BULLSHIT FRANK AND GORILLA JOE
a big hit in the comics/zine department at HBML has been the first three issues of BULLSHIT FRANK AND GORILLA JOE, a zine by the inimitable MICKEY ZACHILLI. unlike a lot of “independent” comics / zines you find nowadays, this comic is neither a bunch of telephone doodles you’re trying to pass off as spirtuality, or just a non-story about a tiny dude walking around in a weird land. gorilla joe is a beard with sunglasses, and bullshit frank is an excitable nouveau hairstyle with st:tng bumps on his nose. together they form a friendship full of quips and funny ideas, and then there’s another character that is akin to the holy ghost. all of this is drawn in a great scribbly style with screen printed covers (in truly disgusting color combos).
despite the zine format, BSF&GJ is a newspaper-style comic strip- each page is it’s own standalone piece, sometimes playing into a larger narrative, sometimes not. not to be over-analyzing here, but all together, the effect is a good look at a great friendship, told over a long time, in infinitesimal glimpses. and like all good comic strips, there is the wonderful constancy: as dagwood still collides with the mailman, gorilla joe smokes endless cigarettes, bullshit frank continues to low-level pester, and the path of the hurricane can be charted by the location of birdeyes (currently in the kitchen). oh, and even though it’s obnoxious to make references all the time, check out the cameo in that last link by kazuo umezu’s cat-eyed boy
visit mickey’s webiste, read her comics online, buy the comics from your stupid desk, sleep over at her house and wake up with a drooly cat sitting on your actual wig.
[…] topic of things written about things relating to me, jacob wrote this thing awhile back one time: http://hbml.org/fresh/2009/02/24/bullshit-frank-and-gorilla-joe/ i like it not only as a self serving bj sesh, but also as a piece of fine […]
August 4, 2009 @ 2:39 am