Customer Reviews

Where Demented Wented: The Art and Comics of Rory Hayes

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Wow. I just read this book yesterday and I doubt the effect will ever wear off. Rory Hayes may be one of the most interesting artists I've ever heard of. His speed (among other drugs) addiction had a lot to do with the look and feel of his work, though drugs would later be his downfall. This is what I can say about the book: EC comics-inspired acid trip visuals, disturbing stories and artwork, bears who commit murder and are sometimes victims themselves, an alcoholic old lady who always groans and takes meth, horribly gruesome scenes of bodyparts being chopped off, and other things that Amazon would never allow me to put. It is the work of a strange, pale, skinny, wall-eyed creature who grew up troubled. If I could use one word to describe his work, it would be "outsider". WARNING! This book is definitely NOT for the weak of heart!

I did buy this, thinking they'd culled the best of Hayes' material and placed it within a frame work of "what happened" or at least a "why". What you get is a sloppy retrospective of a man people more fondly recollected than for first hand knowledge of what he produced, which is no bargain. Very little of it has quality, and very little of it seems charming. It is raw, ugly and unrewarding. Honest it might be, but this is not the honesty you wish for, as there seems to be no forgiveness or desire to move through it. If it was therapy for Rory Hayes, fine.

It isn't that I cannot respect a talented primitive. There is just less here than I expected. Basing just on the cover, I thought it would be interesting. It's the cumulative details that you see after you pop open the book to realize that the value you spent and what you get aren't equal.

And the large factor of Rory Hayes dying from drug overdose and drug usage seems to be glossed over, as is the information I gathered years ago, that as he got older, he did less. This is a bunch of drawings from an older disturbed teenager.

If you pick this up in a store, you would put it back. I know I would. Sorry I bought this.