‘The Underhogs’.
Written by Lukasz Kowalczuk and Henryk.
Art by Henryk.
I’m a fan of pretty much anything created by Lukasz. He has that antiestablishment approach that we really need. He reached out to me recently with his new book. It gets a release in June in Poland and will hopefully get grabbed quickly by an English language company soon.
Lukasz described it to me as this;
‘Bikers, Adventures, Lizards, Mafia and a Hollow earth. All action, no dialogue.’
To be completely honest you don’t really need to know anymore that that.
However here’s a warning of what you will be reading...
Imagine a bar in the desert. A dirty biker shack of a place. It’s part of a set for the movie Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! The cast are kicking back and drinking whiskey and the odd fight is breaking out. In walk the movie directors Ruggero Deodato and Sam Peckinpah, both off their nuts on medicines of their own particular choice. Followed by cartoonist Gerald Scarfe with a pocket full of pencils and paper and a brutally sarcastic attitude. They talk about making a comic. The Underhogs is what you would get! (Kinda, Maybe... ).
Prepare yourself for magnificent madness on a page!
Hentyk’s art is rough and raw and instinctual in all the ways that I find pleasing. His action is meth-tinged and immediate. He pulls no punches in action and/or style. His characters are so strangely otherworldly but emote more than enough in a book that contains zero dialogue. This is a visual fever dream with monsters and anthropomorphised lizards attacking you at the turn of a page. I would say that if you are a fan of artists like Jim Mahfood or Matt Harrower of Warwick Johnson-Cadwell that this is right up your street.
This aggressively brutal attack on narrative and comics stylings is an absolutely triumphant antidote to the current comics world of faux manga, faux ability and faux outrage. This is a book that is punk as fuck. It never holds back and the art will be outside of some peoples safe and fluffy wheelhouses but they do really need to experience it and open their minds to these stylistic possibilities.
So what do you need to know going in? I’ll try and sum it up a little bit more for you.
Biker Woman, Biker Man and Biker Monkey walk into a bar. They get given a paid mission by a many toothed gang lord and set off on a road movie style story that is set in a seemingly post apocalyptic desert world. On the way they will encounter cigar chomping dinosaur biker gangs, arena style chariot (bike) races, Flaming skulled knife carrying assassins, a town full of doll-like midgets hidden under the Earth, tentacle monsters, giant motorway attacking toddlers and much, much more.
The story leads to a really great final confrontation that doesn’t quite end how you might expect.
The action in this book never, ever stops. The characters and the story (literally) zoom through one situation to the next. This actually started as a Tumblr webcomic but you’d be hard pressed to find a change in style or artistic competence and that’s pretty impressive for such a very long book.
I would say that my main problem in fact is the exhausting length of the book. I read it digitally and went back to it again a few times as there’s a lot for the eye to take in and enjoy. I would love to see this given a Manga style paperback digest release! The cover seems conversely a little too rough around the edges and could do with some tightening up artwise and logo wise so it stands out on the shelf a touch more.
I have to also admit to also being a little bored of all Mafia bosses looking like Donny Trump. Another short cut is required I think. I’ve had enough of that particular person already, his appearance both in the comics I read and on my Television make me squirm. Can we all agree to move on a little?
There are no plans beyond the digital to release this in an English language version but there really need to be!
Henryk can be found here https://m.facebook.com/Henryk.ART/#_=_ and here https://m.facebook.com/DOOM.PIPE.comics/
Find out more about Lukasz Kowalczuk by visiting https://m.facebook.com/nienawidzeludzi666 where you can see more by this creator.
Many thanks for reading.
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