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Just Read: BARR GIRLS #1 - Donna Barr does hermaphrodite porn, oh yes, ohhh yeeeessssss...
So here was a Donna Barr book I wasn't aware of until I decided to be all completest about her gluttonous, corpulent body of work. Published through Antarctic Press' adult line, Venus Comics, it's a compilation of the pin-ups and shorts that Barr doodled out over the course of coarse time, hinging on a rather interesting (if graphic) idea: what if everyone was an hermaphrodite? What if all humans were both genders at once, so that there was never any distinction? What would the new preconceptions be? The new biases and cultural divides? And what of our own cultures would be lost having never arisen in the first place?
BARR GIRLS is fancy free and graphic, in love with sexuality and in love with love in general. While there is some drop-dead accurate social criticism in these stories, mostly by what the stories leave out rather than what they contain, the lack of certain beliefs and day-to-day gender views that logically are the bathwater to the baby that gets overhand-fastballed out the window when men and women become one and the same, and so are proven cosmetic, views and beliefs that do not stand up to even this slightest of shifts in reality, and in this way spotlighted as dependent upon circumstance (wow this is turning into a long, digressive sentence, sorry, and this isn't helping, sorry again), the core of BARR GIRLS is not necessarily message-centric, or preachy, and while perhaps it is a little slap-in-the-face insofar as its outrageous subject matter in concerned, the spirit of its audacity comes across as the passion of innocence unfettered (why would I hold back? the child asks) instead of the shock value of arrogance unleashed (what's gonna make me hold back? the bastard sneers).
The book starts gentle, mostly observing the "girls" (who are referred to as girls but almost always pronoun-ed as "he" and "him"), heading to work, inviting guests over, exploring what the unavoidable assumptions of the human mind would be like in a world where gender was simply parceled out differently. Then comes the crowning, most lengthy episode of the issue, and the sex-stuff gets explicit and wild. Not for the easily offended, and not at all for anyone who thinks they already have the answers to human sexuality and gender place and position. Closed-minded asininnies need not apply.
The pin-ups are the most blink-inducing parts of the book. Mostly involving Barr dressing her girls in the looniest outfits and exploring the, uhm, anatomies of male-female adonis-amaranths. It's all jolly good fun, and you walk away feeling damn good about genitals, of either sex, which is refreshing.
This one's a tough nut to find, but right now there's copy available over at 
or anyway their online eBay store (which is where I purchased my copy, and they still have at least one more!) Head on over there by clicking HERE
Just Read: Desert Peach #21 - The Good Uncle
Whoof - child molestation, murder, and desecration, generally in that order. THAT is the name of the game for this rather unexpected (can I say that? That this book is unexpected? Ever? As in "I didn't see the fact that I wouldn't see the what that came next would be coming?" Haven't I learned that this is straight-on par fer the sandy dry dessicated course?) issue #21, titled "The Good Uncle".
I thought that was Erwin Rommel on the cover (what a striking cover, too, eh?), the Desert Fox himself, but thankfully no, the cover model is a new character introduced (and exuented) in this very issue, there to basically explore a rather squirm-inducing topic. For that, it's memorable, as this is a hotter topic to fan the flames than the more general topics of war, humanity, tolerance, bigotry, sexuality, etc. I suppose that's the unexpected part, this is the first time quite so specific an issue has been raised as sole focus of an entire chapter. Which isn't to say creator Donna Barr doesn't toss in male mothering instinct, her usual up-close dissection of the differences between cultures and resolving issues even in the face of ignorance and unavoidable bigotry. But past DP books have wheeled between sub-plots and side tracks, while "The Good Uncle" travels a very straight and arrow-shaped path, as thought the subject demanded a very focused, single-child nurture.
The first half flows well, and offers readers a marvelous number of scenes involving an enlisted regiment of dirty, lonely, aimless soldiers taking care of a little leibchen, the son of Pfirsich. Then comes the arrival of Leutnant Doktor Lindemann, a pediatrician who's come to lavish special, prim, professional attention on Pfirsich's boy. Soon, however, the locals arrive crying for justice, looking for a killer of their children! A search for the suspect in on, and when they're found the question still remains of just what to do with them.
It's a heady brew, The Good Uncle is, though it does a commendable job with sizing up the justifications of man's behaviors, and drawing distinctions between "deviant" ones. And the ENDING!!! With a one-two punch of horrific absurdity, Barr yanks the whole shebang to a climax and epilogue that would have immediately been rejected by any editor with content authority. Not that they're offensive (is anything, really, in a Barr book? It's her most signature talent - offensive material that never IS offensive when she writes about it), but the ending is classic Barr - entirely random and not how anyone else would have done it, but wholly fitting nevertheless.
One final thing that makes #21 stand out - A LETTER'S PAGE!!! Yes, after having nearly none for quite some time, AEON gave Donna 10 whopping pages to go all Dave Sim/Erik Larsen with her fans, printing letter after letter longer than some essays and responding in kind. It's was fascinating to get a nice lump of historical perspective, reading letters concerned with the book's hiatus (when Donna took time off to produce the DP musical) and then letters deciphering the issues much as I'm doing now on this blog. Different takes, different opinions, good to read, awesome to read in fact.
THE GOOD UNCLE is an issue I'll likely think of long into the future, one of those that may become signature when I consider the series in retrospect. But it's also, thus far, an oddity - less a pot pourri than a deliberation. But a deliberation done DP style, which makes it oh-so-good. --Dave B.
Just Read: STINZ - A STRANGER TO OUR KIND
Whoo-hoo! What a thrill to have finally read the very last (missing) installment of my Stinz collection!
A Stranger to Our Kind (Stinz Volume III, #5), the fifth and final one-shot published by MU PRESS before Stinz V.III continued on for four more issues (#6-9) and a graphic novel (New Souls, which wedged itself between issues #8 and 9) under creator Donna Barr's own company imprint, A FINE LINE PRESS.
The first two volumes of Stinz dealt with his war years, as a half-horse conscripted into the German army, his meteoric rise to war hero, thus nicknamed "The Black Major", and then also his coming home, back to a rural farmland community. There were whispers, though, of "The End of the War", and how this had somehow traumatized Stinz, changed the face of the world as anyone knew it, and yet Stinz's own township seemed unaffected. The one-shots otherwise known as Stinz V.III #1-4 slowly built-up the mystery, and revealed hints of precisely how the world changed, and began to build up a new tension: Stinz and the townfolk vs. the Baron and Baronin, who since the End of the War have apparently, officially "owned" the town, and all the half-horses became their Serfs. Half-horses are not seen to the world at large as people, with the rights of two-leggers. By and large creator Barr kept this mostly as part of the setting, rather than first and foremost in the trials of the characters. But all that changed with "A Stranger to Our Kind".
Here, the conflict between the extreme class differences as accentuated by the results of "The End of the War", come straight to the fore. The Baronin has married the Baron, and now brings her guards in to run the valley as she deems proper, which is based on an outsider's perspective of "proper". This leads to yellow-suited soldiers trotting about and demanding service of the locals, which leads to one local reacting with a fatal consequence for one of the soldiers. Confusion and outrage ensue, leading to one young half-horse soldier, Yesi, thoughtlessly naming Stinz as the most likely suspect in the murder.
Now, Yesi had been (somewhat unsuccessfully) courting Stinz' daughter, Reet, only to be rebutted by both the girl and the old war half-horse himself, so that this accusation stems from less-than-sincere impulses. Now Stinz' ex-General, Gift, along with Yesi and other soldiers who consider the half-horses little more than uppity slaves, have to bring Stinz to a ceremonial trial that no one in the valley has actually heard of or taken part of before, and mass miscommunication is the flavor of the day.
This is the story that truly kick-starts everything that comes in the FINE LINE PRESS issues. The Baron and Baronin, the carnivorous face-horse Kilan, mention of the ground zero area for the mysterious End of the War, the first story that truly centers itself around the cultural overhauls caused by said End of the War, much talk of journeying back into the world outside the valley, Yesi and Reet's relationship, the respect and love between Gift and Stinz that only two old war companions could have, no matter the most current conflict between them. It's all here, and makes, frankly, issues #6-9 seem much less sudden of a switch in tone and focus as they did before, when I tried to jump from V.III #4 to #6.
A Stranger to Our Kind is dense and jam-packed, with dozens of characters, and a whole story told on nearly every page, each page like a chapter in a book, nearly self-contained in its own right but then you get a full book-length contemplation of events should you plow through all 40+ pages of the one-shot. In a way, this is the perfect "jumping-on point" for Stinz, as everything you need to know is explored here, and then continued and brought to natural conclusions in following issues. Think of this as like the beginning of the "Twilight years" for Stinz, all past stories dealing more with youth (V.I) and middle age (V.II, III #1-4).
Barr's dialogue and pacing is in perfect control, which is to say the story tells itself without doubting its intent or direction for an instant. The art is equally as finely wrought, tight and layered but very polished. The printing is smooth and flawlessly cut and magic to the touch - crisp white paper and solid cardstock cover.
An absolutely beautiful package, with a striking cover and a story that will bloat you with ideas and characters and events as though a meal of fried chicken and waffles - it will stay with you, intermittently pleasant and otherwise.
The only place I know to order a copy of this extremely rare, hard-to-find issue, is Westfield Comics dot com - (or click here - http://westfieldcomics.com/store.cgi?sc=858151910832426433&cid=2&mid=250&P=80027620)
But it's worth it - go find it! Read STINZ!!!
For all other Stinz issues (they're all available except this one!), go to:
THE LITTLE STORE (http://donnabarr.blogspot.com/2007/04/my-emergency-website.html)
EDUCATION OF PURCHASE:
STINZ V.III #1-4 and 6-9 are sold individually.
The two Stinz collections offered: "CHARGER" collects all of V.I and V.II under one cover, and "ALL TURNED AROUND", otherwise/also known as "NEW SOULS" GN, fits chronologically between V.III #8 and 9, and collects a long run of online Stinz stories Barr published at ModernTales.com, where you can find yet more of her Stuff.
Not much to report, but found my missing Stinz!
Nothing much for today, something more definitely tomorrow. But today I got my last issue I was missing of STINZ - A STRANGER TO OUR KIND (Volume III, #5). I read lots of incredible things about this issue from other online reviews, many claiming it was their favorite and the best of the character's run. So of course it was the ONE issue I couldn't bloody locate.
But I nabbed a copy from www.WestFieldComics.com, and it arrived via post this afternoon, so WOOT! I've already read to the end of the line, or anyway to the new beginning of sorts in AFTERDEAD 1.1 and 1.2, but still, I'm looking forward to digging into this much anticipated chapter. Prolly write about it tomorrow.
In other news, me and the gal-pal of 6 years and counting found a great new apartment in Los Angeles an will be moving in together in a few short weeks! No more ghetto Koreatown! No more one-hour walks and bus rides just to steal a kiss! (awww! But it was so romantic [and yeah, it was, we'll have to get creative to replace the "And I will walk 500 miles" shtick to pronounce our undying affection for the other! Mmmm...creative...lookin' forward to it *sluuuurpp!*])
Late and tired and already written other things all evening long. Time for rest. Reading, maybe watch a move-ay. G'noit! --Dave B.
Just Read: The Desert Peach #19 & 20 Self-Propelled Target and Fever Dream
We got us a double bill today - I'm passing on reviewing THE DESERT PEACH #18 until I've had the chance to listen to the soundtrack a few more times, plus finish reading the libretto. (DP #18 wasn't a DP comic as such, but a reprint of THE DESERT PEACH: THE MUSICAL Program, plus lots of behind-the-scenes accouterments). I'll hit #18 with a proper review alongside a full review of the musical when the time comes. But for now...
The Desert Peach #19: "Self-Propelled Target"
"Self-Propelled Target" is the name of this one - the big return of the book after the huge climax/wedding-of-Udo in ish #17, and also it seems the title was shuffled from MU PRESS over to AEON STUDIOS with this installment, where it would remain until issue #25, after which creator Donna Barr would launch her own (and to this day still kicking) publishing gambit, A FINE LINE PRESS. When I interview the lady in the near future, I'll have to ask her about all the transitions and manifestations of this book, but for now, all I know is that the title changed publishing hands, and not for any discernible reason.
But sticking with the last two MU issues, #19 consists of a meaty 44 pages of story. Oddly, Udo's marriage isn't brought up at all, even though it was the seminal event of the book's run to date. Instead we're offered a crazy tale of pranks gone awry - Oberst Pfirsich Rommell is feeling under the weather (stomach problems that would plague him to the end of the NEXT issue!), and in his discomfort he allows himself to poorly phrase a request to Udo that yanks open a loophole to allow his nemesis, Kjars, to go at each other no-holds-barred. It begins Udo rupturing the decaying stomach juices of a deceased body while on grave-digging duty, and allowing the effluvia to douse both Kjars and (by accident) Pfirsich. This does nothing but exacerbate the poor Oberst's delicate, waning constitution. This leads him to camp out in the outhouse, while Udo and Kjars both pursue parallel schemes of trickster-like schenannigans which will once again climax with poor Pfirsich caught in the middle.
This issue is, in a word, "disgusting". I'll leave it at that, and warn that those with a low threshold for potty humor and low-brow brown humor need not apply. The pranks go WAY over the top ant he results are extraordinarily nauseating if thought upon too explicitly. Which isn't to say this isn't a WONDERFULLY entertaining thing, just that it's also quite disturbing. The Wyle E. Coyote essence of the pranks is inspired, and the sheer mechanical clockwork genius of how the story comes crashing together into a tight, horrific climax is superb. That said, this is mostly a shtick-y episode, humorous and outlandish but not really concerned with advancing or searching the intricacies of the characters. This one is throwaway, in a sense, but it's also a perfect stand-alone story, more so than usual, as nothing before or after really enters into it.
Donna art is electric, some of the best yet - the sh*tstorm of a finale is brilliantly depicted, and all the whirlwind antics impressively captured and fluidly woven panel to panel.
STORY - 7/10 (incredible execution, some things almost out-of-character crazy though)
ART - 9/10 (Really tight layout and flow, detailed and dynamic)
IMPORTANCE - (EDITED [see comments below]) 8/10 (mostly stand-alone, but Pfirsich's sickness pays off in next issue #20, AND effects Kjars in #26 in a major way! )
TOTAL SCORE - 8
And then comes...
The Desert Peach #20: "Fever Dream"
Pfirsich's health problems come to a head as he lay, seemingly, at death's door. Udo (the one most responsible with last issue's pranks) paces and frets, and has the dear ear of Pfirsich's ego-heavy lover Rosen to commiserate with. This leads to Rosen relating the day he first met Pfirsich in German-occupied France, and then Udo spinning a tale of the same, and apparently the two events happened close together. This offers creator Donna Barr the opportunity to (at last!) break out with a very, intensely graphic and magnificently choreographed sex scene. Rosen may be a stud, but he's new to the guy-on-guy stuff (the beauty of Pfirsich his sudden inspiration!) and so Barr allows the somewhat awkwardness of the two trying to literally feel the other out to coincide with an audience that hasn't yet had the pleasure of a Desert Peach comic sliding quite so emphatically into the sex stuff.
But here it be, in all its visceral, funny, eye-popping and unexpectedly heart-warming glory. In usual Barr fashion, Donna somehow depicts an explicit act of sex, and not a mainstream one at that, and manages to make it charm the pants off a Hellfire preacher. Rosen and Pfirsich never seemed so real, human, and yet larger than life as they do in this extended and brilliant flashback.
Then Udo's story waxes poetic on his hiding his Jewishness while being nonetheless bigoted toward gays, and how his first meeting with Pfirsich and the braggart Rosen slapped his hypocritical double-standard beliefs into second thoughts and serious re-thinks.
Barr's art gets a touch more refined and polished for this semi-anatomy lesson yarn, and the result is a GORGEOUS issue of DP. The story is perhaps the most character-centric of the entire run, and gives Rosen a personality he sorely needed to bring his relationship with Pfirsich into glittering light. And Udo's less enlightened past also grants his character a 3-D real world sensibility that lets the reader love him all the more.
After the lightness of substance of #19, "Fever Dream" gives readers a dense and heady package of human beings being human in absolute and definitively human ways, puritanism be damned.
STORY - 10/10 (perfect blend of daring and charming, character and plot)
ART - 10/10 (like lightening striking wood, inordinate detail and crazed energy alike)
IMPORTANCE - 10/10 (two major characters get major moments of their lives told)
TOTAL SCORE - A PERFECT 10/10
Just Read: The Desert Peach #17 (The Wedding Issue!)
Wow. What an issue.
"Peach" has adherred to a 33-page "standard" format up until this point, though now it overflows into 44+ pages per book, beginning with this 48 page wedding spectacular! After the complete mess our resident secret Jew (who-is-also-a-nonbelieving-member-of-the-Nazi-party!), Udo, made of the local Muslim people's black stallion in issue #16, he's forced to make amends by marrying one of their girls, who, for her part, has had her eye on Udo for quite some time. And far be it for Oberst Pfirsich Rommel not to swoon at the idea of a happy couple coming together in coupling love.
Creator Donna Barr kicks off the story with an inspired addition to the wannabe Nazi character, Kjars, a knee-jerk Aryan who's passion for music attributed to "the lower orders" (black music - jazz) comes to the fore and offers an entertaining and (god forbid) BUYABLE tug-of-war between Kjars' unsupportable political beliefs and his actual love of an art form. This broadening of Kjars' character plays heavily into the proceedings when the wedding kicks into high gear, as a malicious rumor of Udo being a Jew starts winding its way through the camp, and neither the Germans nor the Muslims are one bit happy with this!
But before it all hits the fan, two dozen pages are devoted to a whirlwind of culture clashes as a wedding is held to appease (through trial and error) Muslims and Lutherans alike (I think it's Lutherans, anyway...I dunno, the Catholic and Christian divisions confuse the beejeezus out of me - I once knew a born-again gal who I asked point blank to explain the differences and break it down like a family tree kind of thing, and her response was, I kid you not - "there's only one Chirstianity", and proceeded to blink baffled back at me. So much for going to the source...one day I'll read a history book and get it straight). As usual, Barr's play on traditions and pre-conceived notions is as whimsical as it is critical, a celebration of human fraility that doubles as a compelte jeremiad against it to boot. It's a whacktastic blend that feels more real than reality, in a way, a caricature that holds solid layers of true-blue truth behind it, all impossible to ignore the way Barr maneuvers her story through it.
When rumors of Udo's Jewishness finally come to light, things get hairy, and Barr seems to finally get from off her chest all that she has to say on the topic of slander, the unthinking maligning of another without regard to the full conseuqences another will suffer due to the rumor, whether it be true or not. Talk about a subject that still pertains: DP #17 may be over a decade old, and cover a time period nearly half-a century back, but if there's one thing people consistently wipe their hands of, no matter the era, its responsibility of their own actions, the consequences they could have forseen, if only they'd bothered to think it through, only they don't, and so claim they couldn't have known, or anyway it's "THE TRUTH" as though there was something inherently virtuous in spreading around a fact that was, insofar as any man can determine, a fact, and "lies" are bad while "truth" is forever worthy, it's own reward, no matter the disastrous results of utilizing it. Da liegt der Hund begraben: "Truth", in so many things, is like the aethist's God, a thing to believe in at face value and without question. It's pure, it's "good", it's "godly", while lies are the devil, evil and scandalous. Fooey.
Kjars and his music are roped in with an enviously organic twist of plot - if only my own characters could dance around a story and a comic book page as fluidly as Donna Barr's! His own internal battle between what's "acceptable" and what calls to him naturally is mirrored to the Jew/Muslim/Catholic culture issues at hand and it ALL comes to a head with drinking, covorting, and a development with Kjars at the end which makes the entire trip seem, in Barr's own words: "If there's a lesson to be learned here...it's much too confusing for me!"
This is the epitome of storytelling done solid, intelligent, and unchained - unfettered by anything so pedestrian as editorial or audience concerns. Desert Peach #17 is an issue I'd recommend to be a first of the series for anyone, as it embodies and showcases to marvelous effect the every strength the book normally wields. An all-around compelte and exhaustive package of Donna Barr and DP, in a single issue. Es ist einfach zum Schießen!
Story - 10/10 (firing on all cylinders)
Art - 9/10 (incredible detail, wild layouts, more going on in any panel than most comics have happen in an entire run!)
Importance - 10/10 (the culmination of the past 16 issues, all be told)
TOTAL - 9.7/10
Donna Barr Official Dealer Logo!
Running on my Donna Barr riff: the logo below is now to be displayed alongside any official vendor of her books. The first time you'll see this will be at BellCon, at the Cartoonist Northwest table, and Keith Curtis's Crater On The Moon, with more to follow!
On a side note, review for Desert Peach #17 coming tonight, after I finish the double-sized 48-pages-of-story-and-art bastard. It's a real memorable one though.
Anyway, THE UNVEiLING...
Just Read: Desert Peach #16
Working my way through the entire Desert Peach saga (30 issues + two AFTERDEAD GNs in total), a series that follows the exploits of The Desert Fox's gay younger brother, Pfirsich Rommel - The Desert Peach! And here I am at the more-or-less halfway point - issue #16!
First off, the cover sports a simple but utterly beautiful use of watercolor, one of the prettiest covers of the series yet - past covers offered a greater dollop of exquisite detail, but this one makes simplicity look damn good.
Inside, then, the story follows the attempted mating of Pfirsich's white purebred mare with a black pureblood stallion (the mare is a breed that boasts blood purer than humankind can scarcely fathom...well...except for the fact that people were the ones who bred them, or anyway an Arabic people did, which blow the European peoples' little brainpans).
Anyway, long story short, Pfirsich wants to work closely with the Arab folken to enact a successful mating with the mare, an event which would double as a friendly-relations event between the Germans and the natives, but then Peach's subordinate, Udo, rather fancies a mating between the white mare and some other gray speckled horse. He tries to sneak said mare out one night, to make the coupling happen the way HE wants it to, but of course it all goes horribly awry and leads to - I kid you not - a horse orgy with army men stuck in-between. The look on Udo's face as he gets tangled/tied to the white mare's rump as a black, quite erect stallion rears up for the mount, is beyond priceless and perfection itself!
It's a disaster of sexploitative length and breadth (tee hee) that leads to (a rare happenstance for this series) a direct kind-of sort-of "to be continued...", in which a particular event what's threatened poor Udo for the past six issues or so, finally looks to happen in issue #17. (Wedding bells anyone? - shotgun wedding to keep the peace!) Auteur Donna Barr begins to inch toward a looser, more kinetic style, leaving behind the smoother, more crisp pages of the early DP books. Which isn't to say that detail is lacking, but said detail becomes vastly more wild and fancy free as compared to the rigidly controlled linework of Barr's 80's work. This is the perfect story for Barr to cut loose, because horses rampaging and rutting amongst a small turmoil of human bodies stampeding to put it all under control = the very organized chaos Barr's pen-stroke evolves into.
While the social and cultural issues usually explored in a Barr story take a back seat for the situation here - a thing Barr obviously couldn't help but work into an issue-length fiasco out of sheer glee (horse sex! horse sex! army men in the middle! whoooo!) - sixteen issues in, and this is actually a breath of fresh air, allowing DP a chance to get down and get nasty not to mention funny and ridiculous before tackling the intricacies of a multi-cultural wedding in the next ish (which should have big-big cultural insights aplenty!).
Desert Peach #16 is a whirlwind ride of humor, humanity, and absolute artistry, if you like your art a fair shake on the naughty side.
Story - 8/10 (hysterical, dense, fast-paced, everyone in character, awesomeness)
Art - 8/10 (a wonderful blend of intricate and expressionistic, drop dead gorgeous cover)
Importance - 8/10 (Udo's goin' ta the chapel!)
TOTAL SCORE - 8/10
For more "Desert Peach" visit http://www.donnabarr.com/
To order copies of this Issue #16 (which is now SOLD OUT from Donna herself, Mycomicshop.com still has a few for $4.00 a pop at http://www.mycomicshop.com/search?TID=300451