Caterer

I read and greatly enjoyed Jeff Lint’s The Caterer comic (#3 ‘reprint’ by Floating World). Steve Aylett (steveaylett.com) continues to milk his phenomenal Lint mania. This perfectly ‘reproduces’ the format and printed medium of 1970s’ comics, complete with dodgy adverts and a ‘fan mail’ page. “Once again tatty curtains part on the true situation.”

When he’s not practising trademark ‘stillness’ with baffling diatribes, ‘hero’ of The Caterer, Jack Marsden, is causing untold mayhem and indulging his penchant for splash–page dreamscapes eerily reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch. This is surreal comicbook weirdness at it most deliriously offbeat, so utterly irreverent that Aylett risks losing as many readers as he’s likely to gain.

Newly minted pulp action scenes vie for attention with inconveniently preposterous dialogues and supporting characters - like (or perhaps you don’t?) Sheriff Leonard Bayard that help define friable Jack by doing things he doesn’t, such as leaning, or giving moderately sane advice (“don’t let it be udders”). But, whatever else we think of Jack, in The Caterer, we’re bound to wonder “what he’s doing now” and what he’s going to do next…

Further cause for celebration, is a new revised edition of Aylett’s implacably amusing Inflatable Volunteer.