Od #1
including Alfred Smith (1 of 4)
Od #1 © Fraser Geesin
| Od #1 & Alfred Smith Fraser Geesin |
Od #1 starts happily enough, with a two colour cover and FREE B&W Telly offer!!
The first strip opens with, There's a corpse in my flat...!! But the rest of this first issues mix of strips is really inconsistent! Most of them relying on swearing and gross-out as substitutes for any resolution, punch lines & ideas. All done in a faceless mix of style-less styles. The low points are Life takes a big fat shit on Arnold Smith, Crisp Newturd and the diabolically unfunny, on-going epic that is The Windswept Sheep!! I'd given up on Od until I fell over two lines from this is Jeremy.... "Judy kept her tits in a box! ...Meryle the girl from Venus told her to do it..!!" That cracked me up!
Then, the Living Dead two pager, about three corpses in suits, crawling out of the earth for a night on the town! It's so brilliantly obvious and good natured in it's humour, e.g.: a passing car, zooms by, knocking off the hitching corpse's hand!! Ha! Ha! "My leg fell off while I was laughing"!!! So Fraser, dump the rest of the stuff in "Od" And do a comic featuring these guys!!
"Tell me boys, how do I look?!"
"You look dead Jerry!!"
"So, do you think the babes will go for 'dead'?!"
I'd buy it!!
Alfred Smith (1 of 4)
Hey! Is this the same guy who did Od?
That zine I've just sliced & diced. It flippin' well is! Well... unlike "Od"... This is terrific!!! In this first issue everything works! It's got a simple, but effective central idea. It's got an increasingly engaging character, in Alfred Smith. It's got a funny, pithy script, full of emotional crunchy bits! It's well sequenced, with collage elements, and moments of touching visual counterpoint, with the text, that make yer heart break! And if the artwork isn't up to 'Vertigo' standards, it's still more ambitious than most small-press-stuff.
Alfred Smith - Performance Artist at The End of The World... "I don't go in for all that poncey-stuff! I did my performances so I could get free-tickets, for the summer festivals!!" his Fly-Swatting 'Performance' lands him a job with the Gods 'Dept of Artistic Oblivion'. "Now every Global Extinction is also a comment on something dead poncy!" From there on in, it gets really silly, (& touching).
Send off for a copy NOW! (...while - you - still - can!!!).
Clive Scruton.
| Od #1: 28 A4 pages, 3 colour cover, with free copy of Alfred Smith 28 A4 pages (limited Stock?) | Recieved at ZUM! HQ: no info |
£2 +P&P | Fraser Geesin, , c/o Headrest , Street Lane End, Broad Oak, Heathfield, E Sussex, TN21 8TU |