5 out of 5

S’aright, chumps and chump-ettes: I’ve read my share of disturbing comics.  The sickos, the weirdos, the I-can’t-unsee-that-os… I’ve read ’em, good or bad.  While some of the individual sights glimpsed in the worlds of Josh Simmons’ collected comics in Flayed Corpse aren’t ‘new’ – pooping butts, flesh a’cut – the way Simmons approaches it all with a blase shrug – and I mean all of it, the normal, the tragic, the vile – coheres his work into something utterly affecting.  When a serial killer breaks in and starts to chop at some ladies, and then the ladies join in in an orgy of killing-themselves, perhaps it triggers nose-wrinkled disgust; accusations of juvenile shock tactics; when a Batman and Joker proxy meet in a twisted, poop-smeared version of Killing Joke, perhaps it merits a comic-influence nod of appreciation and then a brush-off as a forcefully strange adaptation.  Sure.  But check the horror and/or fascination on these characters’ faces, even when Simmons is only scripting: if you’ve read Josh’s Jessica Farm collections, it’s likely already familiar: that the line between what’s acceptable and what’s egregious is decided on a whim; the universe don’t care and is as likely to wipe out your house with a tidal wave as it is to have you live in a world in service of a giant, shitting monster.

Yeah, okay, most of this ends in misery, that’s true, but it’s in varying degrees, and it’s the odd blend of relative joy or relief mixed in that’s most disturbing – in an awesome way – about Simmons’ stuff.  The fact that he can achieve this whether simply on visuals or scripting – or both, more often than not – is rather astounding, as is that the bits and bobs collected in the appropriately named Flayed Corpse HC, spread out over years and often repeating such concepts, never feel tired or lose their bite.  The cover of an organic-looking, wooden, rotting face with yellow, cracking “teeth” and a moldy-leaf tongue is the perfect symbol for the unreal-but-recognizable horrors contained within.  Filed under “fun/failure” indeed.

Fantagraphics did a great job on this, with a flat-sitting but sturdy woven binding, magazine-sizing for appreciating Josh’s varying, decrepit worlds, and thick but easily-flippable paper stock.