Tales Designed to Thrizzle, Vol. 2 by Michael Kupperman

Michael Kupperman has a deeply weird sense of humor, if his Tales Designed to Thrizzle comics are any indication. (And he'd be even weirder than that if he made funny comics like these that aren't based on his own sense of humor, if this was some odd attempt to deliver what he thought a mass audience wanted.)

One major running theme is the adventures of Twain & Einstein -- they look almost identical, get it? -- who fight crime or have other random adventures, usually in a vague "now" that corresponds to neither of their lives. (Which I don't think actually intersected, though they were both alive from 1879 to 1910.) Another is the duo of Snake & Bacon, an actual hissing snake and a presumably sentient piece of cooked meat that only says "I'm real bacon."

Anyway, Kupperman's comics are filled with surrealist nuttiness, which is why I'm back for Tales Designed to Thrizzle, Vol. 2. (I read Vol. 1 a couple of years ago, only about a dozen years late.)

I probably said most of what I could say about Kupperman's style the first time; writing about surrealism tends to deteriorate into listing the random references ("and there a one-page Odd Couple gag with vampires!", "and Quincy, M.E. plays a major role, as does Saint Peter, to the point that they appear in each other's comics!", "did I mention the pseudo-horror story about men who suddenly have sexy women's legs?") and that's not terribly interesting for the reader.

This is funny in its own way, deeply steeped in pop-culture references: Kupperman is from Gen X like me, so I stewed in much the same media world as him in childhood, and that may be important to fully appreciate what here might Thrizzle you. (If you're too much younger, a lot of this will seem entirely random, rather than references to odd things that were originally meant to be serious.)

I didn't find Vol. 2 quite as funny as the first one: maybe there's a bit too much Twain & Einstein here, and not enough of the really crazy stuff like sex blimps and criminal fingertalk. But it's definitely more of the same kind of thing for people who liked the first one, and is very similar in tone and style and art. (Kupperman draws like a grainy photocopier about half the time and colors with a garish cheap-printing palette almost all the time; his humor comics also look like nothing else.)

If you're looking for a Thrizzle, you will find one nowhere else.