#04 bicycle
#04 Bicycle
Kitchen Sink March 1973
Snarf #4 features a delightfully burlesque front cover by Evert Geradts and adds Joel Beck and Howard Cruse to a growing line-up of first-rate contributors. Geradts leads off this issue with the six-page “Marion McKay’s All-Animal Orchestra,” which is a story about a scantily clad stage performer named Marion who travels with a five-piece animal orchestra (a horse, an elephant, a giraffe, a mouse and a rabbit). Ollie the elephant is secretly in love with Marion and has erotic fantasies about her, but when confronted by reality he becomes heartbroken.
After an amusing one-pager by Denis Kitchen and a decent two-pager by Beck, Mark Morrison makes his first appearance in Snarf with his trademark characters Great Uncle P. Bosco Wad (“Doc”) and a frog named Hank. Doc and Hank were two of the central characters in Morrison’s one-man comic Pagfeek Papers, a fair-to-middling book that had been published just a couple months prior to this ish of Snarf. In any case, Morrison’s untitled four-page story here is rather witty, as Doc and Hank play a game of cards.
Peter Loft, who debuted in the previous issue of Snarf, returns with “The Truth,” a four-pager about a dog named Harvey who yearns to have intelligent conversations with girls but can’t seem to find a willing partner. A wizard on a hilltop zaps Harvey with the power to “see the true meaning in what is talked about by others,” but instead of helping Harvey the newfound power puts him right back where he started.
Tim Boxell (aka Grisly) contributes “Paper Sheets,” a six-page satire on young romance comics as a blond bimbo laments that her true love slowly succumbs to the evil clutches of…classic literature. Richard “Grass” Green follows with “The Origin of Wild Man,” a follow-up to his “Wild Man meets Rubberoy” from Snarf #2. Like the previous story, “The Origin of Wild Man” is a zany superhero spoof in the tradition of Mad, ridiculing the predictability of boilerplate superhero comics from DC and Marvel.
The book closes with three pages of newspaper-style comic strips, the latter two of which feature Barefootz comics by newcomer Howard Cruse. The Barefootz character debuted in the University of Alabama’s student newspaper in 1971 and appeared in alternative tabloids in Birmingham. After Barefootz became a regular feature in Comix Book, Cruse and his friends funded the publication of Barefootz Funnies, which Kitchen Sink produced and distributed.
#04 bicycle
