Ubu Bubu # 3
Story and Art: Jamie Smart
SLG Publishing (Slave Labor Graphics)
Ubu Bubu # 3 has been sitting on my desk for three months waiting for something to be written about it. Every time I attempt a review, I can’t think of a way to express exactly what makes this comic worth reading. It doesn’t have the same moving storytelling like a Scalped, Criminal, or Northlanders. It certainly doesn’t have the universal reach like a lot of superhero comics. But there’s something about the unsavory jokes and sheer bizarreness of it all which combine into something amazing.
The previous issue of Ubu Bubu had the cat demons involved with activities which can loosely fall under the category of obscenity. There was a lot of violence, poop-throwing, and some other disgusting stuff. Most of the action and jokes for issue 3 center around what can best be defined as perversity. While inhabiting the insane cat Ubu, evil demon Lord Bubu allows demon-of-perversion Nub Nub to enter our world through Bubu’s arse. Nub Nub escapes from the demons’ earthly home base and spreads chaos by granting each person’s deepest sexual fantasy. If you’ve ever fantasized about fellating the butcher from the Brady Bunch while standing in an oatmeal-filled canoe with a hobo in a Santa suit rubbing your nipples with steel wool, then Nub Nub is the demon for you. And he’ll raise you a vaseline-covered honey badger to gnaw at your balls. Perversion after perversion is pretty much how the book goes until the demons collect the final souls they need for an orderly Armageddon. Unfortunately, it looks like they pissed off Hell and someone has been sent to bring the demons home. Issue 4 will be the end of the series, and, if the final page is any indication, the end of Lord Bubu.
What really makes this series work is the art and the pacing. The characters’ exploits are rendered in such cute and delightful forms that the violence and perversity are transformed into the humorous, and the next joke is fired off as soon as the previous has registered with us. Without Jamie Smart’s art style and timing, stories like this would be either too intense to process or too dull to care about. Smart gets what makes comedy work and what makes stories in general work. I expect the next issue to be the most humorous and disgusting comic I’ve read in a long time. It should be fun.