This mini collects about 20 of Suicide’s most recent strips, as well as a longer story, “The Legend of the Enigma of the Lost Mystery”. The city’s seamier side is portrayed in his “Chroniques du Centre-Sud” (south-central Montreal), where he actually lives. Welfare day and last call are the two most important events in this part of town, and it shows in these strips. They’re all executed according to the highest standards of urban underground comics, as only a practiced veteran such as Suicide can accomplish. It’s stark, gritty, filthy stuff, filled with one of the baser senses of humor. Some of the jokes strike me as being a little too facile, but then again anything too fancy would look really out of place given the context. An example: we’re in one of those greasy spoons that you find on every second corner in East End Montreal. A hot dog is pleading to this huge slob about to eat him, saying ‘Please, no, I am the hot dog fairy, and if you spare me, I can fulfill all your dreams!’ The guy pauses, stares at the thing, considering, then savagely wolfs it down. The hot dog fulfilled his dreams after all. (LR)
comic, french, 40 pages / main creator: R. Suicide / $2.50 / 1943 Cartier, Montreal, QC, H2K 4E7