FAD DIETY
By:
February 16, 2026
One in a series of occasional detours from Adam McGovern’s irregularly scheduled column OFF-TOPIC.
APPLE’S PARADISE | APPLE | RED APPLE COMICS (ALSO DEADCROW COMICS)
This comic was slipped to me in a Queens, NY diner two weeks before and I had to be in the right frame of mind (Day 4 of a brain-fuzzing headcold, also Valentine’s) to receive its revelations. The galactic spiral of the cover-image, Eve in a double-helix with the Snake, is style-follows-subject, serpentine composition spin-arting associations into a pen moved as if by Ouija-winds. Their dance-fever is the panacea of the poison fruit, “Apple’s Paradise,” both title and author; it is that it is, and if you know you know. These dervish images turn with the urgent orbits of the inner Big Bang as pages 1 through 3 roll by, goddesses thrashing; it suddenly feels like Mirka Andolfo has been holding back. On the plane of persistent material attachments, mortal Barbra goes on a quest for a discontinued flavor of supermarket soup; pop-art lived on the cans alone but sensual stakes are high before Kali comes to devour everything. This App is killer, but the wheel of creation flattens out new fertile canvases; rendering is narrative, and in the way that Savanna Mayer’s tendriling line traces Return to Sleepy Hollow’s preoccupation with tangled vines and exposed veins (another purposefully random comic find), Apple’s intuitive absurdism marks indelible mind-tattoos and her splash-page mandalas mirror a 360-degree attention-span. The radial configuration of the cosmic dance puts her in position to pluck references from any direction, and we meet the Beatles as if in a slash-fiction eight-pager by Terry Gilliam (“Apple”core?); the cast shifts species at will; you learn the universe’s schematic overlay of Ganesh and Garfield — I’m spoiler-ing the fruit, but nothing substitutes for its fermentation on the page; gig-flyer grit and computer-palette glitch, Victorian engraving and tapestry epic and Disney-whimsy and punk non-dominant-handed marker-carving; Apple is capable of it all in the Pablo Picasso and the Walter White senses; we’re in a new realm, and what’s in an appellation? You’ll have to find out for yourself: supercoolawesomechicken.
MORE POSTS by ADAM McGOVERN: OFF-TOPIC (2019–2025 monthly) | textshow (2018 quarterly) | PANEL ZERO (comics-related Q&As, 2018 monthly) | THIS: (2016–2017 weekly) | PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HELL, a 5-part series about characters in McGovern’s and Paolo Leandri’s comic Nightworld | Two IDORU JONES comics by McGovern and Paolo Leandri | BOWIEOLOGY: Celebrating 50 years of Bowie | ODD ABSURDUM: How Felix invented the 21st century self | KOJAK YOUR ENTHUSIASM: FAWLTY TOWERS | KICK YOUR ENTHUSIASM: JACKIE McGEE | NERD YOUR ENTHUSIASM: JOAN SEMMEL | SWERVE YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRO and THE LEON SUITES | FIVE-O YOUR ENTHUSIASM: JULIA | FERB YOUR ENTHUSIASM: KIMBA THE WHITE LION | CARBONA YOUR ENTHUSIASM: WASHINGTON BULLETS | KLAATU YOU: SILENT RUNNING | CONVOY YOUR ENTHUSIASM: QUINTET | TUBE YOUR ENTHUSIASM: HIGHWAY PATROL | #SQUADGOALS: KAMANDI’S FAMILY | QUIRK YOUR ENTHUSIASM: LUCKY NUMBER | CROM YOUR ENTHUSIASM: JIREL OF JOIRY | KERN YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Data 70 | HERC YOUR ENTHUSIASM: “Freedom” | KIRK YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Captain Camelot | KIRB YOUR ENTHUSIASM: Full Fathom Five | A 5-part series on Jack Kirby’s Fourth World mythos | Reviews of Annie Nocenti’s comics Katana, Catwoman, Klarion, and Green Arrow | The curated series FANCHILD | To see all of Adam’s posts, including HiLo Hero items on Lilli Carré, Judy Garland, Wally Wood, and others: CLICK HERE