I've enjoyed Dave Crosland's work on Puffed and Heaven, LLC (among other places), but it wasn't until this year in San Diego that I really got knocked on my ass by the talent that he and his collaborator Debenski "Debbie" St. Sinclair have. That's when I first got a look at their Acid Bomb and Penguin Beef sketchbooks, as well as two issues of their minicomics, Slop 5 and 6. My first thought upon reading these books was "Where can I get me some more of this?!" The answer is Slop: Analecta, a "best of" collection of the work that Crosland and Sinclair have done on their minicomics, as well as for various websites. The resulting potpourri of strips includes illustrated song lyrics, snarky absurdist strips and plenty of political and social commentary, all drawn in a style that has elements of artistic pioneers like Scott Morse and Jim Mahfood. Slop: Analecta is a treat for the eyes, a visual feast of great black and white comic art, but it also provides more than a few laughs and has some great storytelling to offer as well.
There's definitely a general tone in Slop: Analecta, and it's a little bit of a mixture. The sarcastic, observational humor common in alternative comics comes through loud and clear, but there's more to it than that. There's a thoughtful side to be found in some of the Slop strips, as Crosland and Debbie ruminate visually on the lyrics from songs, and do so in a way that is better than 95% of the rest of comics trying to incorporate song lyrics into their stories. There's also an almost sad, wistful quality to some of the strips, because even while you're laughing at some of the depictions of the way the world works, you'll feel a little sting of disappointment that the world does work that way. This is most noticeable in "Same 'Ol, Same 'Ol," a two-pager that juxtaposes warfare with children playing war, but it can also be found in Crosland's examination of wartime friendship in "Smoke" and in other strips throughout.
Actually, there's plenty of commentary on the culture of war and the political culture that drives it in the pages of Slop: Analecta. "All's Fair" by Sinclair is a brutally funny takedown of the "hawk" mentality, again juxtaposed with childish playground antics to point out the essential childishness and adolescent chest-thumping that seems to drive war anyway. There's a hilarious "Kung Fu Busboy" strip, as the strip was moving away from being about Kung Fu Busboy and more into general commentary, that puts the current U.S. foreign policy in the context of a boxing match that just had me laughing hysterically. An adaptation of lyrics from "Man vs. Ape" presents the sad link between DNA hardwired for bloodshed and modern warfare with a stirring single visual. And "George Washington, Chrono Avenger" is probably the funniest strip in the book, not only for the cathartic joy in seeing one of the founding fathers beat the crap out of some of the political figures currently fucking up what he helped build but for the undeniably enjoyably line "I cannot tell a lie. I will fuck you up!"
However, Slop: Analecta, while having a political point of view, is not a book of political cartoons. There's more to it than that. Like K Chronicles or Stupid Comics, it's a comic book journal of sorts where the creators can riff, but unlike K Chronicles and Stupid Comics, Crosland and Sinclair often have more room to explore. So we get, for example, an eight-page opening story called "The Day Mr. Foobles Got Out" that reads like the whacked-out kid poetry of Shel Silverstein with an R-rated climax. We get the visually stunning rendition of "Sad, Sad Song" and "Cold Blows the Wind" alongside absurdist humor pieces like "Fetch" (which will make you feel bad for every time you ever fake threw a ball for a dog to confuse him), "Soap" (about an escaped bar of soap) and "Emily (An Oogeyville Tale)" (about a girl who has a building growing out of her head). These all run right alongside the bittersweet and funny "Patience Gets You Nowhere, Tolerance Gets You Hurt" about the painful realities of romance.
Then there's "Kung Fu Busboy," a large chunk of the book that began life as a strip for Chickenhead (now "tastes like chicken") magazine. It begins as a spoof on superheroes and the trials and tribulations of working minimum wage jobs, which is funny enough, but after about a half-dozen strips, "Kung Fu Busboy" skews more into being a soapbox for Crosland and Sinclair to vent their feelings about anything, using everything from a detailed one page gag (their brutal takedown of Valentine's Day) to standard strip formats that mock the whitewashing of Thanksgiving history, the commercial takeover of Christmas or the downsides of fast food on a superhero physique. The strip eventually mutates into "Slop," which is like the later "Kung Fu Busboy" riffing without a central character. There's really not a misfire in the bunch.
Slop: Analecta closes out with selections from the Acid Bomb and Penguin Beef sketchbooks and covers from the various Slop minicomics, and it makes for a pretty good confirmation of the art skills that Crosland and Sinclair possess. A couple years ago, Dave Crosland was a name I didn't even know, but after reading Slop: Analecta, he and Sinclair have rocketed up the list of my favorite artists, and I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for whatever they've got going in the future. I highly recommend this book to fans of Keith Knight, Scott Morse, Jim Mahfood or the twisted humor of Arsenic Lullaby, as well as to anyone with a taste for unusual and beautiful comic book artwork and crackerjack comedic timing and storytelling ability.
