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Hyperthick
With Aylett’s surreal satire at full blast, HYPERTHICK collects the 3-issue comic series that Alan Moore described as “a new dimension of poetic genius.” Follow Benny the Hen, Su Pesto, Biloxi Blake and Fox Grave as they lurch from one fulfilling fiasco to another. Wall-to-wall trickster figures face off in a lateral drench of comedic honesty. What is the Memphis Conjecture? Are owls to blame? Where do characters go when they run out of bends to go around? Lucid dream or psychedelic stoicism? Ignite your chemistry and discover the heart of the spiral narrative. In Clownsurround! Plus bonus material.
104 pages, Paperback
First published April 12, 2022
3 people are currently reading
40 people want to read
About the author
Steve Aylett
47 books158 followersSteve Aylett is a satirical science fiction and weird slipstream author of books such as LINT, The Book Lovers and Slaughtermatic, and comics including Hyperthick. He is known for his colourful satire attacking the manipulations of authority. Aylett is synaesthetic. He lives in Scotland.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
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April 21, 2022"Belcher, I'm fantastic! A peach in a cage! My face, formed by the universe and its glittering pressure, features a powerful hydraulic nozzle! The universe darkens when I swallow! I've dispelled nebulae with my eyelids! I'll eat anything if it's baked to perfection!"
Yes, it's another slab of distilled WTF from the great Steve Aylett. In an age intent on selling us absolute nonsense disguised as inarguable common sense, he ploughs a lonely furrow doing exactly the opposite, and it's brought him exactly the nugatory level of fame you'd expect. Where Roy Lichtenstein badly photocopied perfectly good comics and won the acclaim of a million simpletons, Aylett takes forgotten strips of yore and feeds the participants a froth of oracular gibberish, detourning them into plots of arrant lunacy. The results are frequently hilarious, sometimes laced with great truths, and always feel like the shape of your brain has been slightly altered.
"If it's any consolation, Phil died doing what he loved – running downstairs and screaming about fridge magnets."
"My husband's name is Tom."
Yes, it's another slab of distilled WTF from the great Steve Aylett. In an age intent on selling us absolute nonsense disguised as inarguable common sense, he ploughs a lonely furrow doing exactly the opposite, and it's brought him exactly the nugatory level of fame you'd expect. Where Roy Lichtenstein badly photocopied perfectly good comics and won the acclaim of a million simpletons, Aylett takes forgotten strips of yore and feeds the participants a froth of oracular gibberish, detourning them into plots of arrant lunacy. The results are frequently hilarious, sometimes laced with great truths, and always feel like the shape of your brain has been slightly altered.
"If it's any consolation, Phil died doing what he loved – running downstairs and screaming about fridge magnets."
"My husband's name is Tom."
September 8, 2023
AMAZING - a really HARD read as a comic, and more like looking at ART than reading a story, with the added bonus that the story/dialog often had me bent over LAUGHing
(Sorry, finished this ages ago and have been rubbish at Goodreads updates)
(Sorry, finished this ages ago and have been rubbish at Goodreads updates)
December 27, 2022
Hyperthick is A LOT. The Comic’s Journal review of issue one is essentially that Simpson’s kid pleading “stop, he’s already dead” stating that although brilliant, just over thirty odd pages of it is close to something that will ultimately break your brain. And yes, this is true and over a hundred pages of it is even more brain melting (you almost start thinking in Aylett style dense thickets of intense dialogue after a while), but it’s still maddeningly brilliant. That Aylett sees the TCJ reviewer pleading for mercy and decides “hell, I’ll have that as a back page review please” tells you everything you need to know about what you’re about to read
Essentially Hyperthick - whose name absolutely prepares you for what you’re about to read, because it’s literally meaningless but also somehow EXACTLY sums up what you are about to read - is an extension of a one off comic called the Caterer from a few years back. That was a companion to Aylett’s masterpiece Lint, and clearly he enjoyed taking public domain comics and stretching the form as far as it would go because that’s exactly what he does here. But Aylett isn’t interested so much in using this for dramatic purposes - I think what he’s trying for is capturing the terseness of pulp prose (after all this is someone who brought us the comic Johnny Viable and His Terse Friends), that sort of brutalist punchy succinctness you get from the masters of the form, and rather than using it structurally to prepare you for a story’s climax have the entire thing be written in just that form. It’s unrelenting, caption after caption of these dense thickets of ideas and words that seem like they’re just lazily thrown out but are genuinely tiny masterpieces of carefully constructed eccentricity. It’s a tough trick but he manages it
There’s a caption early on in the first issue where Aylett quotes the great Cardiacs, and essentially I think he’s trying to do in textual form what a lot of Cardiacs music does: play with structure and dynamics and sort of deconstruct that so you’re not quite getting what other music like this tells you that you will be getting. By playing in the same ballpark as outsider artists like Fletcher Hanks and Harry Stephen Keeler, he sort of prepares you for the version of pulp action you’ll be getting but then just starts this unending barrage of unrelenting prose at you. And it’s clearly going to alienate a lot of the potential audience who’ll be understandably exhausted by the end of episode one of Benny the Hen (my wife said it felt like reading something written by someone on cocaine), but for the valiant through who are prepared to wade through all of this there are so many rewards to be had. Your brain will never quite be the same again and how often can we say art does that?
Essentially Hyperthick - whose name absolutely prepares you for what you’re about to read, because it’s literally meaningless but also somehow EXACTLY sums up what you are about to read - is an extension of a one off comic called the Caterer from a few years back. That was a companion to Aylett’s masterpiece Lint, and clearly he enjoyed taking public domain comics and stretching the form as far as it would go because that’s exactly what he does here. But Aylett isn’t interested so much in using this for dramatic purposes - I think what he’s trying for is capturing the terseness of pulp prose (after all this is someone who brought us the comic Johnny Viable and His Terse Friends), that sort of brutalist punchy succinctness you get from the masters of the form, and rather than using it structurally to prepare you for a story’s climax have the entire thing be written in just that form. It’s unrelenting, caption after caption of these dense thickets of ideas and words that seem like they’re just lazily thrown out but are genuinely tiny masterpieces of carefully constructed eccentricity. It’s a tough trick but he manages it
There’s a caption early on in the first issue where Aylett quotes the great Cardiacs, and essentially I think he’s trying to do in textual form what a lot of Cardiacs music does: play with structure and dynamics and sort of deconstruct that so you’re not quite getting what other music like this tells you that you will be getting. By playing in the same ballpark as outsider artists like Fletcher Hanks and Harry Stephen Keeler, he sort of prepares you for the version of pulp action you’ll be getting but then just starts this unending barrage of unrelenting prose at you. And it’s clearly going to alienate a lot of the potential audience who’ll be understandably exhausted by the end of episode one of Benny the Hen (my wife said it felt like reading something written by someone on cocaine), but for the valiant through who are prepared to wade through all of this there are so many rewards to be had. Your brain will never quite be the same again and how often can we say art does that?
February 24, 2023
I want you to know that I write these reviews not for anyone else to read although someone else will come across them now and then of course but mostly, in fact, entirely so I will remember what I thought of a book at the time I read and it and also just why I read it. This comic for instance I picked up because I ordered a $5 comic (Santos Sisters #3) on the internet from Floating World Comics and in order to make the postage worthwhile on a $5 comic I bought this book as well after reading a couple of random sample pages at the website. I had no idea at all who the author was, Steve Aylett, I thought was perhaps some young up-and-comer indie comics kid who had a style reminiscent of old golden age comics. After the first 10 pages of this book I started to think this guy wasn't doing the art at all and was lifting it wholesale from public domain comics of more than 50 years ago (I'm the first to admit that I'm not to swift on the uptake) and looking him up online I see that this is the case and in fact Mr. Aylett is mostly a prose writer, although from his choppy, enigmatic & gnomic style, I would hesitate to call him a novelist. A writer of fiction. I suppose it's intellectual, I think he's a smart writer and is funny, thank god, otherwise this kind of writing would be horrendously tedious, akin to amateur reviewers on goodreads for instance. Anyway, it's been a pleasant couple of days, I don't think I'll track down his other stuff. I love the comics of the past and usually don't like at all the current trend of people re-writing these old public domain comics for easy laughs and empty kicks but Aylett gets a pass this one time from me. It's an interesting anomaly but ultimately unsustainable. You know what I mean, if not, read it yourself!
February 6, 2022
ATTN: Reviewedly viewed! : Insanity is literalized. Obnoxious & hilarious drivel. Unique and hopelessly bastardized. Hyperthick - devilishly abstract as an acute and rectangular route. If the style is roundabout attitude importantly obscene, yuppie money floweth over in attempts endeavors to squander such said bombastic edition. Be believe. -EW
***An excerpt on Moray Eels:
"If made to laugh, an eel will drop its victim. Eels enjoy stories about nuns falling face-first into mud, and no other stories. The Moray's judgemental expression is structural and it is generally agreed that an eel's accepting attitude is unwavering - which is more than can be said for its body!"
***An excerpt on Moray Eels:
"If made to laugh, an eel will drop its victim. Eels enjoy stories about nuns falling face-first into mud, and no other stories. The Moray's judgemental expression is structural and it is generally agreed that an eel's accepting attitude is unwavering - which is more than can be said for its body!"
May 1, 2022
A perfect book to read while recovering from a head injury.
December 30, 2022
Absurd and surreal, but a bit one note.
April 22, 2023
The Finnegans Wake of comics made out of public domain comics, both in terms of density and plot. Often laugh out loud funny, other times totally bananas.
October 18, 2023
I found this hilarious. I showed it to my friend, Joe, and he wasn't able to muster more than a polite smile.
It's not for everyone.
But it tickled me.
It's not for everyone.
But it tickled me.
December 5, 2023
Absolutely hilarious.
February 14, 2024
It is words and pictures on pages of paper collected in a particular order.
September 28, 2024
It flew so far above my head I could barely hear it whizzing by
A comic artist at a bar sketched me reading this, hoping to be a background character in his next comic
A comic artist at a bar sketched me reading this, hoping to be a background character in his next comic
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews