The Furry Trap by Josh Simmons
My rating: 2/5 cats
this book’s first story brought back a childhood experience long since forgotten. it was of coming across my older brother’s mad magazines when i was five or so. until then, you know, i had lived in a little girl world of soft-rounded wuzzles and my little ponies and rainbow brite.
so to unexpectedly encounter a style of art that was more violent and seedy, and greasy-looking—it felt dangerous, like i was looking at something i shouldn’t have been.
since then i have certainly come a long way and been exposed to so many different forms of artistic expression (SO much monster porn), and i no longer live in that child-safe world, but this was a reminder of that first time, this opening story which is all cutesy until it all goes horribly wrong in a violent way.
and i read other reviews of this book, because i was trying to see what other people were getting out of it that i wasn’t. but most of the reviewers are, frankly, horrified by the amount of violence, particularly sexual violence. and it’s true, there is a ton of it. the sexual violence doesn’t really bother me—i am able to separate real-world sexual violence from this brand of sexual violence, where a male elf slices the soft underbelly of a wizard’s jaw and rapes him, coming out the wizard’s mouth. i mean, the wizard was planning on killing him, so fair play, i say. but it is so ludicrous and part of a cartoon-only scenario, that it doesn’t make me feel uncomfortable. (please do not send me news stories proving me wrong in my beliefs.)
so it wasn’t this element that made me low-rate this collection of graphic novel horror stories.
my objection is that after a while, it is just boring. same kind of gags, different tale: incest, magic jizz, fecal matter, masturbation, cat-boiling…overall, the story is sacrificed for the shock—they only exist to showcase the violence. and, yawn. i’m not really shocked by it, so there really isn’t much for me as a reader. and whisper whisper, there are several i don’t even understand. but violence isn’t compelling enough on its own to entertain me, is the problem.
i have to admit, i did laugh at the wizard-rape, because i have a fairly diseased sense of humor, and nothing is funnier than raping a wizard in his wizard-throat. but apart from that, there isn’t really a need for any of these stories.
it is mostly just splatter horror with cartoons and a shock value edge. it’s okay, but pretty same-y after a while, although the style of the art does change dramatically, showing me he could really have something, if he broadened his subject matter a bit.
i read this because i trusted some dude who said, “oh my god, that book is so fucking sick, you have to read it.”
but he meant it in a positive way.
so i gave it a try, because i am the resident “bad influence” on goodreads.
and it is sick, but it is just sick. it isn’t awesome-sick.
i think i prefer something like kochalka’s Fancy Froglin’s Sexy Forest, where the artwork is cutesy pie, but with serious adult content. that juxtaposition makes me giggle, and i really like the way he draws frogs. and most other things.
but this one, not so much.
yeah, i have said enough for one night.
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