Comic, Joe Deagnon and Kirby Stasyna, chickenoutfit.com, $5.50
You don’t typically think of South Carolina as a hotbed of warped zombie-ish mayhem. Or maybe we do?!? Either way, it’s the home state of Chicken Outfit, a full-colour, fully-professional comic that details the misadventures and misfortunes of Rusty, Stan, Headcast and Billy. They are your typical, garden variety “salt of the earth” types who ultimately find themselves on the receiving end of ritualistic abuse, be it from authority figures or from the authoritative monsters and ghouls who come within their orbit. This comic also touches on technological angst and binge drinking, all spun into a singular chaotic episode that they manage to survive. The artwork in Chicken Outfit is a lot of fun with shades of R. Crumb in some of the monsters and facial expressions (though not in the hind quarters). The dialogue is colourful and fat-free with plotlines advanced quickly without tons of exposition. Although this is the second issue, an interested reader can really pick this up without having read the first instalment thanks to the quality of this work. From the sounds of things, there was a bit of a spatial gap between issue #1 and #2 so hopefully we won’t have to wait as long for #3. We want more! (Cam Gordon)