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Intelligent Comics From A Couple Of Bearded, 35-Year-Old Virgins
By James DiGiovanna
WHILE THE ART world held its breath, Greg Petix and Chris
Cilla worked feverishly behind closed doors, to bring us the latest
volume of Swonk, their cartoon tribute to Marvel Comics,
the Clinton administration, Israeli Psychics, and all such satanic
things. Howling Swonk features not only the award-winning
"gag strip" format that post-modern art critics like
Donald Kuspit and Rosalind Kraus have called "archeo-teleologically
diffident," but also a continuing story (nearly nine pages
in length) featuring Uri Geller, an assortment of politically
incorrect superheroes, and a mentally challenged mass murderer
with a Hillary Clinton fixation. If that isn't enough, there's
the recurring theme "things only Greg Petix can remember,"
featuring such lost moments of late-20th century popular culture
as the Growing Up Skipper Doll (who went through puberty when
her arms were bent behind her back), and the short-lived Abba
comic book, wherein members of the band appeared as super-powered
crime fighters.
Swonk appears regularly in the extremely prestigious and
refined aesthetic journal The Daily Wildcat, but it avoids
all the trappings of a typical "college newspaper strip"...which
is to say that its jokes are intelligent and never feature someone
vomiting after a kegger. Well, almost never. Rather than reading
like it was written by a frat boy who regularly gets rejected
by sorority girls, Swonk reads like it was written by a
well-read and thoughtful writing major who regularly gets rejected
by tattooed punk rock girls. It's a parade of frustrated feelings
sifted through a cheese cloth of obscure but easily recognizable
American icons. Buy it at your local art museum or comic book
shop...or anyplace else where bearded, 35-year-old virgins hang
out.
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