SPAZ!

Some of you may remember my previous post that mentioned Kaz Strzepek's minicomic series The Mourning Star, a sci-fi fantasy epic that I continue to recommend highly. Well, the book pictured above is Spaz, another Strzepek book that shares many of the same qualities that makes The Mourning Star such an excellent read.

The book itself is produced in a similar manner, with a heavy cardstock cover in a light, cool, gray tone, with three-color screened artwork. The binding is a piece of colored thread looped through the pages and cover, color-coordinated with the green of the cover art, and tied in a neat little knot in the center. This clean, attractive presentation is what initially caught my eye about his work, as it's several notches above the typical Xerox and staples production values of the minicomics world. The attention to detail is striking.

But where Spaz truly shines is inside. This book collects a series of gag cartoons about a trio of roommates. One of whom is a mute, anthropomorphic cat, and the other two are an odd-couplesque pair of college buddies, one straight-laced and put-upon, the other rather lacking in social graces. Not an especially original concept, but the execution is spot on. Each page is typically a complete "scene," from setup to punchline, but the scenes are strung together in a larger narrative. Not really a plot, as there's no overarching storyline in any grand sense, but there is in internal continuity to the strips, and several of the one-page scenes connect into longer storylines.

The characters are rather broad, but well-thought-out, and their interactions are the source of the humor here. Booie, the wild roommate, is the instigator of almost all the hijinks, which range from harmless pranks and drinking mishaps to stealing cars from crackheads and exposing children to hentai. There's also an incredibly funny sequence detailing the pitfalls of trying to combine nerdy pastimes with sexual fantasy.

There's an infectious rhythm to the book, with solid laughs coming at the end of every page, and usually smaller gags filling in the space between setup and payoff. In a lot of cases, the jokes build on top of each other, making each page progressively funnier and leaving few comic possibilities unexploited. There were a few times I had to stop reading to wipe the tears of laughter from my eyes.

Spaz would be completely at home in one of the many alt-weekly newspapers that run comics like Maakies or Red Meat. It's a dark yet lighthearted sort of humor for adults that functions well in small doses, but pays off even higher laugh dividends in concentrated doses. I'm not sure if there are more episodes of this series in the works, but apparently there is some more Mourning Star coming sometime this summer.