#mini kus!

Future is Now, éditions Mini Kus!, 16 pages bichromie, 2011

Mini Kus has been putting out great titles for awhile now.  (I’m not typing their name right, the ‘s’ has a little line above it somehow.  How do I type an ‘s’ with that line above it?  Its not a tilde, right?  A tilde is the squiggle, this is like a little check mark or something.)  They’ve got a great anthology that they put out, that is called ‘Kus!’ (also spelled wrong because I can’t get it to do the s with the line above it.  When I hit ‘option-s’ I get this: ß.  Here’s the tilde, thats easy: ˜), and they also put out a series of smaller titles that are aptly titled ‘Mini Kus!’.  Great production, always in color, and always nice and tiny; great little curios to have on the ol’ bookshelf.  They always showcase a great sampling of cartoonists from all over the world, better known and lesser known, and in the case of their 43rd installment its superstar Michael DeForge.

‘Meat Locker’ is full of gym, jock, and meathead tropes that are well enough compiled that I somewhat get the gags even though I’ve never been to a gym in my life.  The opening three pager supplies us with hilarious introductions to personal trainer stereotypes (”I’m not here to be your friend, I’m here to unlock a profound inner strength buried deep within you!) that I know are hideously true because even though I’ve never been to a gym I do run a show full of dancing people and circus people and have witnessed some of these trainer types firsthand and oh damn do they fit the bill.  He didn’t put in a ‘namaste!’ but maybe thats just one of my own personal stereotypes to get over and not so much a universal one.

DeForge has been cranking out the hits for a long time now and damn is it amazing to watch his visual style evolve.  Back in the old days it was a consistently surreal and often gross ‘Adventure Time’ style but damn has he devolved his line in the most beautiful and brilliant way.  DeForge has been pulling back, getting more and more minimal and retracting more and more weight from his line, to the point where it is undeniable that although the images are often quite dada and an uninitiated reader might struggle for point of reference to more classic cartoony styles he is a goddamn cartoonist in the most classical acceptance of the term.  This dude is seriously on a trajectory that will one day take him to a level of uniqueness and instant recognizable-ness of Schultz’s ‘Peanuts’. Fuck, I hope he ends up drawing ‘Peanuts’ because that would be bad ass.