Van Sciver, Noah – Blammo #4

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Blammo #4

To give you readers a peak behind the scenes here at Optical Sloth Inc., generally speaking comics that come in the mail come with some form of letter, usually just a post-it or tiny note that requests (or occasionally demands) a review, and about a quarter of the time they come with no notes at all, correctly assuming that when I see their comic in the mail that I will instinctively know to review it.  Spoiler alert: I review every comic that comes in the mail regardless of the note.  Really, if you’ve sent a comic that I haven’t reviewed, it’s because I never got it.  Anyway, the point of this intro is to note that on very rare occasions the comic comes with an actual letter, clearly with a bit of thought put into it, and this letter was wonderful.  A bit daunting, as at the end of it I’m told that the future of the underground comics scene is in my hands (as if I’m the only guy out there rambling about underground comics), but this is just a long, rambling way to say thanks to those actual letter writers out there.  Hey, isn’t there a comic I’m supposed to be talking about?  Well, assuming that anybody made it past that long intro, it is, once again, a wonderful thing.  Stories include taunting a neighbor with a gorilla mask, getting to them before they get to you, the true story of the Denver Spider-Man (it’s not what you think), an absolutely hilarious chicken story (picked up, more or less, from the last issue), a bad dream that goes just fine until his nose falls off, how Bob Dylan influenced a young (er) Noah in his wandering around years, and a longer piece about a masked artist and his inability to face the world without his mask (because he’s brutally ugly).  Noah gets all kinds of bonus points from me for not wasting even a tiny bit of space, as there are letters on the front inside cover and extra comics on the back (including an excellent tip for avoiding panhandlers).  The Denver Spider-Man was my favorite of the non-funny pieces, as it tells the true story of a man in 1941 who lived in a tiny, tiny attic of a house until he was caught stealing food and killed the owner of the house.  It was creepy and fascinating, and definitely piques my curiosity about his upcoming Abraham Lincoln graphic novel, something that didn’t really interest me until I saw this.  Of course, I have no idea if he’s doing a serious Abe Lincoln story or something involving Abe as a cyborg child molester, but either way I have no doubts that he can pull it off.  He also mentioned on his back page that reviewers didn’t seem to be getting the chicken stories and that they weren’t supposed to go anywhere; they were just fun.  Fair enough, I’m easily caught up in the idea that all stories are supposed to go somewhere, and this time around the thug who was going to beat up a chicken from the end of the last issue gets rocks thrown at his head, lodging in his nose and the back of his skull, and this whole story had me laughing out loud, always a good sign.  And that bit about us all eventually turning on each other was brilliant.  Well, more ramble there for your buck than usual, but there’s some really great stuff in here, Noah is doing everything right as far as I can tell, and clearly I have to do my part to get the word out.  He says this is in my hands, but really it’s up to you people to buy his books.  All I do is talk about them and he needs the cash to survive.  Won’t all you good folks help him out?  $4