This is a fantastic read when the subway gets clogged. With iconic one-page Far Side-ish crisp drawings (not unlike the genius of Toronto inker Mike Parsons), this zine is a flashing reminder to never underestimate the power of drawing. Wiegle is one of four members of Partykausa, an art collective named after a car dealership in Connecticut. Their website is devoted to providing a new drawing a day, and is also a welcoming portal for promoting and selling zine and comic work of friends and allies alike.
Roman Dirge, the Slave Labor Graphics creator of Lenore (and previous magician who once set himself on fire by accident), comes to mind in Wiegle’s work, along with the self-deprecating gothic hilarity of Jhonen Vasquez (as an iconoclastic hooligan in an Underpanting strip that resembles Vasquez’s Happy Noodle Boy).
Wiegle’s “Bonus Gallery of Things in Underpants,” a last page where creatures float in polka dotted undies reminds us of Dirge’s “Dope Ass Tattoo Flashes” in his Lenore comics; a page that is famous for being brought into tattoo parlors with excited fans wanting to actually get tattoos of the underground comic characters on their bodies. Maybe I will get a tattoo of Wiegle’s underpants on a pair of my own. (Nadja Sayej)
Comic, Matt Wiegle, PARTYKA, c/o Matt Wiegle, P.O. Box 448, New York, NY, 10018, U.S.A., http://partykausa.com