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CBG SATELLITES
The ADD Blog by Alan David Doane
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The Doofus Omnibus
I like Doofus, although I'll be damned if I can
tell you why.
It's not funny, although it is comical. You don't
laugh out loud, but you chuckle in your mind.
Doofus doesn't elevate the artform or change my
life or make me see the true potential of comics. It's
just fucking odd, is what it is.
Doofus and his pal Henry Hotchkiss are like some sort
of idealized, panty-huffing village idiots. This
volume contains Doofus's "Greatest Adventures," as it
says on the cover, but they never do very much. The
most elaborate story here sees the pair stage a
panty-huffing party at the home of Miss Juniper, a
buxom, Wally Wood-esque brunette who leaves town for a
while with a handsome, impotent clod. And again, not a
whole lot happens.
The joy of Doofus is in the art, which looks so
much like Wood (right down to the lettering) that it's
scary. The joy is in the nearly David Lynch-like
pointlessness to the stories, which surprise not out
of clever plot developments, but out of their sheer
readability. There's no reason to read Doofus,
and yet once you've started you really can't stop.
It never occurred to me to wonder before, but now I am
questioning whether "Rick Altergott" is even a real
person. Why is there an interview with Dan Clowes at
the beginning of this volume? And why do some of the
backgrounds look so much like Clowes's penwork? Is
Clowes a huge influence on Altergott, or is this some
sort of elaborate gag? Am I even now making a fool of
myself for wondering if the name "Altergott" is a
clever hint -- alter ego? Alter God? What the fuck is
this book's power?
Doofus is stupid, but Altergott -- whoever he
is -- is brilliant. The cartooning recalls the very
best Mad comics under the guidance of Harvey
Kurtzman as drawn by Wally Wood, perhaps after both of
them had suffered severe injuries to their pre-frontal
lobes. The Doofus Omnibus is well worth
reading, filled with irony and satire and as easy to
grasp as a wisp of smoke -- or the scent of
yesterday's panties pulled from the bottom of Miss
Juniper's hamper when she's not looking. Grade: 4.5/5
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