Andros #9
Here’s a little bit of trivia for y’all who have stumbled across this website for the first time: way back in the day (and my memory is not specific, so please allow some leeway here), maybe in my third year of reviewing comics (so around 2003), I ran a review for the third issue of this series, and it looks like I was undecided at the time. It was an anthology back then too, which probably had something to do with it, but the years have made one thing clear: I’m a fan of Max’s work. Even when it’s stuff that I don’t get, there’s something so compellingly grimy about his art that it’s impossible to look away. And if you’re taking “grimy” to mean sloppy, just look at that sample and try that one again. There are several stories in this one, a few of which were already in various small press anthologies, so if you’re somebody who reads every single one of those, I guess you might have seen one or two of these before. For everybody else this will all be brand new, and even if you’ve seen those pieces there’s still plenty in here to recommend it to you. There’s a hilariously tragic story of the time he went to a seedy strip club with information that for $80 they would “do anything” to him. Not to spoil anything, but it didn’t end all that well. There’s another piece about how he slandered a girl when he was a kid with a story about how she had sex with the whole football team at a party (he wasn’t even at the party), which morphs into a tale of how he could protect himself from her irate brother. As always, there’s his centerfold, which should forever ruin any sexy connotations from that word usually being applied to Playboy and the like. The level of detail here is insane, and I don’t know if it’s a good or a terrifying sign that I understood the meaning behind it right away. There’s another story where he talks about a tape that he made in the early 90’s featuring his “burp solos,” and there’s still even a copy of it out in the world as of this writing. Finally there’s a longer strip that talks about his early troubles with panic attacks, a toxic relationship he lived through and even a small glimpse into the origin story of his long term relationship with Kelly Froh, who is also an incredible cartoonist and somebody whose work you should be seeking out. There are also a few single page strips with his redneck characters from past issues, sort of like if Hee Haw got run through a David Lynch filter. I’m clearly biased, but there’s some great stuff in this issue, and it’s only $1 more than the issue I reviewed way back in 2003. Check it out already! $3
Posted by Kevin 
