10 YEARS OF THE BF SIX TO WATCH! Although we covered the first two print issues of Christof Bogacs and Beck Kubrick’s Meat4Burgers series a while back at Broken Frontier we never quite got around to putting a spotlight on the crowdfunded, collected edition last year. Still available as a digital download, and in selected shops, it seems a more than appropriate time to revisit the book – compiled under the grimly alluring title of Meat4Burgers: Welcome to Burgertory – given the rising stars of both creators, who this month teamed up again in the pages of Oni Press’s Rick & Morty: Finals Week: BrawlHer.
So, to recap (and unashamedly recycle) from our original review, Meat4Burgers throws us directly into a mystery; one that we experience and attempt to piece together alongside its main character. It begins with “Trace” (a name later ascribed to them rather than their given one) waking up in a cardboard box in a fast food restaurant with no idea who they are or how they got there. All they know is that they are now an employee of the Val-U-BurgerTM corporation, an outlet apparently floating in space.
Trapped with them in this pedestrian but sinister existential hell are a number of Val-U-BurgerTM co-workers: Britt the authoritative boss, the ever eager Boyd, “burger artist” Jackie, and veteran Phil who seems to be in a perpetual stupor. All are in exactly the same situation as Trace, only they’ve had a lot more time to acclimatise…
Welcome to Burgertory brings together four chapters/issues, with short tales and illustrations between each illustrated by Axe Marnie, Marie Enger, Ray Nadine, Kit Beukes and Geoff Class that, despite their succinctness, flesh out characters and give added insight into their worlds. In this volume we learn more about the workings of this strange limbo franchise, its shadowy customers whose presences have nightmarish effects on the team, and the ominous performance review manager whose arrival the crew are dreading.
This is one of those genre narrative titles that is so full of twisting scenarios and improbable developments that it becomes increasingly difficult to discuss without ruining what should be the reader’s firsthand experience of events. If you’re looking for clarity, answers and full disclosure as to what is occurring in this eerie locale, though, it becomes more obvious as the second half of the story progresses that that’s not really the point. Rather Welcome to Burgertory is a full-on, visceral challenge to the interpretive senses, hinting at much but also requiring the reader to take their own meaning from its talking toilet walls, controlling company mascots, and sinister workplace regulations.
It’s up to each reader then if they see this as a commentary on late stage capitalism, how corporate control crushes the individual, the commodification of art and the squelching of dreams… or whether you just want to enjoy it as a darkly surreal tale of cosmic angst, a la Steve Gerber at his creative peak. What’s also important here is that given the timeframe over which it was worked on it gives a clear indication of the developing style of artist Kubrick (one of our 2023 ‘Six to Watch’ creators).
Kubrick’s panel and page structures continually disorient and discombobulate the reader, perfectly reflecting the off-kilter nature of the world they and Bogacs have created here, with their use of lettering further accentuating the weirdness of the proceedings. Check out too their suitably disquieting character designs. This is a creative partnership where both creators perfectly complement each other, ever amplifying and feeding off the unsettling imaginations of the other.
At the moment the digital download of the book is on sale at just £3.00 here. For the best of 100 pages of material from such up-and-coming creators that’s a bargain too good to miss.
Christof Bogacs, Beck Kubrick (W), Beck Kubrick, Axe Marnie, Marie Enger, Ray Nadine, Kit Beukes, Geoff Class, Christof Bogacs (A) • Self-published, £12.00 (print), £6.00 (digital)
Buy in print from Gosh! Comics here
Review by Andy Oliver
2024 marks the tenth year of Broken Frontier’s ‘Six to Watch‘ initiative. Look for articles throughout the year celebrating the work of those artists who have been a part of the programme.
