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Troutman, Dick – The Dick Troutman Handy-Dandy Pocket Guide to Successful Suicide
The Dick Troutman Handy-Dandy Pocket Guide to Successful Suicide
This is a work of sheer genius. It’s not technically a comic book, I guess, but there’s no way in the world that I was going to leave this off my page. It’s exactly what the title suggests: a guide to committing suicide without screwing it up. It takes a dark sense of humor to really enjoy this, but if you’re lucky enough to have one of those, this is the kind of thing that you’re going to want to buy 10 copies of just to make sure you keep one when all your friends start borrowing them. All kinds of ways to kill yourself are covered: hanging, drowning, drug overdose, explosive decompression, animal attack… The descriptions for all of these are brilliant. He alternates between bullying and understanding, and outlines all the pros, cons, and effectiveness of the methods, along with whether or not you can have an open casket and how messy your death will be for whoever has to clean up after you. Frankly, I’m astonished that something like this can exist in a world as PC as this one, but we’re all lucky that it does. It’s $5, and forget whatever I said about any other comic on this site. This is the one that you should get immediately, and there’s no way that you’ll be sorry.
Troutman, Dick – Street Angel #1 (with Brian Maruca)
Street Angel #1 (with Brian Maruca)
Sometimes I like things a lot better in theory than I do in practice. This one has ninjas, an evil genius, a sassy ass-kicker (Street Angel, of course), and a plot to destroy the world, but it just didn’t keep my interest. Don’t get me wrong, parts of it were wonderful. The ninjas refusing to fight because they knew they were going to lose, the evil genius’s reaction when he loses (and if you didn’t know that, shame on you), and the Bald Eagle were all wonderful. There’s also a playful sense running through this, nothing is taken that seriously. Maybe it’s just because I read this in clumps (kept getting interrupted) and this does seem like just the sort of thing that I might love a few issues down the road… but so far I don’t. It’s $3, contact info is on the title or elsewhere on the page.
Troutman, Dick – Outfitters #11
Outfitters #11
Is it OK to just call a book awesome and leave it at that? Anybody who reads these things regularly knows that that’s not a word I use very often, but there it is. This is a silent book about a group of folks hunting down Sasquatch. There’s a fight scene at the end with the surviving member of the group and the Bigfoot that has to be seen to be believed. This comic is an absolute blast and, as anybody who read the other review (#4) can see, a complete departure from the other comic of his that I’d read. I still have three more of his comics to read, so there’s probably going to be a “Dick Troutman day” where I review all of them soon. Until then, judging by the covers at least, all of these Outfitters books are different and this one is completely worth the $2 to check out. Contact info above, more is on the way once I get through with the rest of the SPACE stuff…
Troutman, Dick – Outfitters #6: Sucks
Outfitters #6: Sucks
At first glance, this looks like all the characters of Archie comics vs. Charlie Brown, with a lot of relationship antics thrown in. After reading it, yeah, that pretty well sums it up. I have no idea what was going on in the other 5 issues of this series. I suppose that’s a good thing, seeing as how I missed them, but if it was like this one every time it probably got old. “Sucks” is the Charlie Brown look-a-like who gets his locker door jammed every day, with pretty much everybody in the school either in on it or not giving a shit that this was going on. The main character, Ruggo, is dating a girl who’s slowly starting to see somebody else, but he’s still having sex with her. I should mention that this is set in high school so there’s probably no reason to expect emotional maturity in these dealings, so he’s got that part right. Anyway, the problem is that this Ruggo guy is such a prick that I didn’t really care what happened to him. His relationship isn’t going that well. So what? He still gets to have sex with the girl and with another random girl who discovers that he’s “available”. A lot of petty, silly stuff, which is just like high school. This is an interesting book, and it’s probably only me who was annoyed to be looking at Archie characters the whole time. That’s probably just the way he draws and I’ll give him a complex or something if I keep this up. Check out the website or just e-mail him to see how you can get this ($2) or back issues maybe.
