Review by Frank Plowright
New comics from Rick Altergott are frustratingly rare for anyone infatuated with his stylish art and perverse sense of humour. In fact we have to go back to 2002’s Doofus Omnibus for his previous graphic novel, but that was just a collection. This is the equivalent of Flowertown: The Movie.
At the start Altegott’s primary characters remain Doofus and Henry Hotchkiss, residents of the art-deco inspired Flowertown, but for the first time he begins to consider additional residents other than Stink Hair Stu. Along the way we meet dope dealer Tommy Cottonwood, just released from a year in jail, a sinister Doofus doppelganger, sleazy equivalents of so many stock town personnel, and more briefly members of the Forty Acres Club. This secret organisation restricts membership to forty people, sworn to secrecy and vowing never to achieve anything but solitary orgasm.
The idea is preposterous enough, but Altergott inflates the joke by basing the organisation on the freemasons, complete with opulent premises, arcane rituals and presenting an alluring mystique to the uninitiated. A member has died, and Doofus has proposed Henry Hotchkiss as the replacement. It’s always Henry Hotchkiss, by the way, never Hotchkiss or Henry, this despite his being a pitiful figure unsuited to an unsupervised existence. However, just after Doofus has staked his reputation by proposing Henry Hotchkiss, the unthinkable happens when a group of stoned girls seduce him. A variation of this scene appeared in The Doofus Omnibus, but Altergott takes events in a different direction.
Altergott’s sly visual humour presents an intelligence at odds with the writer indulging in obvious crudity (which is very funny). He subverts picture postcard USA with images such as muscly, naked fishermen stretching nets between them near the shore. Disgusting, though, is the default status, manifesting in many wondrously creative ways, all stomach-turningly hilarious as if there’s a parallel universe where Doofus movies were made in the 1960s, while smutty innuendo of the UK’s Carry On movies was a watered down imitation.
The full length Blessed Be is a departure from the short, funny and repellent stories forming Altergott’s back catalogue, and unfortunately the plot rambles. A central theme of Flowertown being a setting for a fundamental battle between good and evil never really gels, with ideas such as the random placement of Jack Chick pamphlets having no payoff. Moreover, the exploits of Doofus and Henry Hotchkiss concern unique characters with individual mindsets, and by concentrating on the deluded ravings of the crooked Tommy and the wholesome Astrid’s concerns Altergott sacrifices that uniqueness.
What raises Blessed Be is Altergott’s wonderfully comical art, presenting the most unfeasible situations as if in a world where they could actually occur. A sequence near the end is a bizarre parody of the movie chase scene, featuring Doofus in his ridiculous little car. Other panels throughout are peppered with funny little details, almost always gross, with scenes set at the burger franchise managed by Stink Hair Stu the most imaginatively disgusting.
There’s much to enjoy about Blessed Be, but it’s in moments rather than the sustained narrative.
