Review: Eyeball Comix #2 UK Underground Mayhem!

This is a lovely produced 52 page comic; with high quality printing throughout.

The first thing that hooks you is that amazing cover by the artist Gunsho....It really is eye popping; quite apt for an anthology called Eyeball Comix.

As with the first issue (see my previous review of issue #1), the driving force in terms of art and ideas are messrs Paul Arserott & Rob Amos (now going under the pseudonym 'Robscenity').

In true Underground anthology tradition, there's a real mix of humour, sex, and violence; real life horror, fake ads, pirate sluts, heavy metal demons, funny grotesquery, alien invasions...Even Bruce Campbell makes an appearance!

So without further ado, let's get stuck into the strips!

 First up is Paul Arserott's brilliant 'Creepy Crawl'. This genuinely creepy story tells a real-life tale of Susie Atkins AKA Sadie Mae Glutz; member of 'The Manson Family' and killer of Gary Hinman.

The strip focusses on the testimony of Virginia Graham; the woman who shared a dormitory with Atkins in a L.A. Detention Centre before Atkins' trial.

Whilst incarcerated there, Atkins decided to boast and confide to Graham about her involvement in the Charles Manson Family murders and her violent fantasies which she had planned, and wished to act out on other celebrities.

Arserott brilliantly renders these disturbing fantasies which clearly illustrate how deranged and damaged this Manson family member was, and the kind of power Manson had over his followers.

'Robscenity' continues his piracy theme from issue #1, and delivers another beautifully drawn and pervy underground comic entitled 'Pirate Sluts'.

This darkly comic tale is simple enough: A motley crew of male pirates spot a group of comely seafaring women encroaching on the border of their territory.

Deciding they will teach the wenches a lesson and rape and pillage while they're at it, the pirates set sail and invade the woman's camp with no idea that the lasses are battle-hardened pirates themselves and more than equipped to deal with their male counterparts.

What really makes this strip is Rob's tongue-in-cheek humour, the way he draws his foul perverts and busty pirates, and his clearly genuine love of portraying feisty, dominant women overpowering, humiliating and maiming those who would do the same. You can tell he gets off on it.

This is female empowerment exploitation style, akin to an X-Rated Russ Meyer flick (if he'd ever done a pirate film). Where in the end, the women make sure they get what THEY want (as the last page, which I haven't shown, clearly demonstrates).

This issue also welcomes the debut of Kyle Platts, who has a really interesting and grotesque drawing style and a great warped sense of humour.

He has 3 different strips in the anthology, my favourite being 'Shotgun' pictured to your right.

Aidan Cook provides 2 Thrash Metal influenced satanic horror/ darkly comic strips, one briefly featuring cult B-Movie favourite Bruce Campbell as a Genie. Whilst certainly different, I wasn't really knocked over by either story, which to me, seemed to want to focus on coolness and appeal mostly to niche metal fans, rather than focussing on telling a more interesting story. I did really like Cook's one page poster portraying a living-dead graveyard metal-head though.

Mr Arserott reappears for the final strip 'Blowflies from Outer Space', a very entertaining, darkly comic B-moviesque tale about brain-eating blowflies who stowaway on a moonlanding vehicle and invade earth.

Arserott's more cartoon-like approach to this mayhem has visual shades of Johnny Ryan and Mike Diana to it and is gleefully apocalyptic.

Artist Burgerlips' 'Guffball 3000' is a nicely drawn and coloured fake advertisment too.

Whilst there's more 'meat' to it than issue 1, I still feel the comic suffers from a few other filler strips/pages that felt unnecessary. Eyeball #1 started off great, and issue #2 improves upon it, so hopefully, in the future it will become a stronger anthology throughout every page... Despite those niggles, it remains one of the seldom few original and quality UK Underground Comix out there. Check it out!  http://eyeballcomix.blogspot.com/