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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 741
EAN num: 9781560976103
ISBN number: 1560976101
Label: Fantagraphics Books
Manufacturer: Fantagraphics Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 192
Printing Date: November 10, 2004
Publishing house: Fantagraphics Books
Sale Popularity Level: 1266779
Studio: Fantagraphics Books
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Brief Book Summary:
Existential clown comedy as you like it. - SEE! Fred the Clown get slapped regularly in his single-minded pursuit of l'amour!
- HEAR! The screams of his lady friends from several blocks away!
- SMELL! Fred the Clown's scientifically improbable collection of fungal infections!
The signature creation of cartoonist Roger Langridge, Fred the Clown is the thinking man's idiot. Fred has an eye for the ladies, as well as several other organs, but the only part of themselves they're willing to share with him is a carefully placed kneecap...
Fred the Clown's misadventures are a curious balance of bleakness and joyful absurdism; the universe may dump on Fred from a great height, but he never gives up. More often than not, they involve the pursuit of a lady—any lady will do, it seems, but bearded ladies are at the top of the list. Disappointment seems inevitable, and it usually is; yet, almost despite himself, Langridge will occasionally give Fred a happy ending out of nowhere...
Langridge's comics betray a restless stylistic playfulness, a pessimism about human nature, and an absurdist perspective on human folly that can be traced back through Monty Python, The Goon Show and even as far back as Lewis Carroll. Fred the Clown's visual look often harks back to earlier eras, evoking the styles of (among others) Max Fleischer cartoons, classic newspaper strips, 19th-century illustration, the children's books of Maurice Sendak and Doctor Seuss, and more. The sensibility, though, is thoroughly modern—no classic style goes unsubverted, no narrative is left without ending in emotional ambiguity or a pomposity-puncturing ironic gag. Underlying it all is Langridge's own meticulous brush style. According to another New Zealand cartoonist, Hicksville creator Dylan Horrocks, 'If Samuel Beckett had teamed up with the Goons and learned to draw like Tex Avery, the result would have been something very like the comics of Roger Langridge.'
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
Disturbingly funny, ritchly textured, and fully capable of making you laugh and cry by turns. This book is a love letter to the whole history of comic images.
Within these pages you'll find a funny set of stories, but you'll also see a sly satire of comic artist from the 1890s to today. Each story seems to be done in a different style, by a different fictional artist. Background notes and a false history of Fred the Clown comics give a funny authenticity to these parody styles.
Well worth giving it a try. It's very, very funny.
Rated by buyers -
Without hesitation, I'd easily put Roger Langridge on my short list of the greatest all-around cartoonists alive today. He combines slapstick humor, nimble wordplay, Vaudeville, old-tyme comics and filters it through a modern sensibility (with liberal doses of Monty Python, the Goon Show, and the occasional bit of heartbreak and tragedy thrown in for good measure).
This is required reading for everyone who loves comics, everyone who used to love comics but has given up on them, everyone who's been raised by wolves and doesn't understand the concept of comics and pretty much everyone else who doesn't fit into any of the categories above.
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