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Savoy Books 

Fuck Off And Die

David Britton & Kris Guidio


2005

b/w and colour illustrated

304mm x 216mm

Hard covers

First publication

160pp

ISBN 0 86130 113 7

Fuck Off And Die

 

 

Fuck Off and Die is the follow-up to the notorious Adventures of Meng & Ecker. Featuring all the usual favourites—Meng & Ecker, Lord Horror, La Squab—as well as new characters, it is probably David Britton and Kris Guidio's farewell volume of comic strips. All-new strips in b/w and 48 pages of full colour, containing the complete run of the La Squab three-panel strips, FOAD stacks-up more fucking bad taste than a monkey can shake a pointed stick at; the un-politically correct Daddy of comic books.

With an introduction by Alan Moore and an afterword by Dr Benjamin Noyse.

Jacket design by John Coulthart.


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"Oh, Christ. Britton and Guidio. Now look what you've made them do, and at the worst possible moment.

La Squab herself, apparently, was fathered on the bestial and psychopathic Meng by former Manc stud Morrissey somewhere between the squalor-sequined pages in jailbird of Paradise Dave Britton's and sinister legend Guidio's Meng & Ecker comic, though the issue of her actually parentage and pedigree runs somewhat deeper.

La Squab is a gothed-over, morbidly embellished version of the innocent, delightful Angel Face, originated by authentic British cartoon genius Ken Reid.

A terraced street visionary whose creations were the squelchy, squeaking furniture of many 1950s juvenile imaginations, Ken Reid and his various homunculi have always fitted seamlessly into the bilious, fluorescent Savoy swirl of cultural reference that sluices the toxic minor-cosmos of La Squab, Lord Horror, Meng and Ecker; an apocalyptic universe where ghastly English landmarks such as Oswald Moseley are set on spectacular collision courses with icons like James Joyce, Arthur Askey, Tiger Tim or Jessie Matthews.

An incongruous soup of moral outrage and nostalgia, this splenetic oeuvre offers us a key to the scarred, scalded sensibilities behind La Squab, behind the whole Savoy agenda. In these comic strips, as in our lives, the reassuring and beloved playmates of our past are herded onto cattle-trains and dragged into the semen, shit and blood stained razor-wire enclosure of our present.

This is a black and excellent collection, sharp as gall, a fine display of Britton's acid voice and splendid gallery of Guidio's elegant and decadent designs. La Squab is a sophisticated howl of anger and disgust disguised as a Violet Elizabeth Bott tantrum, Minipops conceived by Bertolt Brecht with set designs by Harry Clarke and camera work by Leni Riefenstahl. A paedophobic gymslip gem, it should be on the shelves of anyone hoping to fathom the lurid, fractal mess of turn-of-the-century British culture, a must for those of us who cannot stomach Cute unless it's gnawed down to the painful cuticle. Go out and order six more copies of this book immediately.

Tomorrow belongs to her."

ALAN MOORE IN THE INTRODUCTION


 

Reviews

"Consider the lilies of the field—and let the cluster-bombing begin. Fuck Off and Die, the latest literary JDAM from David Britton and illustrator Kris Guidio, targets pretense, hypocrisy, and the icons of so-called culture, whether highbrow or popular. Passionate, provocative, harrowing, hilarious: this collection of comic strips and graphic stories puts pay to a brave new century where governments prohibit photographs of dead soldiers and hurricane victims lest emotion—and possibly even thought—may follow. Its centerpiece is a series of three-panel strips featuring La Squab, offspring of vivisectionist vaudevillians Meng & Ecker (stars of the only comic book to be banned in England). Slam Little Orphan Annie into an anime nymphet, dress her in a death's head and butt-climbing miniskirt, slip her a handgun, and you'll get an idea. La Squab wanders the wasteland of the New Jerusalem, exacting her own brand of moral vengeance through bitter bon mots—"I don't like the thought of dying...on the other hand, I do like the thought of not being here"—and, courtesy of a quick trigger finger, the occasional bon voyage.

La Squab's mischief frames epistles from Meng & Ecker, including 48 pages of full-color delirium wending from urban legend and the Hungerford murders into Schopenhauer with the full-immersion baptism in hate, violence, fascism, and duplicity that have marked Britton as a brave, unapologetic, and unblinking satirist—arguably the best of our generation—and, in England at least, as a pornographer and criminal. Guidio's artwork is wrenchingly beautiful, repulsive, nightmarish, profound. Buying this book is an act of conscience—and of revolution against those who fear words and images."

DOUGLAS WINTER

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