Redfox #1

“Oh, this is the big one! You hear that Elizabeth? I’m dying of bad colorless art.” One of the few books in the pack that worked “blue”.

Redfox is a comedic Red Sonja-ripoff book that ran for over two and a half years in the late 1980s. It was nominated eight times for Eagle Awards and winner of the Best New British Comic in 1986. Things must have been really bad for British comics in 1986. No less than Neil Gaiman himself helped with the last issue, which proves that even great writers can suffer from bad taste from time to time.

This book is a very by-the-numbers variety of dungeon parody. There is nothing here surprising or new and the art speaks for itself.

I’m fairly sure that I saw this exact same picture drawn on countless notebooks and book covers in high school.

The story is fairly simple: Red Fox is wandering the desert searching for something called the Treasure of Pthud (bet you already guessed that). She comes upon a burial tomb, digs out a ankh shaped key and opens it up.

She’s lost the key in her purse here. Same thing happens to my wife all the time.

If only all the panels could be drawn like these. Guess they couldn’t afford all that black ink.

Moving on she encounters a creature named Trog who, despite his fearsome appearance, is apparently the tomb’s maid.

Note that it’s impossible for Trog to chew solid foods due to a tremendous overbite and the appalling lack of medieval troll dentists. Trog explains the way to the treasure and Redfox marches off to collect it. On the way, she runs into a pit trap, a hall full arms holding swords, spears that jab at her from the ceiling and a snake with the power of making her hair defy gravity.

About this time she’s captured by the tombs other denizens, which are led by an Anubis-headed dude who speaks like he’s from the Bronx. See how funny that is?

Ok, not so much. Trog arrives and frees her. Redfox finds her way to the temple treasure only to find it’s a dead wizard. Or a mostly dead wizard. Soon the tomb guards are battering down the locked treasure room door and the wizard provides them with a hasty retreat through a magical portal.

That was my exact reaction while reading mag. Funny how art imitates life. Even funnier that I called this stuff “art”.

The wizard’s name is Estaque of Galtaya and he’s searching for the Blue Cobold, another wizard with a potion of eternal life. Red Fox isn’t doing anything now that the treasure turned out to be a sham, so the wizard and the halfway dressed barbarian chick decide to team up. He gives her a ring that turns into a sword and magically changes the color of her outfit. It’s a freaking black and white comic. How are we suppose to tell?

Further adventures await these two and unfortunately I have some of them. But I’m not going to be reviewing them just now. The art in this one was just too much. Stealing a quote from Redfox herself, “I think I’m going to be violently ill!”

Roarin’ Rick’s Rare Bit Fiends #1

The Most Bizarre Book Ever! Period!

Above you see pages 4-5 and 8 of Roarin’ Rick’s Rare Bit Fiends #1. I placed them up there with no commentary because they speak for themselves. This book is what I imagine dropping acid must be like. Each page is either a self-contained story or a series of random panels. Every 5 pages or so we have a new story of the three men told in a very simplistic rhyme scheme but telling a similar peculiar story. There are no real characters, no real conflicts (although there is one fight scene), and many odd images juxtaposed around other odd images. What the heck is this? The 60’s all over again?

No, but it takes some reading of the letter column to make any kind of sense of this. Or you have to have heard of the an obscure comic by Winsor McCay run in the 1900’s New York Evening Telegram (If you saw these when first published, please raise your hand. Or have the nursing home assistant raise it for you).

Rare Bit Fiends is a pet project of Rick Veitch, who was Alan Moore’s accomplice on Miracleman and Swamp Thing. After Moore left Swamp Thing, Veitch took up the writing chores for the magazine for the next two years. Bad blood between him and DC occurred when he was denied the ability to run a story where Swamp Thing meets Jesus near the end of a story arc where the man-monster was trekking through history. It was at that time that Veitch turned to self publishing books.

So what is this book? It’s a dream journal of Rick Veitch. It contains ideas and situations taken directly from his dreams. He got the idea from a challenge issued by Scott McCloud to several artists to write and draw a 24 page comic in 24 hours. Rick’s first result was a dream journal that he released to his friends in ashcan version to rave reviews. The less said about “rave reviews” from friends and fellow artists, the better.

There are 21 issues of Rare Bit Fiends floating around out there, somewhere. No doubt they are awaiting the pull to someone’s crapbox, perhaps even mine. If so, I can’t imagine them being more bizarre or random than this one.

The Fairer Sex, Part I: American Woman #2 (flip side is a Samwise short)

You know I’m gonna leave you woman. Bye-bye, bye-bye

Antarctic Press has made a name for themselves with their Warrior Nun and Gold Digger series. The San Antonio shop is still in business today and appears to be doing booming business with steampunk and zombie tales. This was one of their lesser known titles and it has a very special place in the crapbox. It is, without a doubt, one the shortest and most pointless series I’ve ever read. I’ve read Razorguts and Rare Bit Fiends, so that last line says a lot. American Woman’s entire run is two issues.

I can only assume that issue 1 of American Woman (...get away from meee-he…) had an origin story. Here we get no explanation of her powers, origins or who she really is. What we get is a six page fight with shiny bubbles attached to the outside of a building. About 80% of the action is told through the mouths of various news reporters. We get two panels of American Woman (…mama, let me beeee-he… sorry, I’ll stop now) thinking something and then the building blows up.

I wasn't aware she was speaking of the storyline at this point. Oh, and surprise, the building is undamaged! By the end of this issue none of this will matter, trust me. Because of all the power she’s absorbed, AW gets covered in skyblue energy and stars while flying off to parts unknown. It’s then that we are introduced to the main villain of this issue.

The Mime. Not a rip-off of Joker, DC lawyers. This guy doesn’t speak. He’s hated by everyone. And he has invisible weapons. Like this little number: the invisible WORLD-DESTROYING BOMB!

I’m totally serious about that. And speaking of serious, Amercan Woman gets into a serious chat with some guy she knows. Who cares what his name is, in less than four pages, the issue and series is over. Here she is covered in blue sparkle stars.

Next we see AW, she’s speaking at an Independence Day rally. The mime is there doing tricks in the crowd. As usual the people are hurling insults at him. Meanwhile American Woman spouts off stuff that sounds vaguely fascist like the line below.

Except ours is a nation built on individualism and freedom of speech and many other large concepts that insure the right to dissent from majority opinion. Sieg Heil, American Woman, Sieg Heil. She shouldn’t be up there anyway. She should be stopping the mime, who is in the process of lighting the FUSE on the invisible PLANET DESTROYING WORLD BOMB.

Yeah good luck with all that, American Woman. If only Hulk Hogan-man there was our hero. Boom!

Heh-hee! Well there goes the neighborhood. No wait! It’s a WORLD DESTROYING BOMB.

American Woman should turn in her hero license for this. I will say this: American Woman is possibly the best hero parody I’ve ever read. What hero lets the villain destroy the world. Better than All-Star Batman and Robin. That is suppose to be a parody, right?

The Samwise feature on the flipside of the comic was four pages long and the whole joke was ruined by the publisher putting the pages out of order. Come on guys, you can’t count to four? You can’t put four pages in sequence? Nitwits.