2 out of 5

I do feel fortunate to have my copies of Dodgem Logic, Alan Moore’s humor(-ish) magazine.  One day I’ll probably read them.  Because god bless the man and his work, but he can prattle on for a bit, and the magazine seemed to be produced via that indulgence, the various smart / smart-ass people gathered to contribute bits fully able to prattle on as well.  ‘Johnny Viable,’ a collection of some material by Steve Aylett which would appear to be Golden Age comic strips re-cast with new dialogue (and occasional minor tweaks to art), had some of its pages previously appear in Dodgem Logic – which is why I bought it, because I’m a blind fanboy on occasion – and so, yeah, nothing’s changed between now and then: the connection suggests there’s a potential for wankiness and that potentially is hereby fulfilled.

It’s not that Aylett’s work is unamusing, or that the shitty reprinting (these ain’t remastered) doesn’t have a certain shitty charm, it’s just… impossible to read.  Here is an example of dialogue from one panel, a conversation between doctor and patient:

“Doc, you told me to relax, go home, think of hens being released and that would do it.  But instead I’m ten deep in ants, plus ants!” / “…And now you believe you could turn into an octopus as early as Monday.  Come in, friend, and let’s discuss properly.”

This was selected at random.  Now: some panels are more coherent, most are much less coherent.  There are some chuckly odd repeated symbols or phrases throughout the collection (like hens and roosters), but otherwise, linearity is a sham – if you appreciate random humor and you thought the above was funny, imagine every single panel has that same non-sequitur approach, and multiply over 60 pages.  It’s numbing.  There are some shorter strips toward the end of the book that are slightly more straight-forward (and the shorter strips in general seem a bit easier to wrap one’s head around, even though, really, this is just an illusion as no story has a clear beginning or end), but even then, I’m not reading with much of a smile, just relief that panel B connects ever so slightly to panel A.

This review says it’s a-okay and suggests reading it in small bits, and while I think that suggestion is correct, ‘small bits’ means, like, 1/3rd of a page at a time, at which point I question the need for a collection of this stuff to exist.  Although I guess you could justify the cover price based on how many days it would take to get through it, then.  I mean, I flipped through the book before purchase and I laughed.  The panels captured on the back cover – because you assume they’re taken out of context and not the entire context -made me laugh.  But actually trying to read the damn fool thing is a lark.  Though it’s not like ‘Johnny Viable’ isn’t exactly what it seems to be from literally the opening page, and so I can’t completely devoid it of value.  And for sure, if your tolerance for this thing does run high, I bet it’s gold.