Here we have an excellent submission that was recently sent in, ‘Shit and Piss’ by Tyler Landry. There is a lot to be said for unfettered imagination. Not much is said, actually, and a lot more could be said. In underground comix we tend to celebrate the ‘relatable misanthrope’ quite a bit. From the 60s till now we’ve been lauding the pantheon of Crumbs/Clowes/Matts/Van Scivers as voices of a generation or a kinda “thats exactly what I’ve been thinking!!” vibe kinda creator guy. Years upon years of dudes drawing themselves with their shoulders slumped, against a droll cityscape for a backdrop, on a solitary wander as we read panel after panel of thought bubble listing off by rote how much they hate everything and themselves. Now, I’m using some broad strokes here of course! All those guys are geniuses and I will happily buy every product but we still need to sit back and acknowledge that to illustrate or to give voice to shit everyone is thinking aint exactly all that; we’re all thinking that same shit! We celebrate the artist who can in the most literal way give voice to our most common traits, to the artist who can reach many voices through singular voice, but theres also another kinda artist who takes that aforementioned misanthropy, or angst, and instead of drawing themselves hunch backed and grumbling on a city street takes that pure feeling and puts it through a little filter called IMAGINATION. Being a comix fan for a good 25 years and pretty much devoting those years to the small press and underground, I notice its the Bagges’ who speak to a generation and inspire a swath of imitators for endless years to come but the Woodrings’ don’t so much. Theres always a big pile of auto bio comics to choose from and tons more about “relationships” but we don’t get much in the way of a silent dog man in a hallucinatory landscape. Thats cuz that shit aint so easily imitated without clearly cheating and ripping off. So the imitators are less, or less brave, but we still get a trickle of a few every generation who realize that the secret is just to access ones imagination and let it flow; thats how one best follows in the line of ones heroes. And methinks we don’t celebrate pure and unfettered imagination so much because even at its first degree of separation from reality; as Landry’s misanthropy is represented in eloquent and skilled representory (as in not full on fucking definition of ABSTRACT) art that instead of showcasing young twenty somethings sitting at a diner talking about girls and combat boots it depicts a shit and piss processing plant and the creatures cursed to live in it, it is quite hard for any of the muggles of the mainstream to understand. Most folks need cartoons about teens in skinny jeans and california rolled jeans, or at best anthropomorphic monkeys and ponies in skinny jeans and california rolled jeans, to understand anything and anything even slightly beyond that level of reliability. Any actual use of imagination, is, to that reader, nothing but garble. In cinema everyone flocks to see Iron Man but even though Hellboy does alright its still not setting the standard, even though that fucker is an action movie with angst about girls its still ABSTRACT by comparison. It takes only one more degree of separation to get to David Lynch and then beyond that we’re straying into “my kid could do that” territory. The mainstream hates the abstract and it hates imagination, it just don’t get it. This is hurt these days even moreso by the fact that we now have smartphones to do our imagining for us, just look at any snapchat filter and you see the death of imagination; your god damn phone puts on your costume for you. So, by definition, I look at Landry’s ‘Shit and Piss’ as beautiful abstraction of some very basic and understandable emotions and I look at the book as beautiful therapy because, man, we all got the bad feels and what better way to get them out than to come up with a ghastly world that is a giant and ancient shit and piss processing plant full of maligned and cursed creatures destined to fail and yet continue on within its hallows. Seems way healthier than drawing oneself walking down a Chicago street with ones backpack over ones shoulder with thought bubble after thought bubble of going into in depthy detail of why one hates parties and can’t get along with anybody. I imagine Landry is quite a well adjusted and happy gentleman thanks to these comics, the therapy of churning out all those bad feels and making the meat man suffer instead of the self. And I should get to the about the comics! As before mentioned, ‘Shit and Piss’ is about a shit and piss processing plant that is as old as time. No one knows who built it, how long its been there, but its got a caretaker and it is our narrator. And it shows us through through its caves and caravans and of all the horrors within it. This is classic, old school, METAL. This is low deep voices grunting about death and blades and blood. I sat reading this comic, called ‘Shit and Piss’ in a beautiful outdoor park a few blocks from my place. Sipping on a latte in the bright sun, the leaves rustling around me and the birds at play, with a big grin on my face following along at this parable of the HORRORS of us, the human race. This comic belongs in an early 90s issue of Heavy Metal, its got it all there. It starts out as interesting and disgusting parables shown by an indifferent and cold narrator who is a hands on/hands off bastard of a god and then you realize the stories start to intertwine and then, just as I needed it, just as I was starting to realize it and want it, I got a SPACESHIP, and I was like, “yep, he managed to fit in a fucking spaceship, I knew it,” and then we get a wonderfully satisfying ending of an origin story. This comic book perfectly fits that space in between a Fantagraphics book and a Dark Horse book. I didn’t realize that space was so broad but Retrofit/Big Planet, as well as Koyama, are really filling those spaces well.