Jim Blanchard

Web: http://www.jimblanchard.com

Kids, People, Gods & Dogs

Bad Meat #3 and Cruel World #1

Jim Blanchard produces a range of wild, confronting and amusing graphic comics. The first thing you immediately notice is his unique style. He has a superb observational eye and the detail in his work is quite astounding, and this detail ranges from his nicely presented portraits to his explosively explicit and taboo breaking adults only comics.

Kids, for example, is a simple series of portraits, each one drawn with a high level of skill and with a direct style. It is a small booklet with a cynical sense of humour, each image had a simple by-line which helps express the nature of the image. These range from “Blame the Father” to “Jesse Did Her”.

Another booklet of portraits is just called People, without descriptions, you can simply allow the images to communicate the personalities he has chosen to show.

A larger portraiture collection is called Gods and Dogs and includes a superb range of images of humans, and some dogs. It includes some well known figures such as Sammy Davis Jnr, Karl Marx and Fredreich Nietszche to unusual interpretations such as Rambo Hitler, Herve Villachaize (Tattoo from Fantasy Island as a nude angel with a gun in his hand – a reference to his strange suicide) and many others. Many of these images can be examined for quite a long time before you pick up all the details, they are complex with many levels of meaning both visually and symbolically. It is a nice work.

Bad Meat No. 3 is where Jim gets truly bent and truly outrageous. This is such a flash back for me to the old world of dirty underground comics, it is so good it sticks to your fingers. It is beautifully perverse and co-stars Jim Goad, Ivan Stang (Sub Genius), Pat Moriarity, Dennis Eichhorn and Chris Kegel, a superb mix to say the least. Some of the full page images such as Stoned Jerome and Your Mom are especially nice and the 100^th Bonobo by Ivan Stang Chief Poobah of the Church of the Sub Genius brings it a philosophical feel ! Bad Meat #3 is 32 pages and obviously Adult Only.

Cruel World No 1 is an excursion into the world of sociopathic graphic art, with fascinating and strange stories and a range of different artistic styles. Crimesexy are classic examples of Jim’s portraiture adapted from crime photographs each one accompanied by the excuse used to justify the crime. The Attack of the 500 Ft Hippy is a lovely spread sending up 50’s horror films and the wild rampages of the hippies and psychedelics. The execution of Carl Jung is an intelligent and rather erudite exploration of the weirder aspects of Jungian psychology coupled with truly impressive deranged psychedelic cartoons ! There are also some very nice full page images and of course the impressive colour covers front and back. Cruel World #1 is 40 pages.

There is a lot of fascinating stuff here, Blanchard has a great style, a dark and cynical sense of wit which is biting yet painfully honest and cuts to the chase. His adult works are especially enthralling, painstakingly prepared filled with perverse surprises, interesting ideas and provocative concepts.