SERIOCOMIC (28)

By: Adrienne Crew
July 10, 2019

One in a weekly series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by HILOBROW friends and regulars, on the topic of our favorite comic books, comic strips, and graphic novels.

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NUTS

Thanks to Gahan Wilson’s work, I’ve never felt compelled to try LSD. The American artist’s playfully twisted comics gave me enough of a glimpse into other dimensions; his hallucinogenic drawing style left me with a contact high.

When Wilson started a monthly comic strip for National Lampoon magazine in 1972, he named the strip Nuts, a title with two pointed meanings. The strip was a snarky counterpoint to Peanuts, and every other comic strip depicting childhood as anything less than bizarre and terrifying. And it was more than a little bonkers; in fact, when I first encountered the concentric-circle faces drawn by R. Crumb’s troubled brother, Charles, I was reminded of Wilson’s character’s melting faces.

Nuts followed the adventures of a little boy, “The Kid,” who worries about everything. Wilson presented the unvarnished truth of childhood: It’s a world filled with strange mutants and grotesque monsters hiding beneath masks of respectability.

Nuts gave me comfort as I struggled with the trauma of being the first black kid ever to attend our new neighborhood elementary school in Pasadena’s La Cañada suburb. During my first two years of school there, although two older white boys followed me home every day, taunting me with racial epithets and threats of violence, I never asked an adult for help. Not that I would have received much sympathy. While my sister and I took weekly ice skating lessons in Burbank, my mother used to go through our rooms back at our house in La Canada, looking for evidence that we’d broken her (inconsistently enforced) cleanliness rules. Each Tuesday, I’d enter the house a nervous wreck, unsure whether this was the week that my mother would beat me with a wooden paddle for having failed to fold a pair of pants correctly. The punishment didn’t bother me so much as my mother’s volatility.

Although he covered a morbid terrain similar to Edward Gorey’s and Charles Addams’s comics, Wilson was far less coy about depicting American society’s monsters and mutants. As an adolescent, I loved how Nuts called out the hypocrisy of the adults who controlled me. The strip validated my own pre-pubescent discovery that the world — inside and outside my home — was dark, dangerous, and unfair.

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SERIOCOMIC: Mimi Lipson on LITTLE LULU | Sara Ryan on AMPHIGOREY | Gary Panter on THE NUT BROS./THE SQUIRREL CAGE | Gordon Dahlquist on POGO | Robert Wringham on VIZ | Matthew De Abaitua on CAPTAIN BRITAIN | Jessamyn West on FUN HOME | Bradley Peterson on HELLBOY | Stephanie Burt on KITTY PRYDE RETURNS | Jenny Davidson on OOR WULLIE | Luc Sante on MARSUPILAMI | Susan Roe on BLOOM COUNTY | Marilyn Berlin Snell on CHARLES ADDAMS | Deb Chachra on ARKHAM ASYLUM | Judith Zissman on ERNIE POOK’S COMEEK | Alexandra Lange on BETTY (ARCHIE) | Catherine Newman on VERONICA (ARCHIE) | Josh Glenn on SPIRE CHRISTIAN COMICS | Adam McGovern on THE CREW | William Nericcio on ERRATA STIGMATA | Chelsey Johnson on DYKES TO WATCH OUT FOR | Sherri Wasserman on TANK GIRL | Tom Nealon on MEGATON MAN | Erin M. Routson on THE WEDDING OF SCOTT SUMMERS & JEAN GREY | Douglas Wolk on FRANK IN THE RIVER | Annie Nocenti on DICK TRACY | James Parker on 2000 AD | Adrienne Crew on NUTS | Vanessa Berry on MEAT CAKE | John Holbo on WITZEND | Michael Campochiaro on SPIDER-WOMAN | Miranda Mellis on RED SONJA & BÊLIT | Michael Grasso on THE NEW MUTANTS | Ty Burr on BINKY BROWN | Bishakh Som on AMAR CHITRA KATHA | Mark Kingwell on CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED | Brian Berger on JIMBO | Kenya (Robinson) on AGENT 355 | Seth on THE ETERNALS ANNUAL | Susannah Breslin on SLASHER | Lisa Kahlden on JACK CHICK TRACTS | Mandy Keifetz on KRAZY KAT | Tom Devlin on DUM-DUM POSSE READER | Eric Reynolds on ACTION COMICS #460 | Rick Pinchera on EIGHTBALL #16 | Juan Recondo on DAYTRIPPER | Elizabeth Foy Larsen on ROZ CHAST | J.E. Anckorn on HALO JONES | Deborah Wassertzug on GREAT POP THINGS | Peggy Nelson on MAD MOVIE SATIRES | Holly Interlandi on ANGEL SANCTUARY | Karen Green on THE SMITHSONIAN COLLECTION OF NEWSPAPER COMICS.

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Comics, Enthusiasms