Do What He Says!: He's Crazy!!!

Rating:
Summary: Is Callahan sick, brilliant, or both?
Review: "Do What He Says! He's Crazy!!" is a collection of cartoons by John Callahan. Callahan has a distinctive style: his crude drawings look like they were created by 10-year old juvenile delinquent with a hand injury.

Callahan mercilessly mocks modern life. His twisted sense of humor embraces such topics as leprosy, torture, religion, eating disorders, bestiality, and especially suicide. He frequently mocks celebrities: Dan Quayle, Elvis, Picasso, Madonna (one of his favorite targets), and others. He is not shy about making fun of specific groups of people: blacks, Jews, Asians, the bald, the homeless, the handicapped, etc.

Although most of his work features human characters, he occasionally includes other creatures: cows, flies, aliens, etc. His work often has a political edge. And despite their frequently dark subject matter, Callahan's cartoons have a playful quality which I find very appealing, and very amusing.

In one of these cartoons, TV talk show host Geraldo Rivera is shown praying, "Thank you, God for all the tragedy, wretchedness and perversion in the world." Callahan could make that same prayer himself. His gift is to look at the absurd, violent cesspool of humanity and give us all something to laugh at.

Rating:
Summary: Hey! You're not supposed to laugh at that!
Review: Bored with most of the so-called "funnies" in the local rag, I wasn't expectin' much when I caught my first glimpse of this paperback in the humor section of a fave local book nook. But as soon as I saw the cover illustration that went with the book's title (cops staring down a gunman holding a hand puppet hostage), I just had to delve further into the tome in the hopes of seeing even more outrageous imagery. Fortunately, I discovered that the cover shenanigans were just the tip of the iceberg. As I flipped from one page to the next, each crude rendering and corresponding caption seemed even sicker, and more depraved than the last, to say nothing of being extemely non-P.C. Needless to say, I ended up laughing like a mental patient at many of these oh-so-wrong depictions, so much so that I kinda created a scene at the book nook, and decided to buy this collection before the owner got cheesed off even more than she already was...

John Callahan's works are the kind of stuff you're not supposed to laugh at, but you do anyway. Well, except for those few panels of Klibanesque weirdness that pop up here 'n' there, but those are few and far between. From suicidal slugs to a day in the soul leper colony ("gimme none!") to the flatulent nun, it appears that nothing is sacred to the mad quadriplegic behind the wheel of this cartoon catastrophe. If you're easily offended, or are the kinda person who would NEVER make fun of the handicapped, people with deformities, suicide, politicians, lawyers, Madonna, political correctness, or Santa Monica, CA, you probably should just skip this bad-boy entirely, and pick up a few "Family Circus" titles instead... you wuss!

'Late