Romp #2
40 pages, digest size, $5.00, Aaron Lange >>> aaronlange13[at]hotmail.com or through The Comix Company
Not only does Romp #2 kick off with a cool letters page, the first letter is from R. Crumb! That tells you something. (I'm glad I read this too since I was unaware of Maxon Crumb's book Hardcore Mother which I jumped up and ordered immediately.)
In this issue Jay Jazz gets more than he expected when he declares to Hesh his love of the 'male gaze'.
There's a wonderful 20-page 'strip' called 'Hey, Do You Wanna..." - featuring many, many girls rhyming like so: "[Do you wanna...?] Pork? Park? Have fun in the dark? Ejaculate? Miscegenate? Watch me masturbate? Penetrate? Lubricate? Get drunk and date rape?" It's very clever and the drawings are awesome.
That's followed by a totally bizarre strip, 'Hesh and Friends in: The Party!' Jay Jazz takes his friend Hesh and another friend, Curry Brahmin, to arty Veronika Valkyrie's party. Veronika shows Curry her latest work, a photograph of a Robert Mapplethorpe photograph (a very funny dig at modern art) before taking him as her lover for the night. Curry is surprised when he discovers Veronika has stuffed her vagina full of Hamburger Helper.
Dexter sure is building a formidable roster of comix artists for his The Comix Company, with his own terrific work, and Aaron Lange's Romp.
I'll end with R. Crumb's own praise of Romp - "More! More! Give us more! You are rolling along at full creative force..."
