hillbilly epicurean.

I remember very clearly the first time I saw that most disturbing of comics, Maakies.  My parents had taken my little brother and I out of town - I was in high school, a freshman I think, and Trev was till blowing his silver trumpet in the middle school band room.  I don't remember which town it was - Roanoke, Virginia maybe, or Charlotte, North Carolina, or any of a million other medium-sized Southern cities with a huge white and beige faceless mall.  We were eating in a chain restaurant, a nice one as I remember, and it was raining outside. I had distractedly picked up one of those entertainment weeklies (as I still do) hoping for comics, a decent news story from an unexpected angle, or at least a crossword.  And then I saw it - a four panel comic that had all the beauty of the great comic strips from the earliest years of that art - Little Nemo, Krazy Kat, and of course the early pie-eyed, newspaper version of Mickey Mouse a la "Plane Krazy" and "The Sky Pirates."

There was, however, a most substantial difference.  Maakies is totally, utterly, completely insane.  It is vulgar, violent, and post-modern - it makes jokes out of life's greatest horrors.  It takes the Platonic, immortal, classic cartoon character and, to be frank, makes it Nihilist.  And it is brilliant.


Why is this comic brilliant? Is it because it is a perfect expression of hopelessness and human banality in the form of a cute little crow (who is a suicidal alcoholic) and a mildly non-un-cute monkey (who is an alcoholic nymphomaniac)?  Perhaps - I am reminded of Vikings and I'm convinced that it uses the iconography of Moby Dick repeated for a reason.  But then, well, maybe I'm stretching.

Okay, here is the link to Tony Millionaire's website.  And this, this here is the link to Adult Swim's page for The Drinky Crow Show. They are both totally awesome.  Be warned - it ain't for kids.  It is the definition of not for kids.  But, like so many things not for kids and full of sadism (e.g. Rome, Fight Club, Everybody Loves Raymond) it is fantastic.  Trust me.  We're totally in the Trust Tree.