zine, [zeen] noun. 1. abbr. of fanzine; 2. any amateurly-published periodical. Oxford Reference

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Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Zeen Review: Barbirella

 
 

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BARBIRELLA by SCAR

SCAR are the stalwartly Aussie comic creators Steve Carter & Antoinette Ryder. Their work has always been iconoclastic & gross & gained a lot of publicity once after they got attacked by famous religious loon, The Rev. Fred Nile. Their work upsets Christians, but that's like shooting fish in a barrel. But their vast catalogue of work is a little confronting to approach as a discerning reader. So having sampled their work in compilations giving an exclusively SCAR publication a go was a little like trying to pick out your first Home For the Def record, where the hell do you begin? For me, it was 'Barbirella', SCAR's Barbie satire. As implied, these guys have been around for ages, they're old hat. Which is how you'd have to describe a Barbie satire that was produced in 2007, when Barbie's grip on bona-fide doll fans has been famously dwarfed by Bratz dolls. However, Bratz perform, for want of a more PC term, the sluttiness that's been hurled @ Barbie by satirists for ages & when you're falling back on these kind of easy, old hat jibes @ corporate toy figure, Barbie is the easier, obvious, comfortable & classic choice. So 'Barbirella' parades itself as a fake Barbie catalogue, advertising a cavalcade of accessories to warp Barbie's ever adaptable persona into a zany variety of identities. So we get to meet Alcoholic Lush Puppy Barbi, Concentration Camp Barbi, Sexual Deviant Kidnap Victim Barbi, Suicide Barbi, Talibandit Barbi & Feminazi Jackboot Barbi to name just a few & now you get the picture. The artwork's classy as ever, w/ B&W guts, flouro pink skin on A5 portrait format, staple bound copy paper. It doesn't compare well against my first Home For the Def CD (The live album of a spoken word performance featuring a whole bunch of dirty limericks, the man himself was dressed as Jesus Christ), it's pitifully old hat but I'm old hat too & that's why I couldn't resist picking up another Barbie satire.

 
 

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