Fidele Castree comes flying out of the starting blocks with this first instalment of her new flagship title (which, in english, means ‘lice pus’). I can hardly begin to tell you how much fun it was reading this thing. First of all, the cover is a beautiful full-color hand-silkscreen of what looks like the author with a party hat on, struggling with a snake wrapped around her. Or is it her snake, and is that just her monster attitude? Yeah, that sounds more accurate. There are lemon trees around her – indicative of some of the sordid, sour strips inside maybe? One thing for sure is that the glimpse of bellybutton and bush under the snake is proof that this seventeen-year-old budding comic star is well-practiced in hitting below the belt. And that’s just the cover! Once opened, the book grabs you and whisks you into it with a shout of ‘1-2-3 Go!’ on its pink first page. The strips, ingeniously laid out one panel per page (and the whole thing’s printed in pink), do new things to the form that I don’t know how to describe yet. What to say about the one called “The Hanging Girl”? A girl is hanging from a tree, looking suspiciously like the author did before her last hair change. She’s dead. She’s still hanging, several panels later, as a guy who walks by her every day keeps putting off doing anything about it. A truck finally sweeps her off the street and the passerby is happy he doesn’t have to smell her rotting anymore. A happy ending? I guess so. There’s a damn good balance between the absurd and the insightful in here, with the common denominator being her infectious playfulness. Then there’s her ‘Peaches’ strip, which just oozes sex. It makes me feel like I just did something illegal while reading it. “I don’t know why, but when I see you, I feel all rock’n roll. I want to eat, but I’m not hungry.” Man! Now that Julie Doucet has put forth a strong, strong recommendation of this title in her latest Dirty Plotte, I’d recommend you order this first printing right away, before it gets to be a collector’s item. (LR)
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