Popbot: Collection 1

Written & Illustrated by: Ashley Wood
Additional story by: Sam Keith

Popbot is very much a stream of consciousness experimental writing/art project. The story--if that's really important in this context--involves a punk rock singing cat named Kitty who's down on his luck after post-op boy bands begin to top the musical charts and bump his band into obscurity.

That shit's just on the first page.

We've got Andy Warhol clones that host a German television show. There's the blind gunsman who wears a cloth that wiped the blood off JFK, which lends the gunsman a certain clarity of vision. There's the series of robot Elvis ninjas, samurais, sexy fem-bots, sexy feminist bots, a devil of a man living in New Manchester (after London had been nuked) and whoever else gunning after Kitty for their own respective reasons. Oh yeah, then there's Popbot.

Despite what the title might imply, Popbot is not the star of the book. No, the star(s) of the book are naked, female, suggestively-posed and on every other page. It seems that Mr. Wood spends a great (a great) deal of his time thinking about naked ladies. Virtually every woman in the comic is introduced topless and with her legs spread. From what I could tell from whatever the fuck was going on with the story, it was gratuitous pretty much every time.

I would say that something like that got in the way of the narrative (perhaps if I didn't like naked women so much myself?), but the art itself dislodges the reader from whatever story might be going on in the book.


Excerpt from the third issue of Popbot

That's the thing about Popbot, though: it's a hip, arty comic that makes fun of hipness, art and comics (specifically sci-fi comics). It's a robot book that rarely features the robot. The plethora of nude women seems to comment on and make fun of art's historical tendency to feature the nude form (specifically the nude female form). The language in the book--full of vulgarities--seems to comment on the current desensitization of such language in youth culture (along with the cracks about post-op boy band members, Mo Prostate [the Canadian rapper], and other references to current pop culture, not to mention the artistic study of pop culture with his use of Andy Warhol clones). It's hard to decide what Ashley Wood is sending up--or perhaps not sending up--but that's what's so fascinating about this book. It feels like just a collection of references and parodies of pop culture, but it somehow retains an overall cohesiveness. If it doesn't follow some kind of narrative logic per se, it certainly follows its own brand of dream logic.

This is what ad executives must dream about at night. "How am I going to sell to the youth demographic? What do kids like these days? Zzzzcatsnekkidladiesrobotsgunsboybandsviolencecussingbombszzzz..." At once lowbrow and high-concept, Popbot is baffling while reading it. Once the concepts start to sink in, however, you'll find it one of the smartest and most artfully crafted books on the market today. Even with it's high pricetag ($35 for the three volume first collection), Popbot is worth a gander to see great art and witty send ups of current pop culture. [NOTE: Also recommended for fans of naked women with guns.]

D

Like what you see? Drop us an email at: [Nick] bungalowjones@hotmail.com, [Drew] gronix@excite.com, [ESkalac] skalac@uiuc.edu or [Kate] katedickson@occultmail.com