Blammo #6 by Noah Van Sciver
Blammo #6
By Noah Van Sciver
Welcome, Noah Van Sciver, to an extremely exclusive club. Ivan Brunetti’s in it. So’s Tony Millionaire, Johnny Ryan, and Nick Gurewitch. Oh, and Ken Dahl, too. It’s a short list indeed. I am sure there are a few more whose names I can’t think of at the moment, but the list of cartoonists capable of honestly making me laugh outloud is rather short indeed.
There is, perhaps, a theme across these works. Something gutteral. A sometimes base sensibility that I just can’t repress, no matter how hard I try. I even, on occasional, feel a bit guilty. I remember, once, reading an Angry Youth Comix collection on a train, eyes dart back and forth to make sure no one saw exactly what was eliciting such explosive, full body laughter.
It’s not that I don’t find other cartoonists funny—I’d like to think that I recognize good humor when confronted with it—it’s just that, frankly, there’s a difference between recognizing that “this is funny” and actually momentarily losing control over one’s composure.
Now, I should state definitively that this newest issue of Blammo doesn’t have the laugh frequency of a, say, Maakies or a Schizo, but that certainly isn’t an entirely negative thing. Sciver really treats his series as a catchall. Ideas are thrown against the wall, and some stick better than other—or, perhaps more appropriate, stick in different ways. The result is a surprisingly diverse collection that is sometimes funny, sometimes surreal, and even, amazingly, sometimes touching.











