Susan Fitzpatrick


Countdown of Top Ten of Top Tens

10. Things I would like to see in the form of topiary. Number 1 on this list: Ikea’s Ragrund Corner unit.

9. Ways to prepare potato. Number 2: Dauphinoised

8. Dialogue from the film “Tootsie”. Number 3: “For I am not Emily Kimberley, daughter of Dwayne and Alma Kimberley. No I’m not. I’m Edward Kimberley, the reckless brother of my sister Anthea. I’m Edward Kimberley who has finally vindicated his sister’s good name. I’m Edward Kimberley, Edward Kimberley, I’m not mentally ill, but proud and lucky and strong enough to be the woman that was the best part of my manhood, the best part of myself”

7. Stuart Arnot’s ideas for names. Hard to put the likes of Leander, Cecil, Roscoe, Yves in order of preference.

6. Perfect Sunday moments. Number 4: Listening to Gary Kasparov’s choice of desert island discs while constructing the Ragrund corner unit. Especially during Gary’s choice of the overture to Phantom of the Opera.

5. Teddy Knits. Number 5 in this top ten: “Bear Essentials”. See photo

4. Politicians or royals where enough time has passed for people to respectfully speculate on whether that politician or royal had dementia whilst in power. Number 6: Harold Wilson

3. Chugger opening gambits that have been genuinely heard. Number 7: “nice laptop bag”

2. PILFS. Number 3: Derrida

1. Martin Luther put downs. Number 10: “It is presumptuous for people who are as ignorant as you, not to take up the work of a herdsman”. From the Explanation of the 95 Theses.


My name is Susan Fitzpatrick, I'm 38 and currently split my time between staring at my one year old son, going to work 2 days a week, learning how to record and save samples on my new Korg Microsampler keyboard, collecting stuff to stick on Luke Poot's new stage costume, making the tea. On the odd occasion I'll do a gig as part of Acrid Lactations, sometimes on my own as Joyce Whitchurch, would like to return to past creative pursuits such as comic book writing, but time has taken the form of the foul mouthed obstinate Edinburgh bus driver who takes the £2 but doesn't give you the 30p change.


Andy Bolus


Top (in no particular order) 10 Most Warped Comics I Own

1. JoElvifrance* (EF) Incube N°93 "Forces Obscures" [Hidden Forces] (Drawings by Chizolli/Del Prete, Story by "G. Gozzo" aka Carmello Gozzo)
Super graphic story about accidental leak of top secret experimental nerve gas which causes vengeful thoughts to actually physically happen. Aka excuse for nazi skeletons sawing up women, women being strangled by "posessed" electrical appliances, raped by a gang of men who transform half way through into hairy dwarves, and an incredible party scene caused by an irate neighbour, with LP records , wine bottles and chopped up remains of hipster couples splattering against walls and flying out of highrise apartment windows.

2. EF Serie Verte n°177 "Art Galactique" (Drawings by L. Lepori, Story by G.Gozzo)
Uanation is that the guy they are sleeping with is in reality an alien artist preparing 1980's style female human body parts for an art installation on his home planet.nfaithful women all sleeping with the same man break out in easy to draw geometric-shaped wounds. The obvious explanation is that the guy they are sleeping with is in reality an alien artist preparing 1980's style female human body parts for an art installation on his home planet.

3. EF Incube N° 79 "Cartoons Vivants" [Living Cartoons] (Drawing by D. Simeoni, Story by Studio IF aka Carmello Gozzo)
Basically the same story as 2 except it's an alien teenager on a lesbian sex tourist holiday on Earth, who has the ability to make evil Smurfs appear out of nowhere when she feels the need to kill anyone who has a problem with one of her girlfriends.

4. EF Serie Verte N°188 "Betes Humaines" [Human Animals] (Drawings by Chizzoli/Santilli, Story by, yup, Gozzo)
What looks like a white slave ring in fact turns out to be human slaves forced to kidnap other humans (from the typing pool of an office) to be taxidermied and used for exhibits in an alien museum showing banned inter-species sex scenes from all over the galaxy.

5. EF PROLO N°25 "Pur Porc" [Pure Pork]
Why not? Prolo is this square-jawed dude with 5 kilos of meat instead of a head, always grinning and always being a huge dork. Consists entirely of stereotypes, many that you didn't even know existed. All the other characters are either so cheezy or so annoying that Prolo seems like the good guy. Plus he always has the exact same face in every panel. Reliable.

6. Editions Bois de Boulogne N°1 Panthera "Bioniquement Votre..." [Bionically Yours...] (Unknown artist, I suspect the publisher, for financial reasons)
Seriously looks like it was drawn by a 13 year old kid, completely retarded as is everything by Editions Bois de Boulogne, which is named after the, excuse the pun, "wooded area" near Paris notorious for prostitution. Way beyond "trash"...fuck knows what it's about because it's written in super antiquated or completely made up slang, something about a female james bond type heroine who drinks poppers (?) and sometimes has really tiny thalidomide arms.

7. Editions Bois de Boulogne N°1 (I thought they used that number already?) "Heil Heil Panthera"
Probably the same artist, early work age 11 or 12, draws with a BIC biro. Our heroine Panthera (nothing to do with the band) has morphed into an Ilsa ripoff busy running a submarine full of bondage equipment, subsequently changing into a female Tarzan for some snake-wrestling, avoiding some ninja types with harpoon guns (could be scuba divers, hard to tell, does not matter), being careful to not go anywhere which might have difficult to draw backgrounds, and getting chased by a dinosaur. Whew!

8. Editions Belle-France (Directrice Christiane Gugleimi) Duchmoll N°3 "La Main du Masseur..." [The Hand of the Masseur]
Just when you thought you had seen the most retarded thing ever, out of BIC biro-land slithers Duchmoll. Whoever the fuck that is. A title ending in 3 dots "..." in the world of pocket comics seems to be a secret code for brain damaged incomprehensible garbage drawn by teenagers who never went to school. Delivers everything you would expect from a racist pig-farmers offspring attempting dimly remembered Yellow Submarine-style psychedelic "comix", but with the immediately uncool theme of football and a hatred of Mexicans, for some reason. I'm just going to add a few dots at the end...

9. Editions S.P.S Eros Negro N°10 "Fievre de Jungle" [Jungle Fever]
Seems to me that the publisher was trying out different naming strategies, sure than one would catch on. Or else they forgot what the comic was supposed to be called, because the name varies: " Eros Negro", "Sex Negros", and most commonly "African Love" are all "drawn" (I hesitate to use the word because "badly traced from old adventure comics" is more accurate) by the same artist, whose style is distinguishable by the characters' facial features completely changing in each panel, making any kind of plot way harder to follow. One female (?) character sometimes has what looks like half a moustache belonging to another character glued to the side of her head, for example. Drawn with BIC biro and possibly a Spirograph or Etch-a-Sketch as well. Editions S.P.S have adverts in the back for animal and incest porn, so we know it's top quality all the way, delivering the goods. And the bads. Mostly bads.

10. (from Belgium) Uitgeverij BYBLOS "COMIC SUPER" N° 87
Most of these companies used to take the unsold copies, bind 2 or 3 together with a new cover and call it something super cool like "Comic Super". What "pop art" should have been, in fact. This one has 2 of the ultra-rapey "Hostess" comics inside, with beautiful covers by Molino (my favourite cover artist, who, funnily enough, was also the guy who painted the Donald Duck axe murder one which scarred me for life *see below) one showing a hostess getting screwed by a pilot with mirror shades, a 747 just missing the Eiffel Tower in the background (all pilots wear mirror shades and fuck a lot, which is why planes crash). Hostess comics are like storyboards for never-to-be-made movies in the style of Lucio Fulci's "New York Ripper", but starring an air hostess who can do karate kicks while giving a blowjob.

*Elvifrance was a French publisher from the early '70s until the early '90s of Italian "fumetti neri" [literally "Black Smoke"] erotic horror comics like "Serie Blu", "Serie Star" etc, more traditional horror like "Jacula", "Terror", as well as other genres, translated from the original language (the Italian publisher was called Elvipress) which although it's hard to believe now were once freely available on news stands here. I'm the way I am partly due to the happy trauma of seeing the cover of one such comic at the age of 11 in some truck driver service station in the French Alps, a painting of a guy in a Donald Duck mask beheading a naked lady with an axe. Unlike most comics, it's actually the later issues which sell for the most money due to the fact that they went more and more batshit insane until they finally got banned. In Italy they were actually paying artists to draw extra pages of sex scenes to add to existing strips in an attempt to sell more copies. Alongside Elvifrance were a bunch of smaller, sometimes scummier ripoff companies like Editions Bois De Boulogne / Belle France / S.P.S, etc, see above. 

For nearly 3 decades Andy Bolus has been one of our shitty globes finest practitioners of psychotic tape splice noise junk and psychedelic third eye smarting visual gunk. He continues to produce visual and audio works in abdundance from his lab on the outskirts of Paris and is a keen connoisseur of Chinese bath salts.

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