Review by Frank Plowright

For six years Paul Kirchner’s half page slab of surreality The Bus was a mainstay of Heavy Metal magazine, but in 1985 Kirchner discontinued the strip due to finding difficulty in coming up with fresh ideas. However, in 2012 when a collection of the 1980s material was reissued, the ideas sparked again, enough of them to fill this slimmer collection.

There may be fears of it just being more of the same, which it is, but considering how few creators have followed Kirchner’s example of toying with the form of comics, The Bus still leads the way as fresh and interesting.

Kirchner sets the playful tone with an introduction explaining how the actor who played the bald, middle-aged passenger in the original strips is now too old to reprise his role. Fortunately his son was able to inherit it. Beyond that, you’d not know over 25 years had passed since the strips collected in the first volume. Kirchner can still draw in the precise, heavily shadowed style used before, and his quirky imagination provides surreal splendour when it comes to the gags. These are almost all of the wordless variety represented by the top sample, with the likes of the bottom sample strip rare, although among them is a perfect eight panel romance story with a humorously perverse twist and the lunacy of the bus as a circus act.

As before the destination signage at the front of the bus provides oblique statements, and look to the backgrounds for further jokes, either verbal or visual. Shouldn’t there really be a shop named Flotsam & Jetsam, or one selling invisible hats?

The creative excellence that sustained the first collection is again apparent in every strip. They’re smart, they’re funny and they’re still different.