This collection compiles Trembles’s monthly strips for Vice Magazine. A strange progression occurs from the first to last strip, as strips written (and originally read) a month apart paint a surreal narrative only vaguely linear. The sex-and-death emphasis of the first bunch of strips climaxes with the only strip Vice has ever censored: Rodney carefully cuts a woman open from her vagina to her throat, fishes around in her insides, then says ‘I forget what I was looking for.’ This extreme mysoginy is avenged in the following strips, however, when a group of chanting women (including the somehow not-dead disemboweled one) crucifies Rodney. There have always been two types of Rick Trembles strips: the sex-and-violence fantasyland strips laden with intentional shocks, and the narrative real-life strips laden with often inadvertently shocking honesty. By the end of this collection we’re treated to a unique mix of the two, as Trembles interacts with his fictional creations of the previous strips on the streets around his St. Lawrence Blvd. apartment. This is the type of strip Trembles is best-known for, where we get a great example of a comic-strip as both personal expression and documentation (as well as entertainment). Years from now such strips’ll be remembered as being just about the only ones in English to have rendered Montreal and its poverty-inspired, largely ignored yet persevering artists’ & musicians’ existences. Already his earlier Sugar Diet comics have achieved continent-wide notoriety (and praise from R. Crumb) for their honest depictions of twisted urbanity. This short collection’s an interesting addition to the oeuvre, noteworthy for its playfulness with the form and his first-time (and successful) use of paints. (LR)
Over 15,000 Zine Reviews & Growing!
