Relationshapes
June 27th, 2008 by Justin Richards in News
Most people who know who David Rees is know him from “Get Your War On,” his semi-serious comic strip mocking the War on Terror.
GYWO, which is published in many alternative-weekly newspapers but not ours, is not that funny. At least not after you’ve seen his earlier stuff. In My New Filing Technique is Unstoppable, he took the same clip-art characters that he now uses in GYWO, but to far more hilarious effect.
Adventures of Confessions of St. Augustine Bear, Relationshapes, and My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable are also very funny. He certainly does absurdism better than he does socio-political commentary.
Recently, CL got a flier in the mail from one Carlos Montage, whose comics look like a ripoff of David Rees’s. Carlos Montage claims that his work is distinct, but that his and Rees’s shared style might be some sort of new wave in comic strips.
From an e-mail that Carlos Montage sent me: “The appeal of using clip art is that it establishes an authoritative foundation. These are the images used for informational brochures and marketing. To subvert this immediately establishes a line in the sand, a conflict, and thus a fertile place from which to launch. (Art Chantry is one of many poster designers who employs this tactic.)”
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