Where Demented Wented: The Art and Comics of Rory Hayes [Paperback]

Dan Nadel (Editor), Glenn Bray (Editor), Edwin Pouncey (Editor), Geoffrey Hayes (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 20, 2008

The first-ever collection by the underground's most notorious modern primitive.

The controversial cartoonist Rory Hayes was a self-taught dynamo of the San Francisco underground comics revolution. Attracting equal parts derision and praise (the latter from the likes of R. Crumb and Bill Griffith), Hayes emerged as comics' great primitive, drawing horror comics in a genuinely horrifying and halucinatory manner. He has influenced a generation of cartoonists, from RAW to Fort Thunder and back again.

This book, the first retrospective of Hayes' career ever published, features the best of his underground comics output alongside paintings, covers, and artifacts rarely seen by human eyes—as well as astounding, previously unprinted comics from his teenage years and movie posters for his numerous homemade films. The Comics and Art of Rory Hayes also serves as a biography and critique with a memoir of growing up with Rory by his brother, the illustrator Geoffrey Hayes, and a career-spanning essay by Edward Pouncey. Also included is a rare interview with Hayes himself.

"Rory Hayes was the real thing; a genuine 'outsider' artist working alongside his more self-aware compatriots in the heady days of the San Francisco Underground Comix scene of the 1960s and '70s. His work retains its raw, primitive power to this day, teetering precariously between chaos and control, madness and oddly endearing teddy bears."—Bill Griffith

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Rory Hayes was born in 1949 and died of a drug overdose in 1983.

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Fantagraphics Books (August 20, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1560979232
• ISBN-13: 978-1560979234
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 8 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,084,650 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars GORKLE FORKLE MORKLE!, December 6, 2009

By 

Mylz (NJ) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Where Demented Wented: The Art and Comics of Rory Hayes (Paperback)

Are you tired of all of those perfectly drawn comics? Looking for something with a homemade stench? Rotten and ready, maybe? "Where Demented Wented" creeps and oozes, panics and bleeds, attacks and avenges. It is a world without justice, a world without spell-check, and a world enmeshed in atrocities. Despite pages plagued with perversity and horror, rays of comic relief often manage to shine through: "Deep within the Targlo Woods, in the Claroon regions of upper Zargola there lies a small village, almost hidden from the sight of any curious eyeballs that might care to gaze upon it..." and "Listen! Outside in the howling wind, dost I hear footsteps?" "GORKLE FORKLE MORKLE!" Roll out your best pus-encrusted red carpet for a host of new friends and fiends: Granny Crackbaggy, Mazor Storn, Pooh Rass, Sagorth Mogoz, Norg and Morg, Dr. Cline, and uh-oh, noooooooooo...not the Purple Money Digger!!! Embrace the fun hell that awaits you. Collect your golden WTF moments here, in "Where Demented Wented".

(Printed in the front, as a sort of introduction to Hayes' world is the same essay/article that was published in Comic Art #2: "The Black-Eyed Boodle Will Knife Ya Tonight!" by Edwin "Savage Pencil" Pouncey. In the back is a mini-memoir written about Rory Hayes by his brother, Geoffrey and a short interview with Rory at the San Francisco Comic Book Company, where he was once employed.)

WARNING: There is a 20-page chunk in the middle of the book featuring a gaggle of sex-crazed maniacs in the S. Clay Wilson vein. While it adds to the overall madness and devil-may-care content, it may offend anyone who takes sex seriously.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you like weird and perverse, this is where it's at, October 11, 2008

By 

Free Free "Thee Highest" (Seattle WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Where Demented Wented: The Art and Comics of Rory Hayes (Paperback)

I already have some of Rory Hayes' comics in the UG's where they first appeared, but it's great to get this much dementia in one package. I wish they had re-printed all of BOGEYMAN #1, but that's a small complaint. You feel more like you are reading the work of an insane person here, than with the more professional-looking work of S. Clay Wilson or Crumb, who may be weird, but are clearly putting you on. Weird, funny and disturbing. I looked through this in a bookstore and then ordered a copy from Amazon. Well worth having.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Disturbing primitive artist, June 2, 2010

By 

Clayton Hollifield (Battle Ground, WA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Where Demented Wented: The Art and Comics of Rory Hayes (Paperback)

This is a very disturbing book. It's fascinating, but Rory Hayes' artwork looks like what madness must feel like. I'd only read a couple of pages at a time of his work, but when you read an entire book of his work, it's overwhelming. I know that all sounds like a warning, but it's also a very good book. The bio essay, the one by Rory's brother, and the not-very-deep interview offer peeks into his life that are apparently very hard to come by. Completely recommended if you want to read some appallingly unrefined underground comix.