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DemonDust #11
posted February 13, 2013
 

Creator: Bernie McGovern
Publishing Information: Mini-Comic, 8 pages, no price given, 2012
Ordering: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

This is one of those wonderfully inscrutable comics one encounters every so often, from someone that one guesses from that issue number makes a lot of them. To my reading, it seems driven almost solely by an assumed ease about the creator/reader relationship that may or may not be earned and a cosmology of imagery that I'm certain has meaning to the cartoonist if it doesn't register with me at all. That doesn't mean I don't like DemonDust #11; I'm just saying I don't all the way understand what's going on here, like I've walked in on a conversation between old friends. I'm not sure what I've overheard is enough to pique my interest.

I can make out the basics. A stand-in for the cartoonist and a brain stem interview an assortment of motley characters in what looks like a school auditorium for roles as part of the author's personality avatar for future issues of this series. This results in a few semi-amusing moments, but more of the "I can recognize what's going on here as a semi-amusing moment" variety than something I can claim threatened to amuse me. I spent several minutes after I finished the mini imagining the readership for this material, because this work almost certainly exists for an audience: it's a printed-up comic, one of many. I suppose DemonDust #11 provides a pleasant enough reading experience, but mostly it's forgettable in a way that one wishes there were a separate word for work that didn't quite reach the basic level of engagement. God bless this comic for existing, and its maker for continuing to put them out there.