The Eltingville Club #1
The Eltingville Club #1
Written and Drawn by Evan Dorkin
Dark Horse. $3.99
Sometimes you just have to start a comic. Now, this may sound obvious, but hear me out. Too much of comic fandom revolves around collecting our favorite stories or characters. We always want to start at the beginning. We always want the whole picture. Problem is, that’s just not going to happen every time. I keep going back on forth on whether or not to read John Ostrander’s Suicide Squad run because I can only find half of it. As a result, I haven’t read any Suicide Squad. If the discerning reader wants to ever expand their base knowledge, they simply can’t read every thing, every time. Sometimes we just have to dive right in, or we’ll miss out on something interesting. I doubt I ever would’ve read The Eltingville Club #1 if I wanted to start at the beginning.
Evan Dorkin’s been writing stories about the titular club of dorks since starting his comic “Dork” in the mid 90s. They’ve had six or seven adventures so far, and Dorkin promises this to be the final chapter of the saga. There was no way for me to track down every other related piece of media. I just dove right in, and I feel rewarded for it.
The Eltingville Club is a comic about the worst kind of comic fans. These guys are not diving in to anything. They’re set in their ways of absorbing the worst of the worst. Who’re the guys keeping fairy tale porn in print? The Eltingville Club. Whore’ the guys ordering all the extra-bowel destruction editions of Crossed? The Eltingville Club. Who’re the guys writing… I could go on with these jokey references forever, but jokey references make up half the dialogue in the book. When you see it coupled with the other half of the dialogue, characters spewing contempt and disdain for every other character, it makes for some great comedy.
The first issue concerns one of the gang getting a job at the local comic book store, and we’re treated to a nice morality play in the first half of the book. The slimy manager shows him the ropes, and the kid succumbs to his boss’s way of thinking, not that he ever seemed innocent, but we get to see him become so much worse over thirty or so pages. Eventually things descend into pandemonium, but Dorkin squeezes every awful moment he can out of the comic book store. I’ve been to some shitty ones in my time, but never anything like this.
The sheer nastiness of the book can be overwhelming for some, but it’s the sort of thing I’ve been looking for. Dorkin said his characters were the sort of guys who wrote death threats to comic writers and actresses they didn’t like. There weren’t any this issue, but I hope he gets around to it. The Eltingville Club has proven it can make me uncomfortable. I want it to make me reeeaallly uncomfortable.
Written and Drawn by Evan Dorkin
Dark Horse. $3.99
Sometimes you just have to start a comic. Now, this may sound obvious, but hear me out. Too much of comic fandom revolves around collecting our favorite stories or characters. We always want to start at the beginning. We always want the whole picture. Problem is, that’s just not going to happen every time. I keep going back on forth on whether or not to read John Ostrander’s Suicide Squad run because I can only find half of it. As a result, I haven’t read any Suicide Squad. If the discerning reader wants to ever expand their base knowledge, they simply can’t read every thing, every time. Sometimes we just have to dive right in, or we’ll miss out on something interesting. I doubt I ever would’ve read The Eltingville Club #1 if I wanted to start at the beginning.
Evan Dorkin’s been writing stories about the titular club of dorks since starting his comic “Dork” in the mid 90s. They’ve had six or seven adventures so far, and Dorkin promises this to be the final chapter of the saga. There was no way for me to track down every other related piece of media. I just dove right in, and I feel rewarded for it.
The Eltingville Club is a comic about the worst kind of comic fans. These guys are not diving in to anything. They’re set in their ways of absorbing the worst of the worst. Who’re the guys keeping fairy tale porn in print? The Eltingville Club. Whore’ the guys ordering all the extra-bowel destruction editions of Crossed? The Eltingville Club. Who’re the guys writing… I could go on with these jokey references forever, but jokey references make up half the dialogue in the book. When you see it coupled with the other half of the dialogue, characters spewing contempt and disdain for every other character, it makes for some great comedy.
The first issue concerns one of the gang getting a job at the local comic book store, and we’re treated to a nice morality play in the first half of the book. The slimy manager shows him the ropes, and the kid succumbs to his boss’s way of thinking, not that he ever seemed innocent, but we get to see him become so much worse over thirty or so pages. Eventually things descend into pandemonium, but Dorkin squeezes every awful moment he can out of the comic book store. I’ve been to some shitty ones in my time, but never anything like this.
The sheer nastiness of the book can be overwhelming for some, but it’s the sort of thing I’ve been looking for. Dorkin said his characters were the sort of guys who wrote death threats to comic writers and actresses they didn’t like. There weren’t any this issue, but I hope he gets around to it. The Eltingville Club has proven it can make me uncomfortable. I want it to make me reeeaallly uncomfortable.
A Look Inside
