Rabid Animal Komix #5

Posted: Tuesday, August 16, 2005
By: Steve Saville

Cover of Rabid Animal Komix #5 Creator(s): Mike Hersh
Publishers: Krankin' Komix (Self Published)
From: USA
Price: $2.95(US)

The blurb that came with this comic described Rabid Animal as "a vile, disgusting attempt at humour using cheap racial slurs and immature potty humour. Truly despicable." I second that emotion, in fact this could be classified as an understatement in the extreme. At least Rabid Animal knows what it is, crass, offensive and nasty.

I was nervous when the title of the first story was Unsegregated America and featured a burning cross. I was offended by the time I got to the fourth frame. I guess some might find it amusing to draw comparisons between the Negro race and monkeys but I don't. This first story has everything a true racist would enjoy, lynchings, burnings we even have monkey paws being turned into ashtrays. I can imagine Klan members hooting themselves senseless at such unbridled bigotry. I suppose this all might be intended to be ironical, but I don't think so and anyway irony to succeed needs to be clever. Rabid Animal is not clever it is trash.

Things just get better and better in the comics that follow. We have Gerbils being forced to crawl up Rabbits rectums, drink driving, drug taking and, as a climax, a duck who passes mouse shaped turds. This is a comic that appeals to the lowest common denominator.

Artistically the animal characters that feature in this comic can be best described as satanic Loony Tune characters. Imagine a psychopathic Daffy Duck and your getting near to the artwork on show here. To put it simply, the art is good, the production is good the contents are drivel. What a waste of artistic ability.

Part of me feels that this sort of garbage is best ignored but a bigger part of me wants to say that racism and hatred have no place in any sensitive society. I have spent and hour of my life reading and writing about this comic, I can never get that hour back and so I don't intend wasting any more time on this rubbish.

In a Word: Vile.



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