Killer stuff from Revival House Press is our focus this week! None of it “brand new,” but so what? All of it is still readily available from http://revivalhousepress.com/books/

The entire breadth and scope of existence is traversed by means of the shortest distance possible — that being from a “greasy spoon” diner to a mini-golf and video game “emporium” — in the pages of Chris Cilla’s 2014 flip-book Labyrinthectomy/Luncheonette, a kind of throwback to the days of Doug Allen and Gary Leib’s Idiotland in terms of tone, temperament, and style, but with some sort of hidden-in-plain-sight philosophical intent tying both halves together until they meet/mash up in the middle. Characters talk at, rather than to, each other in amusingly impenetrable non-sequitors, seemingly-incongruous actions flow one into the next with no regard to reason or even time, and robots, people, mutants, and anthropomorphic animals all happily (I guess) co-exist in a miasma as immediately recognizable as it is absolutely alien. No aspect of your existence, whether lived or read, has prepared you for this — which means, of course, that you damn well should buy it immediately.

Cilla’s 2018 follow-up, Blue Onion, is, if anything, an even more curious beast — our ostensible “hero” journeying to the center of the mind to muse over fungi, vegetation, and worms (but mostly worms) while, concurrently, inter-galactic superstar rock band “Ghost Manor” traverses the cosmos and writes songs. Or starts to write songs. Or maybe just thinks about writing songs. It’s hard to say, and for the purposes of the “narrative” here, it probably doesn’t matter much, anyway. You don’t go into Cilla comics for specifics, you go into them to learn that specifics just hold you back. Superbly fluid cartooning that exists in a self-created category unto itself — where, needless to say, it reigns supreme — Cilla’s work makes even the most far-out stuff seem tame by comparison. Well, okay, except for Gerald Jablonski.

Also dating to 2014 is Ted May’s outrageously funny and too-damn-true-for-its-own-good Men’s Feelings #1, a kind of gentle ribbing of sub-toxic (but nevertheless annoying as shit) masculinity that features crisp, sharp illustration to match its wit. I’m hard-pressed to single out which strip in this punchy little collection of keenly observational vignettes is my favorite, so why settle on just one? And, obviously, any comic that features a guy a choking on a hot dog only to be saved by a dude who parts the crowd to get to him by saying “It’s okay – I’m a magician!” is one you need to own.

Less a case of “more of the same” and more one of “expanding on the premise” is May’s 2015-released Men’s Feelings #2, which adds something of a wistful tone to the proceedings and even manages to adroitly tackle semi-weighty themes like near-death experiences and mankind’s estrangement from the natural world. Don’t ask me how he manages to keep making the bemused seem amusing, but he sure does — and makes it look easy, to boot. Which, for the record, I know damn well it’s not. This is most everything I love about comics wrapped up in one unassumingly brilliant little package, and I’m pretty confident that you’ll absolutely love it, too.

No business left to conduct here, then, apart from to remind you that this column is “brought to you” each week by my Patreon site, where I serve up exclusive thrice-weekly rants and ramblings on the worlds of comics, films, television, literature, and politics. Lately, in fact, it’s been a lot of politics. Your patronage there not only allows me to keep things going, it also ensures a steady supply of free content both here and at my trashfilmguru movie site. There’s plenty of stuff up on there already, so you’re sure to get good value for your money, and needless to say, I’d be very gratified to have your support. Please take a moment to check it out and considering joining by heading on over to https://www.patreon.com/fourcolorapocalypse