Spike Magazine

Spike | 15 YEARS OF BOOKS, MUSIC, ART, IDEAS | www.spikemagazine.com
Chainsaw’. One of my personal favourites, ‘Jenny,
Jenny Jenny & Babette The Siamese Quadruplets’ puts
a new spin on the impetuousness of droll humour.
Peer group pressure (aka ‘The Debbies’), ‘Sibling
Rivalry And Happy, Happy, Happy Sammy’ examines
universes populated by hormones, pathological urges
and by childhood optimism that has to be stamped
out at all costs. It’s one big, happy, alienated family in
Oblong Town.
This is a marriage between Edgar Allan Poe and
David Lynch. A tango through the bizarre. And to think
that Oblong spent a slab of his youth languishing away
behind the grinding machine at the Royal Ground
Coffee Shop at Polk and Vallejo while pumping out
underground comics on the side. His personal bio states
that he then “ended up in California after five years of
living on the streets and taking it in the butt by ugly old
men for heroin money”. A stint as a clown for a fastfood
restaurant quickly alerted him to his true calling.
Oblong is a mysterious creature whose art screams
“This is Vaudeville”. He idolises his cartoon children
and just as his book showcased the talents of ‘Cross-
Dressing Charles’, ‘Janet’s Butt’ and ‘Carl & The
Crippled Black Kid With An Eye Patch’, his sitcom
debut, The Oblongs, continues the theme by choosing
to both empathise and poke fun at the ‘physically
challenged’ (or if you prefer, mutant children). As
Oblong confessed to the Sacramento Bee’s David
BUY Angus Oblong books online from and
Barton, “I always had a fascination with deformities.
The Oblongs was a show about the kids, it was based
around Milo’s clubhouse and all the ugly deformed
kids who can’t otherwise get friends.”
This book is original. It’s horrifying. It’s morbid.
It’s Halloween for 365 days a year. In a world where
animation is gradually eating into the psyche of
public consumption and where cartoon-strip-style
graffiti is hot, Oblong has carved a beautiful niche.
So what if he fantasised that his father “were a sword
swallower and mother a prostitute”. And so what if
his humour is gallows all the way. It’s time to stop
being prejudiced about first impressions folks; it’s
time to let the freaks in, to celebrate them and their
own unique Olongesque charm.
If you are looking for criticism then you won’t find
any here. I’ve tried. God knows. I hang my head in
shame at the thought that humour can be so sacrilegious.
Look – if American giant NBC can swallow Oblong’s
appeal (and secure his creative vision for cable) – then
so can we. Okay, so home may be the local toxic waste
dump but let’s be fair, these kids are partially human
after all, and as such, deserve our support…
A mock children’s book called Mommy Is Going To
Die is apparently in the test tube. It’s possible that that
small and assorted clubhouse of human oddities will be
raising its semi-amputated arms with empathy and joy
at the mention of more siblings … Freaks rule! �
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