Friday 7 February 2014

Review: Snud #1 & Slasher #10 by Gary Clinick & Friends

Here's two twisted and savagely funny underground comix with a raw punk zine edge straight outta Scotland.

Snud #1 is Gary Clinick's solo A5 comic, full of short, darkly funny comics that all reflect contemporary culture in some way, through a psychotic, angry lens.

"Eat  Shit And Like It!" is the story of a family who do just that. Whether watching high definition crap through their 3D telly, or eating up mum's specialty for tea, this family indeed enjoy all the fecal treats around them without question. Even their teenage daughter finds new shit to enjoy - at her boyfriend's band practice where one of the band takes a dump on a keyboard, or the new cult film they go and see later.
I won't give away anymore, other than to say the comic ends in true underground style and then is followed by an angry rant from the author. Certainly a funny comic about consumerism, materialist culture, and the crap that makes life stink.

"Grave Dogging" was my favourite strip here. A chuckle-enducing send up of dogging culture with a slasher movie horror bent. Karen & Gary are looking for action in the woods when they stumble upon a grave digging necrophiliac.  Karen has a bad feeling but Gary ignores her asking the stranger "'Ere mate, do you want a go on my bird?". Needless to say the corpse-fucker doesn't respond in a way that Gary would like. The strip works well as a short, satirical and nasty horror story.

"Culinary Castration" is a one-pager about self mutilation and how to quickly rustle up a bit of cannibalistic cooking. With more than a hint of real-life Austrian cannibal Armin Meiwes, it really is a Kitchen Nightmare...

"The Healing Power Of Crystals" is a violent one panel funny, hard to go into it without giving the gag away, a somewhat pretentious description might be to say that it juxtaposes dubious hippy new-age beliefs, alongside uptight, pent up conservatism.

"Dolphins" tells the tale of a diver who comes to the aid of a helpless looking dolphin who has something caught around his fin. As soon as he is freed however, he repays the diver by sexually attacking him with his snout. The last 3 panels are drawn and written in a very funny way. I think it's safe to say, we won't been seeing these scenes on a David Attenborough documentary.

The comic also has a couple of other full page gag strips focussing on religion (the catholic church to be precise) and the police. It's a great first issue, where Viz style humour and good dialogue collides with underground comix that revel in their own sick humour. These are very limited and very cheap (£1 if I remember correctly), so contact Gary quickly if you're interested (see the end of this review).

Slasher #10 is a 36 page A4 anthology comic with colour cover, and free noise compilation. It's a bargain for £3. Like Snud, it has a similar underground, dark, twisted, humourous feel but with more varied content, and it's not for the easily offended! Some of the comics and illustrations worked for me, others not so much, but overall there was more enjoyable content than mediocre stuff in my opinion.

Gary Clinick again comes up with the goods - His first strip is a strange one - a female policewoman shoots the man who has previously shot her partner, she then becomes sexually aroused, tearing off her clothes and seemingly morphing into Raoul Moat for a patriotic pin-up poster.  Make of it what you will.

There's his one pager commenting on the hypocritical irony of many jihad extremists, where one masked man holds up a drawing of Captain Haddock (a cartoonists representation of the prophet) and explains how upset he is about that fact, about how the artist has gone too far, whilst his accomplice prepares to behead the bound and blindfolded cartoonist knelt before them. Quite a bold comic all things considered.

His one pager depicting Nescafé's 'Abortion Strength African Blend' coffee, might seem in bad taste for some, but for anyone who knows anything about Nestlé's breast milk scandal and their draining of water from poor rural areas of India and Pakistan (leaving disease ridden sludge for the local occupants), will most likely find this comic perfectly apt, as I did.

"A Taste Of Flesh" is a very funny comic about a pub under the sea where football shirt wearing sharks start fights with student dolphins for talking to their girlfriends before the killer whale bouncers move in. There's a surprise ending which brings in a bit of social/ ecological commentary right at the end.  Fans of Ralph Kidson's comics would like this one I reckon.

Clinick also shines on his strip about Saturday night "X-Factor" style 'talent' shows where every character in the strip is depicted with an arse for a head and anus for a mouth. The strip switches to a domestic dispute half-way through, where a self-righteously indignant punk walks in on his girlfriend viewing the show and judges her for it, before changing the channel to a nature program. The second half of this comic has some very real sounding dialogue and a good ironic ending where the punk character ends up being just as full of it as those he judges with contempt.

As for the other comics/ contributors, Noah Brown draws some bizarre and funny full page/ one panel comics with interesting looking characters, and there's a great comic involving a middle class mother and her son enjoying a responsible smoke of heroin. (Not sure who the contributer is on this one, but it's a good strip and actually feels good-natured despite the absurdity/dodginess of it's premise). There's also an illustration of a nightmare which involves a series of wanking and screaming man-baboons.

"So You Took Too Much DMT" is an interesting one page psychedelic line drawing comic with great art and various characters spewing forth their meditations, like hallucinations from a really strong trip. Again, not sure who did this one, but it's a really interesting page. A couple of the pages are a little mean-spirited or done more for edgy shock-value.

The music CD is very varied and interesting too, with lots of different styles and genres, but all experimental in there own way. The comic and CD represent great value for money, even for the most thrifty of buyers.

Contact: slashercomic@gmail.com or visit the bandcamp site for these and more comics and CD projects:  http://mongoloidproduction.bandcamp.com/merch/slasher-6666-issue-10








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