Broken Frontier

Comedy can be a tough nut to crack, especially in comics, most especially in comic books .  The humor is visual, but sans all fluid pacing like in movies or live performance.  Furthermore, the humor must prove more than one-panel or strip-format jokes to read like an ongoing, book-length narrative.  A plot has to be present, as well as characters interesting enough to support an ongoing string of installments, and yet it has to be funny, really truly seriously funny.  And every once in a while, somebody magically pulls it off.

Drafted during downtime hours at a day job over the course of numerous jam sessions betwixt its creators, Division 18: The Union of Novelty Costumed Performers is 100% hilarious.  It’s poignant, funny weird, funny ha-ha, laugh out loud, and even silent grin splayed across the face amusing.  It’s got moments to provide for all the myriad sought-after forms of comedy entertainment, and to top it all off, it’s got characters and an overall setup to make any writer envious they didn’t think it up first.

Writer Matt Bergin brings to the fore such unforgettable protagonists as Jimmy the Snake, Quackers the Duck, Lou the Pig, Mimi the Maid, a street-side kilt-wearing haggis vendor, and a monkey with a diaper to keep in the enormity of his…uh…monkey junk.  The act of bringing all these disparate fellas together under the guise of a thuggish union is genius by someone’s reckoning, in particular mine.  The dialogue is eons beyond the cliché drivel that often colors low-brow dirty-humor mags, which is especially impressive as Division 18’s subject matter is often precisely such cliché drivel—toilet, racial, sexual, and physical humor, but all of it, somehow, done remarkably well.

The story itself, at least for issue #1, concerns Jimmy the Snake as he spends the entire issue trying to bring aboard the haggis seller into the union proper, so as to collect a $500 finder’s fee.  It makes for a perfectly contained opening chapter, and yet leaves plenty of characters and character attributes begging to be fully explored in the following two chapters (it’s a three-issue mini).  Not sure what else lies in store, but after reading all of issue #1, I’ll be damned if I’m missing a page of it.

For all the praise I lavish upon Bergin, seeing as this is, ultimately, a comic book, and therefore a visual piece in more ways than not, the lion’s share of my eulogizing must consequently be upended atop artist Jeremy Donelson.  His pages are pure comedy gold, reminiscent of The Travelers’ Chris Moreno and current superstar D.J. Coffman (Hero by Night).  His figures lie somewhere between old-school Archie and MAD Magazine designs, with flawless depictions of action, slapstick, subtle nuance, and overstated ham-fistery.  The book would sink or swim on the strength of his portrayals alone, and beautifully, it glides through the waters like a porpoise freshly freed from an oil slick.

Hands down the best humor book I’ve read since Boneyard hit the stands, lo so many years ago, Division 18 should prove to be one unforgettable three-issue foray into the underbelly of the costumed performer’s hard-working life.  I can’t imagine a soul outside of the Pope not enjoying this book, so find yourself a copy and kick the hell back and soak it all in.  My only complaint is that this book needs to find itself a sequel, because three issues is just pathetic.  More, more, more!  You lazy slob creators, resting on the laurels of work completed at your day jobs years ago!  Mooooore!