Super Aids

By Hyena

So a while ago I got an email from someone asking if I'd like a copy of their zine. This wasn't that unusual, what was unusual was that the persona asked me to "write a few bad comments" about their zine, because they "love bad reviews".

That was kind of weird, but after getting their zine I can understand why they expect me to write bad things about this. So let's get that out of the way first: I did not enjoy this zine.

Why? Because, as the cover says, it's full of offensive material like sexism, xenophobia, necrophilia, and lots of other stuff. It's satirical of course, and just because there are characters who are cannibals doesn't mean it's promoting that sort of thing.

I actually just read a pretty long piece about a Japanese animated movie (and the comic it was based on)  that featured (amongst other stuff) a dwarf psychic's violent sexual relationship with a twelve year old school girl. That story is apparently a reaction to the idea that tradition and the past were better and more moral than our current society, and I can definitely see that being true. At the same time I'm already aware of the evil that humans can produce, and I don't really see any need to be reminded of that sort of thing (such as the reproduction of news stories in Super Aids of people doing horrible things). To reuse a Hayao Miyazaki quote from that aforementioned article “If the world were truly filled with such hate and destruction, if that were how history was made, then everyone would surely have been dead by the Edo period.”.

But just because all of that applies to a movie, doesn't mean it applies to this comic. However, while this comic is produced from a very different society and culture, you can see parallels in it's parody/rejection of traditions like family and religion. The author uses characters from The Simpsons acting extremely out of character, and the repeatedly desecrates religion just to offend people who believe in that stuff.

The author even goes so far as to repeatedly insult any of the readers who actually enjoy this comic by questioning their intelligence. So I'm sure there is an audience for this sort of thing (including some who will find it hilarious), it's just not me. The one paragraph Kraken rum review in the back was pretty good though.