Underground Comics - The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers

The freak brothers is funny. There is a lot of humor in the hippie lifestyle, not quite in how it has effected society but in the forms of mass media. Of course it still has qualities other than drug use that confine it in the underground, but compared to other underground works (namely air pirates, that's the only other work I've read) it is a bit more in the norm.

It is very cartoony, not to the point of talking animals running around, but in a non realistic portrayal of life. The freak brothers get into situations, run-ins with the police, and get out of them by some random coincidence of fate. I'm not saying that it should be more realistic in any sense, it is very enjoyable as is.

Underground Comics - Air Pirates Funnies

So, Air Pirates Funnies sounds innocent enough; it wasn't. It was weird, it was strange, mostly for the fact that this was like disney porn so to speak. I wouldn't say I enjoyed it, but I did find humor in it simply because it was disney and other cartoon characters. More or less it was smut and I can understand why it had to be underground.

Contract With God

Contract With God is a graphic novel written by Will Eisner. I enjoyed reading it, and since I waited to write this I read it a second time and still enjoyed it.

It is made of up of four stories, the third one I get a laugh at when I think about it. More or less the super of the tenement is hated by the tenets, but they are afraid of him. The one who ends up solving the super problem in a conniving little 10 year old niece of one of the tenants. Using her unprincipled tactics the super commits suicide and she ends up with all his money while still looking innocent in the end. Why do I get a laugh? Just because.

Besides expressing my abilities to be vague and not explain my humor, I'd like to talk about the look of the novel. It was in black and white, I don't think color would have changed much of the feel. The novel starts with having one or two pictures or frames per panel (I'm not sure of the proper terms) but ends with having three or four. This is more noticed in that the first story, Contract with God, for which the novel is named that Eisner uses more narration to tell the story than character conversation.

One last thing to say, Contract with God varies from most other graphic novels in that it isn't much of a long read, the stories are short. Some might prefer longer works, as I mentioned in a previous blog, I don't.

Overall, Contract with God was a good read.