Review: The Eltingville Club

By Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer

I can't recall my first encounter with The Eltingville Club, but I think it was long enough ago that MTV was still relevant.  I couldn't tell you where or in what book, but the strip always stuck with me. Oft-forgotten, but always lurking in the back of my brain as a cautionary tale of sorts. Every knee-jerk, rabid fanboy reaction I'm tempted to make is tempered by  images of Evan Dorkin's comic about the trollish, ugly side of fandom.

The Eltingville Club tells the tale of Bill, Josh, Jerry, and Pete, a quartet of teen fanboys embroiled in the world of comics, role-playing games, horror films, and a myriad of other facets of nerdery. They're full of geek-culture quotes, arcane trivia, and the very venom of the worst of fan culture.  Arguments, visceral insult, fisticuffs, the odd arson, and all around horrible behavior categorize the meetings and day-to-day goings on of the club and the behavior is cringeworthy.  This is the archetypical fanboy behavior that mainstream culture mocked for so many years and drove great portions of nerds back into the parents basement from whence they came. This is the ugly side of fandom turned up to 11.

Part satire, part commentary, The Eltingville Club really is quite humorous in the way that it makes you second guess some of your own nerd behavior, be it gate-keeping or any other flavor of elitist behavior. It'll keep you looking over your proverbial shoulder for that bad, bad, fan hiding inside.


Or at least it should.

Sacred cows are slain left and right, and fans of Dorkin's other work will feel right at home. Admittedly, Milk & Cheese springs foremost to mind, but that's probably because both strips are bleak, wickedly funny, and almost self-loathing. As an added bonus, thin-skinned fans are almost certainly to find offense somewhere in this book. Even I was a bit taken aback when the book took a shot at Peter Cushing, entirely due to my personal bias.

An afterword by Dorkin tells the origin story of The Eltingville Club, born out of hate-mail that rabid fanboys send to artists, writers, editors and the rest of the lot. The club exemplifies the worst we have to offer, with the exception of Gamergaters, and the author explains that this collection is the Eltingville Club's swansong.
You see, it's become a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Spend any amount of time amongst anonymous Internet nerd fandom and you'll find the worst we have to offer. Horrible, judgmental little stoats of human beings engaged in all manner of verbal abuse directed towards creators and each other. Given that climate, there's no more need for an Eltingville Club comic. I can log on to Twitter and see it unfold in real time.

That said, Dorkin's book is excellent. Funny in ways it shouldn't be, hopefully The Eltingville Club gets under your skin a bit and maybe keeps you a bit more on the straight and narrow.

The art is phenomenal Indy work, which sounds pretentious as hell, but it sure ain't mainstream art. The layouts are eye catching and reminded me of Underground books from the 60s-70s, as well as some earlier small-press comics.

All said, I'd recommend this collection to any responsible comic fan. You'd be doing yourself a disservice in not reading.
If nothing else, you'll have a laugh at the asshole fanboys in The Eltingville Club and remember not to be an asshole out here in the real world.

REVIEW: Badger #1

Creators:  Mike Baron and Jeff Butler

Story:  Mike Baron
Artwork:  Jim Fern
Colors:  Paul Mounts
Review:  Art Bee

At our LCBS we look at various comics,recently stacked on the shelves, in hopes of one enticing us to pick it up and cough up some cash to escort it home.  Let that sink in for a minute...does that sound an awful lot like prostitution? Last week I paid money to purchase Badger #1, published by Devils Due/1First Comics. The cover looked great and the artwork looked really good when I flipped through it.

The main character in this comic is named Norbert Sykes. As cliché as it sounds, he has multiple personality disorder and enlists as a dog handler in the army. Seriously, when I picked up this comic and read the brief introduction inside the front cover, my thoughts went straight to this being a funny comic. That thought was like me wanting to see palm trees in Quebec. They are just not there (unless they are plastic)! As I read this comic, many times I kept thinking about the missed comedic opportunities.
 
Rather than taking the comedic approach, Mike Baron took the serious angle as he warped us through the backstory of this colorful character. I truly mean that. Sykes is a great creation, but these guys essentially took a sports engine and dropped it into a Pinto.

Horrible story + great character = bored reader

The artwork is good. The cover, by Val Mayerik, is very striking. It caught my eye from several feet away, much like the aforementioned prostitutes standing on the sidewalk. Once I began reading and actually looking at the artwork, reality set in. Jim Fern does a good job with the lines and details, but it is not great work in my opinion. What makes the artwork so eye catching is the colors. Paul Mounts is stupendously awesome with his use of colors and shading. Many panels would look just drab and coloring book quality before Mounts gets ahold of it and makes it POP! If this guy was a tattoo artist, I would pay him for an entire back piece.

Many times we pass by various new titles as we walk the comic store. I hope you are all giving them a chance when you can. I do periodically, and it has about a 50% rate of discovering something good. Regardless, we need to support our artists and writers. My recommendation would be for this comic to be left on the shelf and the creators to review their approach with this character. Paul Mounts needs more work! I want to see his name more in comics.

REVIEW: God is Dead #47

Main story writer: Mike Costa
Main story art: Emiliano Urdinoia
Backup story writer: Dan Wickline
Backup story art: Michael DiPascale
Review: Will Dubbeld

I have mixed feelings about this book, and publisher Avatar Press in general. On one hand, God is Dead and Avatar Press deliver no-holds-barred mature content, leaving nothing taboo and giving creators an outlet for stories the Big Two wouldn't touch with a 10 foot pole.
Wielded by Plastic Man or something.
On the other hand, the books are often outlets for pure, unadulterated depravity. I sometimes feel like I should be buying these comics from some shady individual in the back alley behind a seedy porn theater. I also sometimes feel like I need a shower after reading.

That said, an alarming number of Avatar books, from Providence to Über, are on my monthly pull list. Maybe it's the weird little gorehound that's inside of me, the one who loves Lucio Fulci films and Garbage Pail Kids, or maybe I'm just a bit off-kilter, but I keep reading. 47 damn issues deep and I still keep reading . . .

God is Dead was originally scribed by Jonathan Hickman and was based around the premise of gods from myth and legend returning from obscurity and taking over the world. Mankind suffered, fought back, sought godhood, and generally wallowed in defeat after defeat. After Hickman's run God is Dead just went further and further down the rabbit hole. Or off the rails, I'm not entirely sure.

In the story arcs following, the book got bloodier, more exploitative, and gains and loses cohesion depending on the issue. I've seen Thor and Zeus and Satan and a myriad of other mythological figures wreak havoc on mankind and their fellow gods so much, it's pretty much old hat at this point. There have been some interesting angles with the Australian Aboriginal dreamtime and the death/rebirth of the universe (I think . . . that plotline was lost on me a bit), but mostly we're exposed to a retread of god-on-human-on-god atrocity that sometimes borders on rapey torture-porn. 

The current issue maintains the status quo, as a hit squad made up of Thor, Janus, Satan and a few other horrible gods attack the Silver City of Heaven and slaughter a host of angels and God (The Judeo-Christian God) himself.
The assault ends with the implication that Satan sodomizes Janus because he's got a "huge hard-on and nowhere to put it!"

To quote.

We then jump to our heroes (term used loosely) who gain entry into a TV. studio, kill an anchorman, and hijack the broadcast in order to save the world.
They infiltrate the news station by having our female protagonist spread her cheeks and press her ladybits against the window. No lie.

I use the term hero and protagonist very loosely, almost ironically, because with few exceptions every character in the book is a horrible person. Or god. There's only varying degrees of characters who are slightly less horrible than the other guy, relegating them to protagonist role. Anyone earnestly good is quickly killed or turns heel, be they god or mortal.

The book closes with a backup story about a man seeking revenge on ancient Welsh goddesses for murdering his family. Not to be outdone as a mere backup story, our hero shoots a dragon and slits a naked woman's throat as a sacrifice to Poseidon.

I can't really recommend this book to anyone, but in the same breath I can't really condemn it either. 
Because I keep buying the damn thing. It falls in that niche that feeds the reader's Id, assaulting the eyes with a cavalcade of sex, gore, violence, foul language and nudity. 
I'm not sure if it's some deep-seated insecurity or some darker psychological flaw, but I keep buying these damn things. They must appeal to me in the same way Grindhouse movies, circus sideshows, and death metal does.

I got hugged enough as a child, so that couldn't be it . . .

In any case, God is Dead and some of its Avatar ilk will continue appearing in my pullbox, but I won't recommend any of them with the possible exception of Über. Showering gouts of blood aside, Über is a fairly well researched comic about superhuman weapons in WWII.
God is Dead, on the other hand, will serve to fill only your desire for equal amounts of gratuitous violence and nudity. 
Avatar Press may be branching out from the norm, but most of those branches bear pretty low-hanging fruit.