Underground Comix

I couldn't really get into this week's reading assignment. Nothing against the style of these comics, even though I would deem it a little strange, but the stories don't capture my attention. The books are set up as a collection of short stories. Between "The Book of Mr. Natural," "The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers," and "Fat Freddy's Cat" I was mainly bored while reading. I found myself skipping over passages to see if, through just the illustrations, the story got interesting at a later point. 

The "Freak Brothers" and "Fat Freddy's Cat", both by Gilbert Shelton, have an overlapping stoner character. To me "The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers" is entirely about the mishaps that happen to a group of druggies. The characters reminded me the behavior of a few annoying persons who attended the same high school as I did, only these men have crazier facial hair. The cat is possibly a more vulgar creature than his human companion. There is some humor, but not enough to keep me invested.

I felt slightly better about underground comics after talking about them in class. They’re still not my cup of tea, but I can appreciate some of them a little. A few stories dealt with political problems that the author thought people weren’t paying enough attention to. Drug awareness was a very big part of most of these comics. Showing examples of how messed up your life could get if you continued or developed an addiction. So some of them had “edu-tainment” value.  Others were just completely full of very badly drawn sex, crazily drawn penises, and using women as solely sexual objects. I attempted to read some ‘Zippy’ but I found it to be just crazy. I don’t know if Zippy has a mental disorder or no functioning brain at all.

I won’t have any underground comics on my personal shelf. They aren’t something I could see myself reading in the future and I don’t really feel like picking up any more of the issues I read this week.