Dark Horse is proud to present . . . actually, make that giggling manically as they present one of the silliest - yet most subversive and darkly funny - collections of comics you'll see this year. Planet of Beer selects the best and weirdest comic strips from the popular underground weekly comic Smell of Steve in one gloriously colored, landscape format book. Join creator Brian Sendelbach's all-misfit cast of under-loved underwater superheroes, space-faring former U.S. presidents, soul-sucking alien DJs, Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, and other insane characters as they work together to find the elusive and legendary Planet of Beer. Actually, that's way more of a sensible plot than you'll actually find in this book, but if you like your comics absurd, awesome, and maybe just a tiny bit disturbing and wrong, we're pretty sure you're going to love this book.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
Planet of Beer!: Black Aquaman Is Like Aquaman, but Black!
By Paul Constant
If you lived in Seattle eight or nine years ago, chances are you've seen Brian Sendelbach's comics. Back then, I considered his cartoons--produced under the pseudonym Smell of Steve--to be the delicious desert tucked into the back of every new issue of The Stranger. Sendelbach's cartoons in Planet of Beer (many of which appeared in The Stranger) are hard to explain individually, e.g.: President Cater and his alien friend Kenny disintegrate a streaking Henry Kissinger, or a sad and scared bigfoot is sentenced to a season in hell but cheers up when he learns that season is winter ( Ha Ha! Take that, devil!! ). All of the characters, with their giant, gaping mouths sparsely lined with round teeth, could either be in the middle of a belly laugh or a bellow of pain.
Smell of Steve takes the empty concepts of American popular culture and flogs them until they break. You could easily imagine some coke-addled Hollywood producer taking Black Aquaman (he s Aquaman, but he s black!) completely seriously.
As the strip went on, things got even less rational; for some reason, Sendelbach decided to draw everyone swathed in bandages, as though they were burn victims. Characters are randomly attacked by shadow demons and rats. Now that all these strips have been collected into one ridiculously floppy, oversize book, it's clear what happened: Sendelbach was chafing at the entertainer role he'd settled into. Though he d always been a satirist, he eventually fell victim to the same formulas he d mocked. The only solution was to bring about Old Testament-style punishments for his creations: Planet of Beer ends with foods, lakes of fire, and eternal suffering. It's probably the best punch line he could've produced: That's entertainment. --The Stranger
By Paul Constant
If you lived in Seattle eight or nine years ago, chances are you've seen Brian Sendelbach's comics. Back then, I considered his cartoons--produced under the pseudonym Smell of Steve--to be the delicious desert tucked into the back of every new issue of The Stranger. Sendelbach's cartoons in Planet of Beer (many of which appeared in The Stranger) are hard to explain individually, e.g.: President Cater and his alien friend Kenny disintegrate a streaking Henry Kissinger, or a sad and scared bigfoot is sentenced to a season in hell but cheers up when he learns that season is winter ( Ha Ha! Take that, devil!! ). All of the characters, with their giant, gaping mouths sparsely lined with round teeth, could either be in the middle of a belly laugh or a bellow of pain.
Smell of Steve takes the empty concepts of American popular culture and flogs them until they break. You could easily imagine some coke-addled Hollywood producer taking Black Aquaman (he s Aquaman, but he s black!) completely seriously.
As the strip went on, things got even less rational; for some reason, Sendelbach decided to draw everyone swathed in bandages, as though they were burn victims. Characters are randomly attacked by shadow demons and rats. Now that all these strips have been collected into one ridiculously floppy, oversize book, it's clear what happened: Sendelbach was chafing at the entertainer role he'd settled into. Though he d always been a satirist, he eventually fell victim to the same formulas he d mocked. The only solution was to bring about Old Testament-style punishments for his creations: Planet of Beer ends with foods, lakes of fire, and eternal suffering. It's probably the best punch line he could've produced: That's entertainment. --The Stranger
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A Little Pompous,
This review is from: Planet Of Beer (Paperback)
I found the book to be entertaining, only because I was expecting it to be funny, and the jokes just never came. If you are looking for a laugh, I would recommend The Internet is a Playground By David Thorne.
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
eh?,
This review is from: Planet Of Beer (Paperback)
I agree with the previous review. This is no where close to being as funny as David Thorne's "The Internet is a Playground". Now that is one awesome book
9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Planet of queer...,
This review is from: Planet Of Beer (Paperback)
...and I mean queer in the old fashioned sense and not in some homosexually perverse sense. Humour is a universal language but it seems I am some what extra terrestrial to these kinds of strips. They have no point to make, no slap stick or comic effect, no cadence or flow, no meaning or structure, no curiosity or brilliance, no marvel or insight but most of all, no language. There is an art to them and for what they are, they are well drawn but they lack depth to rise above their 2-d surface. I was left feeling I'd been staring at coloured toilet paper - post wipe. Were it the case the in-joke was Kaufman genius. I'm also not one to be pedantic but being the Scot I am, the 'Loch Ness Monster' resides in a 'Loch'(as it's name suggests) and not in a 'Lake' as is the common, stereotypical misconception - it belongs to us so our rules, ok!?Though I could imagine reading this cover to cover in my stoner days, probably in the bathroom, getting to the end and then spending the next few hours wondering what it was all about. Message? Parallels? Metaphor? Commentary on society? Or is this the published, self-indulgent hobby of something which is just not very good at being a comic? The polarised ratings say it all really but at least it doesn't promote indifference. Check it out for yourself.
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