WEASEL #5

Dave Cooper's last ish of this incarnation of his serial comix mag offers usual sordid artistry

By Mike Whybark     September 10, 2002

Let me just say this: Canadian clown porn. But don't get worked up; if that excites you, I want you to put the review down, and walk backwards out of the room. Keep your hands to your sides, where I can see them. Good. Now, shut the door. Anyone out there under eighteen? Why don't you go out the window so you don't have to deal with that person we just chased out the door.

Great. Now it's just us stable, mature adults, those of us with a firm grasp of our own neuroses and horrific fascinations, right? Great. Great. OK, here's the deal: Dave Cooper is a genius. He is utterly fascinated with making you, dear reader, squirm. But it's not the good clean fun of Steven King, or even of Bret Easton Ellis: no blood, no gore, no dead people. Just us, and our society's confused messages about sex and sexuality. And it's icky.

This issue is surely not suitable for sale or consumption by kids; yet despite my lead, it's not pornographic or erotic; it's more like the musings of someone who is so obsessively horrified by sex and sexuality that otherwise innocent narratives take on an undercurrent of danger. Cooper's art emphasizes this quality; in this incarnation, it's reminiscent (in what I think is titled "Ripple") of the Weimar etchings of Otto Dix, which depict grotesque caricatures of criminals, murderers, sporting types, industrialists, and prostitutes; Dix's work served a consciously polemic goal, of viciously satirizing his morally bankrupt society.

Cooper may be interested in the same goal, but the victim of his satire may be himself; it's hard to connect the dots between his distorted and simpering pinups and the originals on which they are modeled. Is Cooper pointing out the distorted and denaturing visions of conventionally sexualized media so we might profit from his salutary warning, or is he merely declaiming a preadolescent fear of sexuality? It's difficult to know; this ambiguity is probably an element of his artistic goals. By playing his cards close to his chest, he wants to force his readers to think about why they are uncomfortable when confronted with his disturbing imagery.

Cooper's force of vision makes any work from his hand intrinsically powerful. Unfortunately for me, the lack of context for the initial story, and the randomness of the plot in the backup feature, "Eddy Table," undermined my appreciation of the work. In the past, I've always found his long tales worth following, but without seeing the rest of the series it's hard to talk about the specific longer tale.

Cooper also mentions in his (nearly illegible) foreword that he will be shifting gears with WEASEL in the future, altering formats of both publication and content at whim. I assume he has something in mind such as Chris Ware's experimentation with the form of the magazine in his series, ACME NOVELTY LIBRARY.

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