonists jn the Milwaukee-Chicago area (including Skip Williamson, who broke into the big-time bread by doing some stuff for Playboy; and all because of little old Krupp-Kitchen Sink Enterprises).

One of Krupp’s more perverted contributors is Tim Boxell who draws sketches of sex and death. Boxell has the knack of laying down little slices of flesh and nausea that can keep you up at night. Some of his most powerful stuff is in “Bizarre Sex” with the Denis Kitchen cover, “The Giant Penis That Invaded New York.” The Giant Penis is a wonderful personality and it’s a shame he appears only on the cover. (It is a he, isn’t it?)

One Boxell perversion, “Defiled,” shows an astronaut being raped in the eyes by a horny monstrosity from beyond the stars. A pleasant thought in itself, it’s made all the more powerful by Boxell’s graphic, somewhat tortured style. Boxell magnifies human suffering through subtle exaggeration of facial expressions. This kid must have plowed his way through a stack of EC horror stuff. Boxell also appears in “Death Rattle,” the Krupp entry in the EC sweepstakes. “Death Rattle” has a fine Richard Corben cover, a so-so Richard Corben story, and muted work by another Wisconsin boy-genius scribbler, the protean Pete Poplaski, who is seemingly able to shift styles at whim, from grit-realism to funny-animal stuff, with nary a line caught short. Poplaski oozes graphic talent; Kitchen says he’s ready to take over the pencilling chores on Prince Valiant right away. He does a nasty satire on SDS for “Snarf No. 3,” with cover by Will Eisner. The story is more sarcastic than satirical, but the graphics are sweet and low, somewhere between film real and funny-stuff cartoons.

One more Krupp title, the mindblower of the lot for slavering fans of science fiction and Richard Corben, is “Fever Dreams,” with an incredible air-brush cover by Corben, also known as “Gore.” Corben has got the greatest, slickest, whammo-zap style I’ve seen, above or below ground. With air-brush in hand, paint brush in the other, and some mysterious instrument clenched between his teeth, Corben lays out the ultimate-impact graphics. The opening shot of his superb “To Meet the Faces You Meet” in “Fever Dreams,” written by Jan Strand, depicts unique cybernetic spacecraft hovering in front of what must surely be a real space nebula in photo. Corben’s machinery gleams with bonafide metal and his women’s breasts look like they’re made of flesh instead of ink.

In “Skull No. 5,” he deals with Lovecraft’s “The Rats in the Walls,” a terrifying short story that is particularly difficult to illustrate because of the subtle manipulations of the reader’s point of view. Just how successful Corben’s version is can be appreciated by checking back to Creepy No. 21, where writer/artist Bob Jenney attempted to deal with the same story. Briefly, Jenney’s spare, bland version fails to adequately convey the tortured viewpoint of the protagonist, and is crudely drawn. The high-point of the story occurs when the first-person protagonist goes beserk, recalls his ancient heritage, jumps on a neighbor, and proceeds to scarf the fellow right down. Corben’s version, with its crisp, balanced layouts and great detail, puts you there. His method of showing flash-backs cuts anything else I’ve seen for graphic appeal and story continuity. He intersperses sections of a horrible nightmare into vertical panels sandwiched between split frames of the man sleeping and waking in screaming terror; and the hint of the nightmare can be seen in traces of the man’s screaming mouth. There is a psychedelic freak-out sequence that achieves the flow of strong cinema — as when Jimmy Stewart freaks-out in Vertigo — and the final scene of the protagonist feasting on the blooddrenched corpse of his neighbor slams home. I love the way he makes bones gleam with blood.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 77.

Copyright® 1972 by Denis Kitchen. All Rights Reserved.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 27.

“Skull No. 6” contains original material by Tom Veitch — a long “novel length” (as they say in Superman) thriller called “A Gothic Tale.” It’s absolutely sickening. Disgusting. Which leads me to wonder why other writers can’t achieve these simple goals. It’s a great story, involving necromancy, an isolated New England community (of which there must be several thousand to account for all the lurid tales), resurrection of the dead and demonology. The first part is drawn by Greg Irons, whose seeming ability to render a simple portrait of Mickey Mouse nauseating remains unsurpassed. Irons cannot put pen to paper without yielding shock; he is a superb stylist and perhaps the best representative of the“Skull” school, maybe because all his characters resemble skulls, or bodies that have been decomposing in vats of schmaltz for two weeks. Matter of fact, Irons gets my vote as the most horrible artist of the horror genre. When he and Veitch go to town on King Dick of his cronies (see “Legion of Charlies,” “Deviant Slice,” both from Last Gasp), the world seems to be in perspective for however long it takes to read the comic.

One more undergrounder burrows into this month’s column, a new Crumb book called “The People’s Comics,” published by Golden Gate Publishing Co., 429 Brazil St., San Francisco, 94112. Crumb finally deals with the living legend Fritz the Cat in a no-holds barred, tell-it-like-it-gotta-he saga of the New Hollywood and the heels who make it run. Gawd, that Fritz is a heel, laying every chick in sight and treating his agent like shit, but ain’t that just like a star. I don’t know any stars, but I saw The Oscar and I read some Harold Robbins, so I think I’m familar with the same source material Crumb is using. This Fritz episode is better written than others I’ve seen; mostly because the unconscious cynicism of previous adventures has been made conscious.

There seemed to be a slick, dispassionate amorality to such adventures as “Fritz the Heel,” “Fritz Bugs Out” and others. The drawings were great stuff but I always thought Crumb was drawing what he thought his readers might imagine the character to be like rather than a$ he imagined the character. “Fritz in Hollwood” seems to be a lot more in control of the situation. Rather than a jerk cat making snap decisions on what’s best for Fritz we have a cynical, world-weary cat making easy decisions, calculated to smooth the way.

“People’s Comics” also contains a disturbing twist on funny animal stuff, when “Two Cats and A Bird” engage in butchery. I suppose realism must merge with the “funny animal” technique, and I’m glad that Crumb is doing his share. These two cats sucker a bird home for dinner, then cut her head off. The neck bleeds a while and the headless torso wanders around for some time before collapsing. The discarded head, with little “x’s” at the eyes (to indicate death — see Seuss’ Thidwick The Big Hearted Moose), attracts flies. Yeah, man. That’s getting down to the gritty. A strong book for Crumb fans, of whom there are more than enough. |g^