Ray and Joe: The Story of a Man and His Dead Friend and Other Classic Comics

by Charles Rodrigues, Bob Fingerman (Editor), Gary Groth (Editor)

Fantagraphics is proud to announce the release of the first volume of another great, under-appreciated, quintessentially American cartoonist. "Black as sin and decay and perversion" is how National Lampoon editor Tony Hendra described the work of Charles Rodrigues. By all accounts, this small, politically conservative, devout Catholic, was a good-natured dumpling of a man. But inside lurked an untapped vein of savage wit that only the National Lampoon saw fit to unleash. Given carte blanche by its young editors, Rodrigues produced a 20-year tsunami of hilarious self-contained comic strips, themed gag spreads, and serials that boggled the mind and challenged all sense of decency and propriety. In this first-ever collection of his comics, readers are treated to the misadventures of conjoined twins The Aesop Brothers; Sam deGroot, a private detective in an iron lung (whose life actually gets worse when he is sprung from his enclosure); Deirdre Callahan, a girl so hideous that to look upon her causes madness and suicide; and the heartwarming (in relative terms) titular tale of Ray and Joe, the saga of a man and his dead best friend. Also included are his brilliant "biographies" of Marilyn Monroe, Abbie Hoffman, Eugene O'Neill, and others. Rodrigues rendered his cast of grotesqueries and naifs in a ragged, unpretty line within dense panels and pages, that perfectly reflects his uniquely bizarre, riotous and repellent world. Charles Rodrigues may be gone and, if not forgotten, insufficiently remembered, and this collection will rectify at least one of those tragedies.

Genres: Comics, Humor

192 pages, Hardcover

First published August 30, 2013

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

RAY AND JOE: THE STORY OF A MAN AND HIS DEAD FRIEND AND OTHER CLASSIC COMICS by Charles Rodrigues - I am not free of doubt: sometimes I start to wonder what the point is in spending all this time reading books and watching movies, or, at least, in seeking out new ones, taking risks on unknown quantities. It was much easier to be (comparatively) more adventurous when I was younger, when I had more time. Then I’ll read a book like this -- a collection of comic strips originally published in the National Lampoon by an artist whom I had never heard of (I’ve only recently begun to pay any attention to the National Lampoon and its legacy) -- and I will be reminded why it’s worth it, because there are few things as satisfying (to me) as discovering a unique, idiosyncratic point of view, expressed through a fully formed style and sensibility. It helps that, in this case, the comics are also extremely funny. Highly recommended.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Macabre Bop…

Couldn’t get any sillier and macabre than Gahan Wilson’s warped cartoons: Man who couldn’t go out without his dead buddy. Adventures of Siamese like twins, and they’re not from Siam. Detective DeGroot in an iron lung on the case. And so forth, with strange fun and laughter. Strongly recommended for those not too wimpy and politically correct or corrupted.