4 out of 5

So I bought Peek!, loved it, was happy to discover that Jason had been doing his thing for several years, and gleefully purchased some of his past work from his website.  Great Taste is a softcover collection of the four issues of the first volume of his self-published Deep Fried, which we can see as the precursor to (and source of some of the characters in) Peek!, though with a bit more focus on ongoing storylines.  Contained within, along with some one or two page gags, are stories featuring Beepo and Roadkill – a drunk clown and his drug-abusing pet pal kitten – Weapon Brown, a post-apocalyptic Charlie Brown (the conception of work is genius in and of itself), and Clarissa, a girl who ends her first appearance by saying “im not going to pretend that daddy didn’t fuck me.”

Comedy!

But this is where Yungbluth sets himself far apart from and above the usual crass-humor crowd: there’s plenty of self-aware controversy baiting – the first page of the first issue blatantly rags on this – but Clarissa, for example, doesn’t exist solely to push uncomfortable-humor buttons: Yungbluth, against all odds, gives her an actual character.  The same goes for Beepo and Roadkill, and maybe less so Weapon Brown himself, the world he inhabits stretches far and beyond simple parody.  It’s hard to pinpoint, as I’m not saying that these figures will do much beyond resort to their expected attributes, but overall, Jason doesn’t take the easy path to the joke.  He loves the medium, and has taken full advantage of it to wring the most humor out of these ridiculous set ups and send ups.

And it is, of course, interesting viewing this historically, as we see the years tick by between issues and Yungbluth gets a little more focused artistically, and structure-wise, and experiments with fonts and the pacing of his gags, but the mix of smart / stupid is never imperfect: from page one, the series is magic.

The lack of the much sought after five star rating is, in part, due to the binding: the collection is self-published as well, and the page, printing and cover quality are all impressive knowing that, but there’s no breathing room near the spine, which means that bits of every single page are lost in that crevasse.  Sure, you can intuit the letters missing, but it’s frustrating all the same.  Content-wise, the first issue is all insane energy, but Jason learns over the course of the four issues how to accomplish his jokes with fewer words and streamlined layouts; that first book is quite crowded for text and panels are packed edge to edge – though, to be fair, it hardly looks amateurish, and only feels stuffy in comparison to the book’s latter half.