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Steckler, Ben – Get Bent #5/Unshaven Chi #0
Get Bent #5/Unshaven Chi #0
I’m continuing my 2010 project of going through some of my old minis, and it turns out I have a lot of comics from Ben that I never reviewed. Not entirely sure why, but I’ll try to add a few “new”ones here from time to time. I also managed to update his website, at least a little bit, or at least to a site where you can buy some of his minis. Not many, considering how many he’s done over the years, but if you contact him through that website above I’m sure he has some extra ones lying around somewhere. So how about this comic? It’s a flip book, and this is the issue where Ben gets tired of his ska guy storyline and starts to wander a bit. In the Unshaven Chi part (the short end) we get to see him finally shave his beard (for a job) and resort to a moustache, all while we learn about his new job, why he still lives at home (at the age of 36) and how he’s unlikely to ever find a job in his chosen field in the area. The bulk of the comic is in the Get Bent section, as we get the continuation of an older story (with a nice recap for the new readers) involving jail, hilariously offensive accents (although, as he argues convincingly in his intro, they do seem accurate), hoarded food, a plane crash and a jailbreak by a giant robot. His short pieces involve the one sampled (and I would love to get ahold of one of those things), a piece about how he’s nobody famous and an obsessive reordering of flash cards. It’s a solid comic, even if the main story meandered a bit. It still had enough funny moments to make it worthwhile, and the shorter pieces were solid. I didn’t see any sign that he’s still making comics, but part of the idea behind reviewing older books is that I’ll be doing a bit more research for future, older issues in this series. $2
Steckler, Ben – Unshaven Chi #4
Unshaven Chi #4
OK, Ben sent me a whole bunch of books this past weekend. Instead of putting them all up here (a bunch of them don’t appear to be in print anyway), I thought I’d just go with the two most recent issues so you could get an idea of what the guy is all about. I’m mostly just posting covers too, just because I like some of his covers. A general overview of his stuff: it’s good. There’s so much variety that it’s hard to make a blanket statement like that, and I didn’t like all of the stuff he sent me by any means, but he’s prolific, so he can work through weaknesses a lot faster than some people and I think this one was the strongest of the bunch. Autobio done well, and that’s always good to see. He has a deal going on where you can send him $5 and get a bunch of his older comics. That’s the best overview for what he’s done, but for the best look at what I think he’s capable of you should get the issues of Unshaven Chi and give him a chance to experiment.
Steckler, Ben – Unshaven Chi #3/Get Bent #7
Unshaven Chi #3/Get Bent #7
Well, at least there’s a break this issue from that endless ska story in Get Bent. Luckily this review is being written about ten years after this issue came out, which is about 9 years after that ska story stopped anyway, making any complaints I have about it kind of stupid. In Get Bent this time around we have Der Red Pumpkin (based on the Red Skull, with a hopped-up German accent), having just gotten his hands on a cosmic cube, wake up in the middle of space. He’s confused, but things only get worse when a cosmic creature confronts him and declares itself “A Jew with the power cosmic”. This concerned Jewish mother then sends him to the perfect punishment and wanders off in search of sex, which this old lady can have at any time because hey, power cosmic. This half of the book also has a section of palindromic gag panels, my favorite being “Ammo, my poor droopy Momma?”, but they get bigger from there. The flip side of the book, Unshaven Chi, keeps up its theme of sticking with the autobio. Stories this time around include Ben’s effort to improve his drawing of hands (and he includes a profoundly awkward attempt at hitting on the cashier in the bookstore) and Ben’s public service announcement to the slacker/stoners of the world to get off their asses and join the ranks of pizza delivery men (which includes another awkward tale of him delivering a pizza to a drunk woman who throws herself at him). Based on my complicated scientific formula for such things, I believe more than enough of this falls in the land of “funny” to warrant a purchase, assuming you can find this thing in Ben’s con appearances or perhaps through the wonders of the internet. If you can find it it’s probably still only $2…
Steckler, Ben – Unshaven Chi #2/Get Bent #6
Unshaven Chi #2/ Get Bent #6
Ah, the flip book. It has made a real mess of this page, that’s for sure. This review is above Unshaven Chi #4, as it should be, but also above Get Bent #5, which makes no sense. Ah well, who has time to fix such things? And to add to the confusion, I sampled the Unshaven Chi cover and took the sampled image from the Get Bent story. OK, maybe it only bothers me. The Unshaven Chi chunk of the book (unless it makes to the staple it’s not officially a half) deals with Ben’s new ability to grow a beard at work (after he just shaved it to a moustache to fit with store policy), how he’s lost a little weight and it’s getting noticed by people other than him, America and its collective acceptance of mediocrity, and how easy it is to make an autobio comic. As for the Get Bent portion, most of it is a fairly ridiculous continuing story about former ska musicians stuck in space (with a cosmic cube parody), which might make more sense if I had the brains to read these in order instead of randomly, and usually spread out over a period of years. Still, this story is saved by a digression at the beginning involving the death of DeForest Kelly and Ben’s own near-miss at becoming a Trekkie as an adult. The whole thing is worth a look, but you could tell even he was getting sick of the ska space story, as a good chunk of the pages were full page splash dealies. Is it still available at this late date? Probably not, but you never know…
