As part of International Zine Month, we’re going to post one zine review a day from various Broken Pencil issues of days past. Today’s review is from the very first issue of Broken Pencil. It’s a review of Mark Connery’s RUDY which he is still creating to this day. Unfortunately there is no credit on this review, but we’ll assume there were only a couple of people writing BP back then, so it was probably written by one of the editors.
comic/’zine / no known publisher / main creator: Mark Connery / $1 or trade / 22 Widdicombe Hill, Etobicoke, ON, M9R 1B3
RUDY is mostly comic but part ‘zine too. The comic features Rudy, naturally, who often has things trying to maim or kill him. Sometimes, though, he is just feeling unsure of where he is and what is going on. His friends come along to help, like Phil the triangle and Ken the walking fish. When discussing Rudy, it’s helpful to remember that he/she (can change from Rudy to Trudy) is a wise/demented, strange/peaceful, sometimes downright hilarious type of transcendental character. That’s probably all you need to know about Rudy to decide if you’d like to meet it. The ‘zine part is made up of re-worded Family Circus (and other) cartoons some of which are great, and snippets of text like “Turning to Scandinavia, scholars were struck by the number of legends about warriors who went ‘berserk’. You have probably heard this word, which means to act wild and crazy.”