From BIUL #2.
If you think this strip is confusing, here’s some help:
The “dark gift”, in my view, is a gift someone gives you that you can never give yourself; the experience of their death. You can only appreciate it once it’s happened. There is no describing it.
https://youtu.be/oiQRWR8oyXg
If you’re curious about the aesthetic inspirations for the R. Buddy page, it’s a mix of Cabbage Patch Kids and this:
A big doll for boys. I didn’t know any kids who had one, and it’s only remembered as the inspiration for Chucky from the Child’s Play movies.
If you think the R. Buddy strip is too dark, you haven’t read Ivan Brunetti’s Schizo, one of the greatest comic books of all time:
It’s a shame if you haven’t.
No one, and I mean no one, beats Ivan Brunetti when it comes to “dark”. Maybe Mike Diana, but he doesn’t change styles like a chameleon, and is easier to spot. Mike Diana was the 90s answer to Rory Hayes, and I mean that as a compliment. Both Brunetti and Diana have drawn comics that made me laugh myself into a fit. Brunetti’s joke-book HA! is so wonderfully shocking, I’m often afraid to show it to people.
The other magnificent sumbitch to beat is Chris Ware. His Acme Novelty Library is not only emotionally vivid, it’s as funny as the old Lampoon, with occasional pages of fake ads loaded with hilarious tiny print. Ware’s incredible Jimmy Corrigan saga contains a scene so hilarious I had to break from reading; while staying with his absent father, with whom he’s just reconnected, Jimmy dreams about mutilating him with a broken beer mug.
Copyright by Chris Ware.
This was because Jimmy imagined his father fucking his mother, and afterwards, Jimmy slits open his father’s backside with the broken glass. His father bellows “HWARK”.
I don’t know anyone living who draws better or funnier than Chris Ware.
If you’re wondering if you can handle the footage of R. Budd Dwyer shooting himself, you probably can’t. But you have to at least appreciate the dark gift he gave the world.
Don’t get any ideas, though.
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