Prison Pit: Book One

by Johnny Ryan
Published by Fantagraphics Books, 2009

So many firsts for me!  First Johnny Ryan book.  First splooge monster.  First splash page thorny alien erection.  And the last page – first…wow, awesome.

Prison Pit is what you would’ve unleashed in seventh grade if you were wickedly funny and twisted and a good drawer.  But you weren’t!  Fortunately, Johnny Ryan was.  Although I think he’s like forty.  Pff.

So some nameless alien authority figures toss our nameless alien protagonist -- let’s call him Fuckface, ‘cause that’s the first thing they call him -- down a chute to a blasted desert outback – the prison pit!  Then Fuckface just starts fucking fighting shit nonstop.  One of the authority figures who got shoved down with him, a Nazi ogre skull crusher & his ill-fated cronies, the aforementioned splooge monster – Fuckface fights ‘em all.

And that’s it, really.  And it’s glorious.  

Ryan’s art style is sorta angry gonzo middle-school reject – it’s blocky and irregular and has an etchy sketchy feel to it, and it’s also tight and refined, which is maybe a contradictory description, but that’s what I got for you.  The full color cover looks righteous & the interior is black and white, which is cool with me because I don’t wanna know the color of the splooge monster’s rocket sauce.

The final panels of prosthetic fellatio I suppose acknowledge that Prison Pit is ostensibly creative masturbation -- Johnny Ryan’s hundred twenty page opus of balls out mayhem and depravity.  Or maybe all that combative mutilation just makes a guy thirsty for a slorge beej.  Whatever, gimme Book Two.