Arsenic Lullaby

Last week, I read Yesterday’s Tomorrows, which was an art book with a bunch of stories in it. Since the Baltimore Comic-Con was last week, I wanted to read a book by a creator who attended the show. So, this week I read ARSENIC LULLABY: THE DEVILS DECADE, written and illustrated Doug Paszkiewicz, published by Arsenic Lullaby Publishing

I chose to read Arsenic Lullaby because it has been around for a long time and, having been nominated for both Harvey and Eisner Awards, I was pretty confident I was going to read something good. Nothing prepared me for just how good it was! Suffice it to say that Arsenic Lullaby is one of the sickest, most twisted books that had me laughing out loud more times than I can count. Lullaby is so twisted and so wrong on so many levels that all you can do is laugh at the sheer insanity of it all. It is a work of pure comic genius.

For those wh regularly read this column, you know that I always start with a brief synopsis of the book. That really isn’t possible in this case without offending or grossing someone out so I’ll do it after the break. 

This book collects all the issues of Arsenic Lullaby that Doug published between 1999 and 2005, plus some early material and some commentary. Each issue contains a couple of short stories containing members of the cast. The cast includes Edgar, who works for the census bureau. His job is to kill babies born after the census was completed so that the count will always be accurate. The count must be accurate so that America can allocate tax dollars correctly otherwise the communists will take over. It also includes Voodoo Joe and his zombie fetuses. Joe must exact revenge upon people, or the curse that bonded the voodoo mask to his face will do some horrible thing to him. He doesn’t know what the horrible thing is because he didn’t pay attention to that part. But, having gotten revenge on everyone on his list long ago, he helps those in need for a small fee. He uses zombie fetuses because they’re easy to store in the fridge and he always has a ready supply from the local abortion clinic. And these are the normal characters. It gets better or worse depending how you look at it.

Now, I am fully aware that the description of the book isn’t that funny. It’s really hard to make the characters in this book funny. But Doug does it with style and a wicked sense of humor. Some of the stories are gross for the sake of gross and some are just inspired insanity. The stories are so far out there and so extreme that you can’t help but laugh as Edgar thinks up more and more extreme ways to do his job. The same is true for Voodoo Joe and the people he helps. 

What makes these stories work is Doug’s sense of comic timing and the extreme nature of the gruesomeness. Doug knows when to push the story and how to get it to a point where, even given the subject matter, it’s hilarious. There were several times just as I was getting to the, “okay, this is just gross” point, that Doug went even further thereby making the entire situation absolutely ludicrous. And, in the case of Voodoo Joe, I got to the point where I was eagerly waiting to see how the ‘revenge’ would get screwed up by either the client, or Joe himself.

Because the collection gathers material from over such a long period of time, you can really see Doug develop as an artist. Doug has a fairly straight forward, indie type style in the early issues, and it’s interesting to watch as he gets better at his craft. You can see how his sense of timing and page composition improves over time. At the same time, his style becomes slick and smooth with smoother curves lines that tone down some of the more extreme moments. It should be noted that Doug’s character design is spot on too. It’s hard to make a zombie fetus cute, but Doug does so with such pizzazz that you forget just how gross the idea really is.

Arsenic Lullaby is one of the funniest books you will read all year. If you’re looking for something to make you smile, you don’t take life to seriously, and have been known to laugh at your friends when they fall down stairs, then this is the book for you.

- David Lee