Dancing Eye

By Mark Oliver and Peter O’Dowd
dancingeye.co.uk

There were several places in this zine where I felt decidedly uncomfortable. I doubt the content of Dancing Eye will have the same effect on others, but I found that the creators’ ideas and art styles managed to hit the right (or wrong) buttons of what I find disturbing (hopefully without intending to, for if they did intend to freak me out specifically that’s even worse): amorphous blobs, things growing out of other things (as I write this I am desperately trying not to think of a dream I had several days ago that featured something happening to my bellybutton), tenatacled monsters, and basically anything happening to someone’s eyes. Brrrrrr.

The zine can be split into two pieces which aren’t attributed to either creator. The first is “Comes in Kit Form” a collection of art showing...things, or pieces, that could presumably be put together into something else, and illustrations featuring some sort of horrible long legged insect or betentacled monster. Sure they could just be a collection of wires, but I really see them more as things that will come along and deconstruct me in the night. Taking me apart piece by piece until there is either nothing left or you wish there hadn’t been any when you come across my remains the next day.

The other part of the zine is given over to a couple of short comics that remind me of Marc Bell and that guy who did The Blot. The text on one page states that “yellow ferrets were smoking strange cigars”, while the art shows smoke transforming into various figures and shapes, and some liney faces that seem to be in the process of melting, so you can kind of guess that these aren’t exactly the most linear of stories.

The rest of the comics continue along similar (ie. incredibly weird) lines. The first one is supposed to be a daydream, so I suppose it follows dream logic, thought not a dream I hope to ever have. The other comic features a character acquiring eyes through a vending machine, and somehow manages to be far more creepy and disquieting than that description makes it sound.

I would say I’m never going to open this zine again, but I’m going to have to so that I can scan something for this review. The things I do for you!