Book Review: Ten Miles of Bad Road
Ten Miles of Bad Road: Hallucinations of a Two-Bit Adman by Eric Vincent. Firetree Publishing. 210 pages. $20.99
Samuel Pepys never intended his diaries for publication. So the 17th century Englishman had no qualms about recording London life in all its grubby glory. He didn’t feel the need to censor himself for fear of offending anyone, so he left a unique, truthful, distinctly personal description of entertainment, sex, food and medicine in the 1600s.
In Ten Miles of Bad Road, Eric Vincent promises to reveal the Truth About Everything. There’s no censorship here, just a reflection of Vincent's life in illustrated form, a life of ingenuity and frustration. Like Pepys, Vincent offers his own perspective on the world around him, and to hell with the corporate reps who don't understand his sense of humor.
The big difference is that Pepys couldn't design footwear for camels or draw raccoons with whoopee cushions. Vincent's commentary takes the form of cartoons, drawings and doodles, many of them put together in his spare moments while working as art director at a Southern ad agency. By putting his fears and fantasies onto paper, Vincent stayed sane and refused to conform with the execs around him. By sharing those fantasies with us, he encourages us to let our imaginations wander beyond the borders of the reasonable.
There are plenty of funny animals in this book, but Vincent prefers to dabble with the anti-cute. Imagine cartoonist Chuck Jones, horror artist Steve Bissette and Mad's Harvey Kurtzman getting together and creating a book of rip-snortin', no-holds-barred, don't-give-a-fuck illustrations, and you’ll have an inkling of the contents of this puppy.
Vincent uses his dogs, cows and mosquitoes to make fun of anything that bugs him, from obese locals to obese tourists and obese businessmen who put commerce before art. But the artist doesn't merely rail against the woes of Southern life or the dull conformity of sales-savvy artists like Thomas Kinkade. Sometimes he takes a 'cool idea' (of which there are many) and stretches it as far as he can before his boss starts looking over his shoulder and asks him why he hasn't finished his latest politically correct assignment.
The gags include a bust-up at a midget cattlemen's association meeting, a dog playing dentist, a pirate armed with a Swiss army peg leg and a busking Godzilla. Superheroes share their pages with gods and mythological creatures. Jerry Falwell is reinterpreted as a flabby rock god, enjoying his successful Angel Wedgy tour.
The free-flow freak show is grounded in reality with a healthy, old fashioned, good-humored dose of Canadian-bashing, and there are plenty of recognizable nods to Lowcountry people and places. In Vincent's version of Charleston, tourists get the opportunity to trade places with carriage horses for a day. Instead of being fawned over by the authorities, itinerant tourists are sent to the klink. At high tide the fish pop out of every pipe and plug, cracking one-liners. Vincent is a man who has lived and suffered here – you can almost feel the salty summer sweat dripping from some of his drawings.
Vincent's intelligence adds a luster to all the mayhem and advertising concepts gone horribly wrong. He comments on some of his work, putting it in context or telling us where it came from. He wears his artistic heartthrobs on his sleeve – there are echoes of John Tenniel and Francois Boucher, warped with an EC Comics sensibility. So in lieu of EC's Weird Science or Two Fisted Tales, we get 'Two-Fisted Science' for double the fun.
Ten Miles is Firetree Publishing's first title. This is a rash choice to launch a company because of its personal slant, but Vincent's had enough of toeing the line and producing material that's worthy just because it's marketable – that's one of the main themes of the book.
Pepys' diaries had a lot to say about the dumbing down of society and the corruption that threatened his native city. His scribblings were tucked away for 150 years, then rediscovered, published and hailed as a literary and historic gem. If Ten Miles of Bad Road is dug up in the same fashion, Vincent's work will give historians a great view of life in Charleston, warts and all, plus a peep into one man's glorious thought processes.
Until Vincent gains the place in history he deserves, he'll always face a whole bunch of people who don’t 'get it.' After all, this mishmash of silly cartoons and deft social commentary, though always stylishly drawn, apparently started off as little more than an office in-joke. But while this collection may not attract the Thomas Kinkade-loving public en masse, it will appeal to all lacto-pervs (cow boobs sure are funny, aren't they?), frustrated two-bit ad men, and anyone unsatisfied with the vanilla normalcy of the world around them.
Samuel Pepys never intended his diaries for publication. So the 17th century Englishman had no qualms about recording London life in all its grubby glory. He didn’t feel the need to censor himself for fear of offending anyone, so he left a unique, truthful, distinctly personal description of entertainment, sex, food and medicine in the 1600s.
In Ten Miles of Bad Road, Eric Vincent promises to reveal the Truth About Everything. There’s no censorship here, just a reflection of Vincent's life in illustrated form, a life of ingenuity and frustration. Like Pepys, Vincent offers his own perspective on the world around him, and to hell with the corporate reps who don't understand his sense of humor.
The big difference is that Pepys couldn't design footwear for camels or draw raccoons with whoopee cushions. Vincent's commentary takes the form of cartoons, drawings and doodles, many of them put together in his spare moments while working as art director at a Southern ad agency. By putting his fears and fantasies onto paper, Vincent stayed sane and refused to conform with the execs around him. By sharing those fantasies with us, he encourages us to let our imaginations wander beyond the borders of the reasonable.
There are plenty of funny animals in this book, but Vincent prefers to dabble with the anti-cute. Imagine cartoonist Chuck Jones, horror artist Steve Bissette and Mad's Harvey Kurtzman getting together and creating a book of rip-snortin', no-holds-barred, don't-give-a-fuck illustrations, and you’ll have an inkling of the contents of this puppy.
Vincent uses his dogs, cows and mosquitoes to make fun of anything that bugs him, from obese locals to obese tourists and obese businessmen who put commerce before art. But the artist doesn't merely rail against the woes of Southern life or the dull conformity of sales-savvy artists like Thomas Kinkade. Sometimes he takes a 'cool idea' (of which there are many) and stretches it as far as he can before his boss starts looking over his shoulder and asks him why he hasn't finished his latest politically correct assignment.
The gags include a bust-up at a midget cattlemen's association meeting, a dog playing dentist, a pirate armed with a Swiss army peg leg and a busking Godzilla. Superheroes share their pages with gods and mythological creatures. Jerry Falwell is reinterpreted as a flabby rock god, enjoying his successful Angel Wedgy tour.
The free-flow freak show is grounded in reality with a healthy, old fashioned, good-humored dose of Canadian-bashing, and there are plenty of recognizable nods to Lowcountry people and places. In Vincent's version of Charleston, tourists get the opportunity to trade places with carriage horses for a day. Instead of being fawned over by the authorities, itinerant tourists are sent to the klink. At high tide the fish pop out of every pipe and plug, cracking one-liners. Vincent is a man who has lived and suffered here – you can almost feel the salty summer sweat dripping from some of his drawings.
Vincent's intelligence adds a luster to all the mayhem and advertising concepts gone horribly wrong. He comments on some of his work, putting it in context or telling us where it came from. He wears his artistic heartthrobs on his sleeve – there are echoes of John Tenniel and Francois Boucher, warped with an EC Comics sensibility. So in lieu of EC's Weird Science or Two Fisted Tales, we get 'Two-Fisted Science' for double the fun.
Ten Miles is Firetree Publishing's first title. This is a rash choice to launch a company because of its personal slant, but Vincent's had enough of toeing the line and producing material that's worthy just because it's marketable – that's one of the main themes of the book.
Pepys' diaries had a lot to say about the dumbing down of society and the corruption that threatened his native city. His scribblings were tucked away for 150 years, then rediscovered, published and hailed as a literary and historic gem. If Ten Miles of Bad Road is dug up in the same fashion, Vincent's work will give historians a great view of life in Charleston, warts and all, plus a peep into one man's glorious thought processes.
Until Vincent gains the place in history he deserves, he'll always face a whole bunch of people who don’t 'get it.' After all, this mishmash of silly cartoons and deft social commentary, though always stylishly drawn, apparently started off as little more than an office in-joke. But while this collection may not attract the Thomas Kinkade-loving public en masse, it will appeal to all lacto-pervs (cow boobs sure are funny, aren't they?), frustrated two-bit ad men, and anyone unsatisfied with the vanilla normalcy of the world around them.
posted by Nick Smith at
10:22 AM
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