Red Meat (comic strip)
| Red Meat | |
|---|---|
| Author(s) | Max Cannon |
| Website | http://www.redmeat.com/ |
| Current status/schedule | weekly |
| Launch date | 1989 |
| Genre(s) | comic strip |
- For mammal meat, see red meat. For the band, see Red Meat (band).
Begun in 1989, Max Cannon's Red Meat is an independent comic strip. It appears in over 75 alternative weeklies and college papers in the United States and in other countries. Since 1996, it has been available for reading on the web.
The strip features a cast of characters with abnormal personalities. A visual hallmark of the strip is the almost total lack of movement of the characters from panel to panel and a "Featureless Void" of no background.
The strip was briefly picked up by The Arizona Daily Wildcat, the student run newspaper of the University of Arizona, in 1989. It was then picked up by the Tucson Weekly.
Cannon is also creator of the Comedycentral.com animated webshow, "Shadow Rock" (based on the Red Meat strip). The 10 episodes are now available on Atom.com.
Red Meat features "slug lines" at the top of each comic which are frequently alliterative. For example, "Official pace car of the apocalypse" or "puckered piehole of the pointless".
Recently Max Cannon has urged his readers to contact the editors of their local alternative weekly papers in an effort to save the comics printed within. [1]
Characters
Many of the strip's human characters are 1950s caricatures.
- Bug-Eyed Earl - A demented sort of person slightly resembling Edgar Allan Poe or Charles Pierre Baudelaire. Earl's appearances generally involve him telling a surreal, strange, and usually disgusting anecdote.
- Milkman Dan - The local milkman; eccentric and hostile towards people and animals, especially Karen, a neighborhood child. Constantly battling against sobriety. Dan also dresses as a cow in his guise as McMoo, the anti-drug cow. [2], [3].
- Karen - A young girl who spends time with Milkman Dan even though she hates him for verbally abusing her and killing her pets. There is also a futuristic version with the descendent of Milkman Dan tormenting the descendent of Karen.
- Ted Johnson - Cannon has stated that Ted is based on his own father. He has a taste for gruesome sexual fetishes and cruel hobbies.
- Ted's son - William is dragged to places by his father and often forced to attend dangerous summer camps. At least two other children of Ted's have been mentioned, but never shown or named.
- Don - Ted Johnson's African-American neighbor. When he is shown with Ted, he appears to be the only "normal" person in the strip, but at home with his wife and kids, he is as quirky as you would expect.
- Reuben - Another of Ted's neighbors.
- Ken - An unsavory looking character who is friends with Ted.
- Johnny Lemonhead - A naive, well-mannered man with a head shaped like a lemon, who is abused and treated as a freak by others.
- Mr. Bix - A sadistic anthropomorphic robot built by Ted Johnson. Enjoys performing painful and/or disgusting experiments on organic beings, usually Ted's son and his friends. [4]
- Clyde - Ted's local gardener and handyman. Glacially slow on the uptake [5], [6].
- Mr. Wally - Owner of the Tobacco Shack. Wally is old and suffers from senile dementia.
- Steve - A friend of Ted's who has had his face burned off.
- God - A relaxed, laid-back, hippy-ish God [7]. Contrast to the Priest's more hellfire-and-brimstone outlook [8].
- Papa Moai - An omnipotent transdimensional being who resembles an Easter Island statue. Usually speaks portentously of transcending time and space, but has more minor and immediate concerns like finding decent tobacco [9], or filling in a crossword [10].
- The Priest - Tries to live according to the Bible, often at loggerheads with modern life or the less conservative God.
- Coach Nick - A middle school coach known for pushing his team (often young girls) too hard and for getting into fights.
- Mailman Matt - A paranoid conspiracy theorist [11] fond of dark sunglasses.
- Vern - A rotund salesman type. Was Johnny Lemonhead's boss at one point.
- Vince - A large, unfriendly "friend" of Ted's.
- The Puppet - A hand puppet who visits Ted's son. The owner of the hand is never shown.
- Stubbo - A parody of Sluggo from the "Nancy" comic strips. He is known for sadistic behavior with a child-like innocence, and possessing beard stubble at a very early age. His mother tolerates most of his actions as long as he doesn't make a mess. Stubbo had previously been reported as retired, however, he appeared in the May 13, 2008 strip.
- The Old Cowboy - Hobbies : overseeing his cowboys [12], reminiscing about the old days, potent hallucinogenic drugs [13]
- The Flaming Skull - A floating flaming skull that torments Earl, always trying to get him to look at him.
- The strip can more or less be divided into three series-- Ted Johnson, Bug-Eyed Earl and Milkman Dan.
- Most of the characters interact with each other at times, with notable exceptions-- Bug-Eyed Earl, the Old Cowboy and Stubbo have never crossed over with any of the other characters.
- There are several apparently retired characters who have made more than one appearance, but haven't been seen in years. These include the Dead Clown (a deceased clown found by youngsters and left in different places, often with a sign attached), Baby Head (a man-child named Bobby), Bad Dog (a seemingly normal dog who disappoints his master), Ponzo (a performance artist who killed himself, but his soul fled before he managed, causing him to be undead), Stacy (a parody of Dick Tracy portrayed as a down on his luck alcoholic) and Spuderman (a parody of Superman whose self importance keeps him from actually helping anyone). Some characters have only made one or two appearances like Walker (Ted's barber), Chet (Milkman Dan's dispatcher - a man with extremely short arms), the man who gave Ted his experimental body fluid-harvesting suit, baby Beethoven, Chuck & Choppo (a ventriloquist and his dummy), a burn ward child pretending to be an alien named Xerkon, a fat androgynous swimmer, Captain Jacques Oiseux of Ocean Land (a parody of Jacque Cousteau and SeaWorld), an unnamed Ocean Land employee who looks remarkably like Ken, Puseye (a parody of Popeye), a nerdy child asking for Spuderman's aid, a costumed super-villain for Stacy, a sea anemone claiming to be Babe Ruth reincarnated and Pinky, Stubbo's pet dog. Batman and Frank Sinatra have also made appearances, but aren't given names (most likely due to copyright issues).
- There are also several unseen characters who exist only as dialog balloons from off-panel. This includes a variety of bosses, customers, co-workers, teachers, doctors, children, spouses, etc. Ted Johnson's wife, Cindy, is notable not only for her number of appearances with Ted and his son, but also because she has been a seen a few times, although only from behind while lying in bed.
Books
Three collections of the strips have been released:
- Red Meat - ISBN 0-312-18302-X (1997)
- More Red Meat - ISBN 0-312-19514-1 (1998)
- Red Meat Gold - ISBN 0-312-33014-6 (2005)