My guest last week was local cartoonist Noah Van Sciver (Westword, www.noahvansciver.com) . We bantered about the art of the comic, the interrelationship of underground music and visual art, and we also got a chance to drop some hot tracks (as it turns out we have a kindred gusto for all things psych, punk, and otherwise).

Noah was kind enough to provide me with his latest self-released comic Blammo Vol. IV (available at Kilgore Books in Denver for $4, between Wax Trax 1 and Wax Trax 2). Blammo is a serial in its fourth volume consisting of self deprecating autobiographical allegories, intercalary meta-cartoon observations/parodies (using the medium of comics for the purposes of poking fun at the business/vocation of cartooning), tales of wandering, human nature, & c. Oft portrayed as the preverbal manqué, Noah avoids any platitudinous archetypal characterizations of himself (the misunderstood artist as an etiolated loner, the dubious, socially stunted, lovelorn misfit…) , but rather allows the reader to project his or herself into any given character’s psyche and subsequently reflect on their own experiences while at simultaneously enjoying guffaws with every turn of the page.

Blammo is a pleasure to read, and I would encourage one and all to purchase volumes 1-4 at Kilgore Books in Denver, and partake of the brilliant and hilarious examinations, indictments, and parodies of human nature and the collective American subconscious.