Week of 2/19/2024 Sunday Editon
On this Sunday update, I review L.A. Comics and talk about Megacon Day 2.
L.A. Comics #2 Review (NSFW)
CW: Some everyday ol’ police brutality, racism, and school shooting references
L.A. Comics was Los Angeles’s answer to the San Francisco underground comix scene, but does it jive like the Bay? The answer is they tried. The theme of this second and final issue is law enforcement, so brace yourself for swine saturation.
National Lampoon and Sick artist B.K. Taylor opens the issue with “The Solution.” What solution, you ask? Why, of course, the solution to tackling urban crime rates, which (surprise, surprise), involves dumping more funding into the police force to stop all “the perverts, hippie weirdos, commies, niggers—” The authoritarian douchebaggery cycle continues as crime continues to increase and the impressionable mayor approves requests from the police chief to pour more funds to the police department. This is one of those comics I wish didn’t age so well because it’s a grim reminder of how many things have remained the same or worse, especially the school shootings references, albeit in a darkly comic way.
If it weren’t for Taylor’s caricaturish expressions and proportions which highlight how the whole quandary’s absurdity, this could be considered unfiltered news.
The two-pager “Fameous Lawmen Then, Now” is exactly what it sounds like satirizing the supposed wussification (for lack of a better word) of lawmakers from rifle-toting badasses to angry men in suits. If it was now, it would be angry men in suits screaming on Twitter. What’s next, angry men screaming telepathically through microchips? That’s one of the two things I don’t have the answers to along with who exactly wrote/drew this and most of the other comics in the anthology. The comic is credited to Icelandic Codpiece Comic Studios, a collective of cartoonists including Brian Mc Bean, Christofer, Gervasio Loma, Jim Ferguson, Bob Taylor, and Errol McCarthy. While some of the comics like “The Solution” are directly attributed to particular contributors, others are under the collective name even when it’s apparent that one person was involved in the entire entry, making it something of a game to figure out who did what.
Back to the comics themselves, “Sargent Skywatch” is a one-pager starring the titular nighttime hero who comes with his “bulb of righteousness” to expose criminals hiding in the dark. In a nutshell, voyeuristically scrutinize young couples getting it one in public spaces. There’s not much else to say here besides that I found the punchline amusing enough. I imagine a lot more funny gags could have been done with this character if he had a series of short comics. As with the previous contribution, there’s no specific artist credited, but if I had to make a guess, I’d pin it on Gervasio Loma who also illustrated the witty “Puzzler Place” in the same issue where the reader is asked to find where the narc is.
“Dialogue in Black & White” tries to make a point about ideological cognitive dissonance by showing a conversation between a couple where the guy argues that cops deserve to be called pigs while his girlfriends object to that. The punchline at the end is that the guy suggests calling the cops in a frenzy when his gal’s apartment is ransacked. As an ironic joke, it’s humorous if not somewhat prediction, but as satire, I found it quite obtuse. If I were writing it, I’d probably expand it to show them contact the police only for them to be arrested for drug possession.
Jim Fergerson’s (?) entry “L.A. Breakdown” is a series of four vaudeville-styled comic strips starring a cop duo who try to pass the time by finding people to bust and harass. I liked the mafia and robbery strips, but the other two missed the mark and fell flat in their punchlines.
Things take a shift toward the science fiction/dystopian realm in “FutureCop” (which I’ll assume Errol McCarthy did) where pretrial justice is nonexistent and you can be blasted to smithereens with laser weapons for such egregious transgressions like jaywalking (tsk tsk). Hopefully, I won’t live long enough to see that future, and if I do, surely there’ll be cryogenic freezing for humans.
Penultimately, Brian McBean takes the lead in “Th’ 1st L.A. Cop” which revolves around your typical power-tripping cop who wishes he could receive more respect. A fairy grants his wish, but it overwhelms him to the point he quits and seeks spiritual enlightenment. It’s got a funny twist, but McBean’s art is too haphazard for my tastes in a way where the action becomes a challenge to follow.
To end the issue, at last, Christopher presents to us “The Metro Squad” which gratifies us with the scrumptious taste of karma as a group of hippies zap a cop and his anthropomorphic car before they can get busted.
The comics ranked:
The Solution
Puzzler Place
Famous Lawmen Then, Now
L.A. Breakdown
FutureCop
Sargent Skywatch
The Metro Squad
Dialogue in Black & White
Th’ First LA Cop
Overall, LA’s underground comix displayed here couldn’t match up to its Bay Area counterpart. B.K. Taylor was the only standout artist whose work made an impression on me. The only objectively bad comic was “Th’ First LA Cop.” Meanwhile, the others were middling to average at best. I wonder if L.A. Comics #1 had more edge to boot since that’s where Mickey the Rat first appeared in comic form.
From now on, the Sunday edition of the newsletter will only be updated biweekly, so I can focus more on making the comics themselves and other responsibilities. The Saturday updates will continue as normal.
Megacon Day 2 Overview
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Sam's Studios to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.