Comics, Books, & Zine Review
Mike Diana's Worst of Boiled Angel collection is the most important book to own as far as transgressive underground publications go. This collects all 8 issues of his "Boiled Angel" series, the infamous zine series that made Mike the first cartoonist ever convicted! Yep, who knew just making comics would get someone into deep shit as if they were serious criminals?! This comic shows how powerful art can be. It can be so powerful that people had to attack it through the fucking law. Mike's comics were pretty fucked-up. His crude but impressive gory/violent art were the visuals for tales of morbid subjects such as child abuse, pedophilia, rape, incest, murder, cannibalism, Christ-bashing, bestiality, and other sick immoral things. Nasty stuff indeed but those with an open mind will find a delightful twisted sense of humor in it rather than disgust as if this were a major threat to society as we know it. Brutal depictions of babies and children getting raped (yes you see hardcore penetration) was a reason this comic caused so much outrage over in conservative Florida during the 90's. It was apparently "obscenity" not "art". I consider obscenity just another form of art. This is an obscene art masterpiece.
The first 12 out of print issues of "Cinema Sewer", my favorite porn/exploitation/cult film zine. Robin Bougie rarely types his reviews or rants, it's all hand written. It makes the zine seem more personal. Robin manages to make reading reviews for movies as fun (if not more) than watching the movies themselvesYou get a good insight into how this guy's sleazy but educated mind thinks and you can relate to his perverted excitement and thoughts. Sometimes his reviews will tap on to other interesting subjects beyond the movie itself. Like it will make you philosophize or psychologize weird sex acts and fetishes he witnesses in a video. His art is as good as his writing too. He draws out some characters from movies and pornstars in his cool comic art style. We need more writers/artists like Bougie in the zine world, he manages to keep a fun sense of humor and wit while talking about and drawing insane depraved shit.
Chas Balun knows GORE. Gore Score 2001 is a book both experts and newbs to gory films need. Judging from this book, he's probably seen more splatter/horror/gore films than I ever will in a lifetime. A lot of horror movies turn out to be boring turds that aren't worth raving about but he manages to at least get a hilarious review about it, which kinda justfies the existence of those shitty movies (his review of the worthless Blair Witch Project movie is more entertaining than that piece of shit movie will ever be). Chas' reviews usually run a paragraph or less and there is a convenient rating system for the Gore level and Quality of the movie in general, makes it very easy to browse the reviews.
Bad Blood: An Illustrated Guide To Psycho Cinema by Christian Fuchs. Great book that compares and contrasts real life serial killers/psychos/notorious criminals and the movies they inspire. There's concise yet very informative writing on both the psychol and the movies they were responsible for in a way. This book shows how art can reflect reality, even if it is an ugly reality devoid of ethics. It's interesting to see how some true crime cases can inspire movies that are dramatically different. For instance a serial killer can be the source for both a shitty b-movie and an intellectual art film. Some movies mentioned here are Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer, In the Realm of Senses, Schramm, Driller Killer, Man Biutes Dog, and a bunch of other obscure films. Some films so obscure that this book is the only time I've ever read about them. There are also graphic photos of both movie screenshots and true crime cases, b&w though.
A History of Cannibalism: From Ancient Cultures to Survival Stories And Modern Psychopaths by Nathan Constantine. When most people hear the word cannibalism, they have a knee-jerk reaction to be disgusted as if it were an inherently evil act. This book will change that perception though. Cannibalism is explained to be an act done for different reasons. Sometimes it's out of desperation (extreme hunger), sometimes out of ritual/customs, and sometimes out of just pure insanity as in the case with those notorious serial killers. The author does seem to have a leftist "embrace diversity" tone to his writing as if assuming all Westerners are automatically close-minded, but whatever, this book still contains lots of facts/incidents of cannibalism and frames the subject of cannibalism under a historical and cultural context, rather than sensationalizing it for mere sensationalism.
The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers by Michael Newton is a big fat book full of everything you need to know about serial killers. You can jump on any page and start reading away about a killer's life and method of killing, from the popular killers to the obscure ones. One thing that makes this book confusing though is that hitmen are considered serial killers. Usually serial killer books just focus on psychotic people. Killing for money is not considered crazy in a world driven by money.