Sunday, August 05, 2007



I Love Led Zeppelin: panty-dropping comics
     and
Monkey Food: the complete I was seven in '75 collection

by Ellen Forney

Hilarious and highly recommended if you like comics. (These are definitely comics, not graphic novels.) Forney's drawing style is well-suited to both the comedic and the erotic themes.

I Love LZ is mostly one-page, one-off comics in the how-to vein: how to be a fag hag, as explained by Margaret Cho; how not to get caught using drugs; how to reattach severed fingers; how to twirl the tassels on your pasties — all a little dirty, subversive, sexy, etc. It also includes a few longer comics, including one written by a gay male friend and illustrated by Forney. Not that everything else is oppressively gynocentric, I just found that one extra interesting, for reasons you should be able to imagine.

Monkey Food is the episodic narrative of the author-illustrator's wonder years. I was only two in '75, but I'm still old enough to appreciate the way bell-bottoms and loud colors can turn the screw on ordinary human foibles.


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