Here we have two of the more outrageous and hard-drinking comic artists in Montreal, packing this mini with an impressive number of strips. Suicide delights in presenting snapshots of the terminally pathetic – there’s Jean-René, who’s had his head stuck in a garbage chute since age 7, surviving on pizza crusts and leftover Chinese thrown out by the residents of upper floors. Or there’s Roland Vidange, so ugly and disgusting that no one wants to look at him, “even from far.” For his part, Guim’s panels are filled with about as many corpses and as much freaking out as I’ve ever seen in a comic strip. Nothing that wasn’t already seen years ago in Zap, you might say – but so what? Society is huge, and there are always those who choose to further develop styles which others had given up on. It seems Francophone comic artists on both sides of the Atlantic have never tired of this kind of over-the-top, gross-out humour. Personally, I think that without titles like 950 ml Comix, the current contemporary underground comic world, with its pensive Jimmy Corrigans and dark Palookavilles, would be devoid of humour altogether. And there’s nothing comical about that. (Louis Rastelli)
comix, 40 pgs, French, R. Suicide and Guim, $3, 1943 rue Cartier, Montreal, QC, H2K 4E7