Across Difficult Country

Cartoon by John Leech .

Apparently I’m not the only admirer of the retarded brilliance of Fletcher Hanks: "There is a man in a blue suit and a green and red skullcap piloting a red plane across a yellow sky. Crossing a lush jungle valley, he spots thousands of “gigantic royal panthers” and instantly declares: “I CAN USE THEM IN MY PLAN TO WRECK CIVILIZATION!” Though the colorful and crudely drawn adventure comics gathered in I Shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets ! read like the fevered imaginings of Henry Darger’s bully older brother, they are, in fact, the garish and terrifying work of Fletcher Hanks." [ More ]

Now that the Hitler's Cross restaurant controversy has abated, I wonder if I’m the only who was appalled not by its ridiculous Führer theme, but by the placing of the apostrophe after the ‘s’ on the restaurant’s sign ? ________   Sixteen Volts linking to the Stupid Comics website reminded me I’ve been meaning to write about one of the comics derided there, Fantomah . Because it's not stupid, it's fantastic. That row of apes is wonderful, as are the heads peeking over the tops of the bushes. I suspect from his style the artist was some sort of idiot savant.

I don’t know French, but I found this depiction of an angry French oldie (who seems to be complaining about immigrants) amusing (note the beret flying of the oldie’s head): The above cartoon is from the Riverol website, which I am unable to read as I don’t know French. If the hilarious cartoon below from Malaysia is accurate (and I have no reason to believe it isn’t) Canada has offended the Malaysians somehow. This cartoon also reiterates one of history’s age old lessons: “building the PutraJaya alone is not complete”. Il est-vous vrai, ne convenez-vous pas? The following two are from the Belgian cartoonist Kamagurka . They need no explication: