Parodies Books

Maybe I was unclear as to what I was buying (into?) here, but this book was a real disappointment.

Truly little, with fairly juvenile humour, as far I'm concerned this book is only suitable for toilet-side reading material or, if really stuck, a stocking filler. But giving it a miss altogether would not leave a huge gap in your life.

This is one of the funniest things I ever read. Witty in a British sort of way. (It's not offensive either, unless you're stuffy - I've organised a few things in my apt around feng shui. & a few according to Wrong Shui - in fact the architect who designed my building was probably a practitioner.)

This has to be the funniest lampoon I have ever read. I had to pick myself up off the floor several times while my friend read it to me in her soothing indian accent. They should give these away while you are waiting in the DMV...or the post office!

I bought this book, based on the two reviews that had been posted here, to give to a freind that practices Feng Shui. Thank God I read it first. Feng Shui IS funny and would make a great subject for a truly funny book. The book, Wrong Shui, is not that book. In other words, the concept of a funny book about Feng Shui is great. Through lack of finesse this book simply offends.

You'll laugh, you'll cry because you're laughing so hard. (Unfortunately, most of the books on the market -- being unintentionally funny -- will find themselves lampooned here.) The perfect complement to all those other goofy Feng Shui books people seem so willing to buy.

I had the original and lost it. It is a work of pure genius!
I love it.It looks so much like my yearbook. And the characters are fabulous.

It is almost as good as the old one that I lost. I think I have grown up a bit (I hope) since then so some of the humor has lost a little of its edge. The printing quality on the new one was not as good as the original. On some pages it almost appeared that they had photocopied the original to make the new one. I still think maybe the best part is the list of names of all the underclassmen. To come up with those dozens of puns the writers must have stayed up late smoking lots of good stuff.

I remember my roommate having the National Lampoon yearbook parody back when I was in college in the 70's, and laughing so hard I couldn't stand up. I always had it in the back of my mind over the years to back-order a copy, if one still existed, but never could find it. Ecstatic to find a re-issue. The humor in magazines like this can often seem dated years later, but not in this case. Completely side-splitting from cover to cover. Especially ground-breaking considering when it was originally published.

When this first came out, it was an amazing success.

First great conceit: printing the whole thing upside down. The "front cover" is the only page that faces the way it does; all the rest of the piece relates the back cover as the front, which is a beautifully done leatherette high school yearbook cover.

And then there's the content. It's all here - the clubs, the class clowns, the juvenile delinquents, the jocks, the cheerleaders. No one has ever topped the orginiality and satirical edge that the editors lovingly contributed to the piece.

I do agree that this reproduction is not as good as the original. I actually have an original and yes, it looks a lot better than this. But look past the print quality and enjoy the content. It's no less brilliant now than it was when it first came out in 1974.

I don't know why they changed the cover page by dropping in the yellow banner across the cheerleaders bare butt. The original was full on. Not that thats the big deal here, but that IS the first thing I noticed when this was released. The original was superior in quality. This repo takes a bit of eye squinting in places to see the details. And if you're anyone who was and is a Lampoon reader, you know thats what its all about. Its not a comic book. Crap, it took a month just to read (and often reread) and get through just the monthly magazines. The book releases were like making your way through a full length novel. Thats just they way you attacked a Lampoon. Almost like it was homework, but fun homework. If anymore of these reproductions come out, I hope the publishers will opt out of using a cheap copy machine and enter the digital age to re-create the final product. Lampoons were labors of love by its creators and writers. The 21st century versions should be given the same treatment.

I didn't like this one quite as much as Molvania, but it's still good humor. It may just be that some of the quirks discussed in this book are not as familiar to me as the post-Communist land of Molvania...

The top five exports from this Southeast Asian nation are MSG, beaded car seat covers, spring roll wrappers, crab sticks and dengue fever. The region has two seasons - a wet one and a rainy one. The native populace considers it unlucky for pregnant women to go into labor in certain months, so they often attempt to delay delivery for up to four weeks. Welcome to Phaic Tân (pronounced "fake tan"), a small country that may remind you of all the worst stereotypes associated with Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Indonesia, all rolled into one.

For those like me who enjoyed the first Jetlag travel guide, "Molvanîa", published two years ago, you will get more of the same sardonic humor in the pages of this faux-guidebook. By this time, the novelty is a bit worn, and the droll, patronizing tone that the editors captured so well in the first book seems to be not as present here. The smug attitude is what makes the first "Lonely Planet" send-up so comically rich, even more than the ridiculous locations and customs described. The absurd, straight-faced observations in this book appear to be of a more generic funny variety, for example, at the luxurious Keow Bhan Hotel in Pattaponga, the editors write, "On Saturday and Sunday nights a local Dixieland jazz band plays so if you enjoy good music, consider booking a table mid-week." In fact, much of the humorous jabs here could be directed at any third world country.

The photos, which look like they are authentically taken in that part of the world, are also not as amusing as one would hope even with the joke-oriented captions. Still, there are some gems such as the section on Phaic Tânese cinema where movie posters for the country's leading movie star, kick boxing champion Trong Tchen, are presented - titles like "Instep of Fear", "Death Wish for Two", "I Greet You with Lead" and "Hamlet". Or the putting range shown in the illustration of the Royal Palace compound. Or the comic painting of the ruling royal couple. It may be that tourism in Southeast Asia is not as ripe for satire as Eastern Europe or simply that the editors have lost some of their original creative energy. Regardless, it's amusing enough for those inclined toward a mock-travel guide that mines Lonely Planet, Rough Guide and any number of travel publishers for laughs.

Fans of the previous fake country guide 'Molvania' (ISBN 1585676195) will enjoy this new 'phaic' guide to a sun-drenched nation nestling somewhere in Asia. This knockout new edition is produced by the same Australian folk who discovered Molvania. I loved the first book mainly because it looked so convincing but wait till you see 'Phaic Tan', this is satire of the first order.

For a start it is printed on glossy paper and in color throughout with excellent photo selection, maps and graphics, the design is first class, too. The first chapter, Getting Started, in eighty-eight pages gives you a complete run-down on Phaic Tan including a page schedule of what you'll see on PT/TV, one of the country's three TV stations, a spread of food photos 'A Taste of Phaic Tan', has a reference to snake wine which is often served with its own tourniquet. The countries four main regions get a chapter each and there is an index in the back.

Like real guide books I don't think it's necessary to read this one cover to cover but rather to dip into the pages now and again, after all not much is going to happen in Phaic Tan over the next few years so this guide book will always be up to date.

Oh yes, do try and avoid the south of Pattaponga, the city map on page 154 clearly shows a gas refinery next to the Syon Yup fireworks factory and remember there is only one hospital, world-class apparently!

"For too long now Phaic Tan has been closed off from the outside world, a country visited each year by just a handful of hardy travelers, aid agency workers and hostage negotiators. But now, thanks to this fully up-dated Jetlag guide, everything you need to know about planning a trip to Phaic Tan, birthplace of the trouser press and irritable bowel syndrome, is here."

This is the introduction to a country formed by mixing equal parts of Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, China, India, Indonesia and Cambodia, stirring for a few minutes and served over ice.

I was excited to see and read the sequel to Molvania. Molvania I read overnight; I could not put down the book. It was almost impossible to take a break from the poignant descriptions of Eastern Europe. Having finished the book, I chuckled for days just by thinking about it. And for Christmas, I gave all my friends a copy. As all sequels, this book falls short from the first version. If Molvania is "Police Academy I" then Phaic Tan is "Police Academy II". (OK, I just carbon-dated myself.) I read it over a few days, this was a book I could easily put down. Certainly, the jokes are there, the non sequiturs are abound, but few are as entertaining, poignant, bizarre, and funny as in Molvania. While Molvania came through as a much more homogeneous Eastern European backwater with all its pollution, rudeness and post-socialist agony, Phaic Tan is more a mosaic of the beaches of Vietnam, trekking in Thailand, discovering remote islands in Indonesia, getting lost in China, shopping in India, and being ripped off a few times anywhere in the world. This does not mean that the book is not funny or entertaining or that it is not worth reading; simply Phaic Tan is not as hilarious as Molvania.

Phaic Tan continues making fun of travel books of the Lonely Planet ilk, the obsessive middle-aged backpackers, and the all-too-snobbish middle school teachers. It is a good read; no doubt, you will enjoy it.

Having spent a lot of time travelling in Eastern Europe, South East Asia, and several newly liberalized, ex-communist countries, I greatly enjoyed "Molvania" and was looking forward to something similar with Phaic Tan. Molvania was hilarous because, though greatly exaggerated, everything (almost everything) had a grain of truth. Unfortunately the same can not be said of Phaic Tan. Whereas Molvania was witty and clever, Phaic Tan is, with few exceptions, just silly. Most of the entries are absurdities that could be made up about any place in the world. Most people who have been to the parts of the world referred to -- Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos -- will have true stories to report that are far more funny than the entries in this book.

Hilarious!
I originally bought this for myself and liked it so much that I bought 2 more as Christmas gifts.

Don't waste your bucks on this book. Though it had potential, it turned out to be no more than a collection of product warning labels with occasional thin commentary.

This is a cute book, but I found myself wanting more after I had read it. It "felt" incomplete, but how can you ever create a book with ALL the stupid labels? This is one book that can never be finished!!

This book is just a good laugh. A good book for a quick read.

I first read this at my friend's house a few months ago and thought it was pretty funny. It's a great little book for your coffee table. Now I find myself reading warning labels on products all the time, to see if I can find any funny ones like the labels mentioned in this book!

This book made me laugh when I wanted to cry and kept my perspective on the crazy world of relationships. Anna and Elliot are a riot and if you're looking for a book that offers great insights about the sexes in a sharp, humorous fashion--GET THIS BOOK! I highly recommend it! (It makes a fabulous affordable gift too!)

I almost didn't buy this book because of the title. I'm not too fond of parodies. I actually own the other "serious" version of this book & found it much harder to read than this humorous but no less true version. I'd love to see these SuC in person :)

This book helped me keep my kewl during the end of a nasty relationship, helped me laugh when I was tired of crying, and helped me see my part in a humorous, easy-to-swallow format. My relationship is still ending, but now I feel much better about it, having regianed my ability to laugh at humanity thanks to this book. I highly recommend it as a gift to newlyweds, singles & long-marrieds alike--in essence, to anyone who has ever been in a relationship with the opposite sex!

Just didn't find it all that funny.
At the very least, the first chapter was balanced in terms of equal parts cloyingly sacchrine cuteness and actual humor.
The rest of the book attempts to be funny by heavy-handed dependence on the broadest and most outdated of gender generalizations. I felt lucky(and toward the end, amazed) if I came across one line per remaining chapter capable of even making me smile and there were definitely not any laugh out loud moments within the entire book. But the multiple positive reviews printed on the covers did make me laugh at least, since they were so far off the mark.
I have a friend who thrives on defining his world strictly by generalizations and so I will be passing it on to him for the final litmus test. He's also going thru a divorce and lives in the suburbs, so perhaps he is closer to the actual target audience.
More than anything, I found the book to be kind of sad because it reminded me that this is really how alot of people think. And just to provide more insight on me, I'm a 35 year old female who recently got out of a relationship with sticky communication issues.
I found the majority of the book to be obnoxious, overdone and obvious as opposed to subtle and clever. Who knows? Perhaps I'm just not mainstream enough to "get" this kind of humor.

This book is hysterical. The humorous advice sometimes is better than the real thing. I have given it as a gift to many people and they really enjoyed it. The pictures are funny and add to the book. A must to lightening up any relationship. I also enjoy Anna Collins work in The Estrogen Files.Net.

I enjoyed its satire and wit. Not since Madam Wong's Guide To Men and Other Difficulites, have I gotten such a laugh.

This book turns motivational science on its head and provides the antidote to the common-place 'ra-ra' of self-help books.

It is good for the occasional laugh...and little else.

This book is great in concept, and generally follows through in execution. It is the perfect antidote to the pretentious motivational publications that are nearly inescapable and which exist only to pander to the notion of self esteem through praise (versus actual accomplishment.)

Chris Gudgeon skewers the motivational industry like few others could. The book uses relentless satire and sarcasm to mock virtually every aspect of the feel-good industry, with examples such as "The Win/Whine Paradigm Matrix," "The Power of Negative Thinking," Men are from Mars, Dogs are from Pluto," and, of course, "Chicken Coops for the Soul."

Some of the jokes begin to wear a bit thin by the end, but overall this is a very well done piece of satire that is a quick, easy, and fun read.

If you are inbetween books and would like to read something fresh, witty, and quick, this book is it! I read it during sporadic 5 minute breaks over a few days and people were staring at me because I was laughing so hard! Really, it will make you laugh out loud. Buy the book. Feel good. Pass it on to a friend.

This book takes a great big laughable stab at the self help industry by reducing it to a profit generating circus of personality evaluation. My only gripe was that the book did succeed in demotivating me-- the attempt for a laugh was so blatent at times, it made me feel like I couldn't understand a joke unless it was bold and italicised.

A fast, funny book that finally bursts the bubble of all those crazy self-help books. I like the pith bits of wisdome like "You always get a second chance to make a bad impression" and "A journey of a single step starts with a thousand excuses." This book was a big bestseller in Canada, and it's easy to see why. There's a great comic mind at work here.

i hate you and your famil

Grishaver takes the mundane and makes it hysterical. He sees life through a pubescent boy's eyes and shares his views with the audience. There are 365 sayings--when's the calendar coming out? Never has sitting on the toilet been so amusing.

This is really quite funny and at times painful and funny at the same time. I wanted to buy some more copies but the publisher is out of stock. If you can get ahold of this book I highly recommend it.

I have found while sitting in the Grishaver living room that this is a great way to waste and more importantly take up time. I do recommend this book to people that ask me a good bathroom book and to any one who enjoys a chuckle.

Anyone who is the parent of or teacher of junior high students will get a laugh out of this book. Grishaver characterizes this age group perfectly. I have read the book and want one of my own, but have not been able to find one. This is a great gift for junior high teachers.

Steinberg worked in advertising at some point in his career. I'm in advertising myself, so I can relate. His book seems like something written by someone in advertising-pretty strong concept, and writing that makes it obvious the author thinks he's very funny. In this book, he lists, from A-Z, annoying things, each with a little essay on it. Like listening to anyone complain, it depends on the topic. For instance, I enjoyed the chapter "A is for Advetising," mostly because it's true. Likewise, I agreed with "D is for Disney" and "M is for McDonald's" and "O is for Oprah." I hate those things too, and it's fun to complain about them. But maybe 18 of the letters of the alphabet were either things I didn't care about one way or the other, or just not funny. But it's a good-looking book, a nice size for a bookshelf.

Someone gave me this book as a birthday present, and I let it collect dust for several years because I hadn't heard of the author and the cover of the book had a straight-to-the-bargain-bins look about it. Well, shame on me, because this book is fabulous. The author is an extremely clever wordsmith, and his descriptions and analyses of various "modern annoyances" are laugh-out-loud funny, largely because they are so dead on. This book reminds me of SPY magazine (which I *loved*) and makes me want to read everything else the author has written (even the book about college pranks--a topic that holds absolutely no interest for me).

Neil Steinberg is annoyed. Not irritated, bothered, vexed or harassed. He's angry, in the same fashion as Mark Twain, who wrote the following: "I don't ever seem to be in a good enough humor with anything to satirize it; no, I want to stand up before it & curse it, & foam at the mouth -- or take a club and pound it to rags & pulp."

Fortunately for his book, "The Alphabet of Modern Annoyances," Steinberg doesn't take a club to politicians, the workplace, victims, Disney and Elvis. What he does do is line them up, in alphabetic order, no less, and bash at each of them for a couple of pages -- short, measured doses of hilarity mixed with fact -- before moving on to the next target. In the court of law, Steinberg would be convicted of drive-by satirizing.

And yet, Steinberg indulges in the non-humorist's attribute of fairness. Almost all his essays have that quality of giving his target an even break. Although always disliking Disney in general ("Disneyland seems like hell to me, the Hieronymus Bosch "Garden of Earthly Delights" version, with weird creatures and tortured denizens scrabbling over each other trying to find a way out."), he's not satisfied with leaving it there. He forces himself to articulate his passionate hatred of all things Disneyfied: its blandness, its desire to take our basic cultural heritage and drain them of the things that make them interesting in the first place to make them most appealing to the widest possible audience.

Even that, to Steinberg, is not enough. "We live in a world of bland smarm. Disney is no worse than -- I don't know, "Hello Kitty," or "Polly Pocket," or "My Little Pony," or any of those warm fuzzies designed to pick the pockets of the young."

He even looks to the left-wing Disney critics, and finds them more abhorrent than the object of their criticism.

Finally, Steinberg zeroes in on the undercurrent of totalitarianism that underlies the Disney "experience." The theme parks have taken the idea behind mass entertainment -- the letting loose of strictures, the temporary rebellion against society's constraints, and perverted it into something that's more constrained, more limited than real-life. "The implication is that our society has decayed so much that people will fly to Florida and pay $33 to walk down a main street that isn't cluttered with crack vials and dozing junkies."

(Maybe, but another thought came to mind as I was writing this. Perhaps we live in a society where the mockery of cultural values has become an everyday occurrence, not something performed the week before Lent. We have corporate honchos who crow about the number of loyal employees they've axed, pop stars acting as poster children of sluttery, professional athletes caught with prostitutes and drugs and awarded with multi-million dollar contracts, and painters, sculptures, "performance artists" and architects to whom craftsmanship and beauty are as taboo to them as revealing how much you make in a year is to anyone else. Is it any wonder that people willingly shell out the bucks to experience a society that not only is rigidly controlled, but dedicated solely to entertaining the people who pay its bills?)

Steinberg's alphabet is a catalog of cultural misdeeds that's compulsive to read and to read out loud. By revealing Oprah as the smarm-queen she is, UFO buffs for the ill-educated louts they are, and invasive, insensitive TV journalists for the vultures they have become, Neil Steinberg has performed a public service that's as funny and it is true. After the fall of the American civilization, one hopes that his book will be found among the rubble to show that not everyone fell for the cultural bottom-line.

In the interests of full disclosure, let me say: A) I know the author; B) He did not ask me to do this. Mostly, I'm motivated by the completely idiotic Kirkus review -- of course the author doesn't offer serious solutions. It ceases to be funny and turns into a policy paper if you offer solutions. Steinberg's take on the post office in "B is for bureaucracy" is dead on, as is "O is for Oprah." What the Kirkus review claims is the one bright spot, the terza rima parody, is the singular unfunny chapter in this book. And as for going over familiar ground, no one that I've seen has gotten to the heart of Oprah as has Steingberg. This isn't literature, and thank God. It's a hilarious, often mean-spirited look at what annoys the hell out of the author, and it doesn't pretend to be anything else.

Some of what Steinberg writes about has already been done to death by the media ("Oprah" and "McDonalds") plus he is just plain wrong in at least one instance (while it is true that most adults who abuse their children were themselves abused, it is not true that all or even most of these adults inevitably go on to abuse their own children). I also disliked his double-standard with regard to fat: apparently it's okay as long as you are male and don't weigh more than Steinberg himself does. However, the book is certainly worth reading, the sections on "Advertising," "Bureaucracy," "Idiot," "Litter," "Quackery," "Traffic," "UFO's," "Yugoslavia," and "Zealots" are insightful, humorous, interesting and well-written. My favorite chapter, "Computers," is laugh-out-loud-funny in places, in particular the part on Socratic dialogue in AOL Lobby 35. It's a good book for an evening or for reading aloud during a car trip.

How can you go wrong with drinks like "A Girl Named Margarita", "Intern-al Investigation", and "Lamented Liaison"?!! This is the perfect novelty item to take to a party and show off. The recipes are really good too. No doubt that the best way to start off a night on the town is with a "Skirt Chaser", courtesy of the coolest president ever! I love the cover of this book.

This book is great! As a commie-lib, I'll have to warn fellow left-of-the-aislers that this is not a Clinton-favorable book, but the notes at the end of each recipe are downright hilarious. I highly suggest "Gordon's Government Shutdown" to all interested parties. This book tends to be slanted toward Clinton's personal indiscretions, but regardless, it's a book any fun-loving American will appreciate.

If you are looking for a book about bartending, look elsewhere. This is not it. If you are one of the millions of conservatives who can't think for themselves and thus consider themselves "dittoheads" ("Think for us, Rush! Think for us!") then this book will be right up your alley.

This is one of the funniest books to come out this year, if not the funniest. I'd like to be a fly on the wall when (and if) Bill sees it. This book should've probably come out a couple of years sooner, but with the pardon investigations looming, maybe it will turn out to be well-timed after all. But certainly I agree that a Bill Clinton Bartender's Guide is the surefire life of any party or a day's conversation at the company water cooler. I guess there's not much danger in America forgetting Bill Clinton anytime soon! Very original, and well written humor.

In no uncertain terms, this is the best book around for those who wish to catalog Bill Clinton and his numerous escapades. This is THE best Clinton humor book I've ever come across. Those with the curiosity should check out "Midnight Marijuana" - a very funny recipe.

It's no secret that Garth Ennis (Preacher, Punisher, Hitman, The Boys) has never been the most subtle when it comes to sick and twisted humor, and Dicks has it in spades. Dicks tells the incredibly vulgar adventures of wanna-be private detectives Ivor and Dougie: two Northern Ireland natives who hang with a motley crew and get themselves into all kinds of mayhem. Naturally, there is much vulgarity and release of bodily fluids, as any reader of Ennis would come to expect. Avatar Comics truly lets Ennis and artist John McCrea go wild with no restraints whatsoever. At the end of every issue, we are treated to single to double page spreads involving certain moments in history, and a charming girl named "Trio". Ennis knows how to shock and amuse at the same time, but there are plenty of times when it just feels like too much being thrown at the reader. This is helped by the black and white artwork of his longtime collaborator John McCrea, who manages to do his work free of consequence or restraint as well. As you can tell by now, Dicks is not for all tastes to be sure, and even some fans of Ennis' more sophisticated work may find this TPB to be too much as well. Despite that though, Dicks is a wonderful celebration of the uncensored comic form, from one of the most notably darkly humerous writers to ever grace the comic book medium.

... of two Northern Irish reprobates, Dougie and Ivor, who decide to become (hopeless) private detectives, and along with their friends Willy, Spence and Wanker, get into a hell of a lot more trouble than they bargained for, thanks to their acquaintance Big Billy, a mysterious man called Bell, and Ivor's ex-uncle (I say ex-uncle because he appears as a ghost... but you can find the details out for yourself).

I've never seen a comic so depraved. Then again, I've never seen a comic so funny! Excellent stuff, but definitely NOT for the easily offended.

garth ennis rocks!no other author,except neil gaimen and john irving,makes me feel all giddy inside when i read their books.ennis is hilarious and very creative when he comes up with jokes. read this wacked out tale of two best friends and explore the zaniness of ennis' world.

This is one of the wildest books I have ever read...EVER. I don't think I've ever read so many occurances of the "f" word, or laughed so hard, or out load, doing it. To say the content in this book is for mature readers is both true and false. I think it would be better to say: "for immature mature readers."
Dicks is the story of two lads from Belfast, Dougie and Ivor. After accidently killing his Uncle Shuggie, Ivor inherits his house, along with his problems. Mainly an order for moonshine to a mobster. Finding his uncle's recipe, he fills the order, and the mobster decides to continue buisness with Ivor. Needless, to say Shuggie's ghost, who shows up from time to time just to yell and curse, is not pleased.
Dougie moves in with Ivor after leaving his wife. Aside from the moonshine, Ivor gets it in his noggin that he wants to start a private detective buisness. They shall be called "The Dicks."
Dougie doesn't think this is such great idea, bringing up the point they have no experience, and they don't know how to find a case. Well, this is easily solved by way of a man at the front door with a knife in his back. He instructs our heros of secret meeting and dies.
At the meeting our heros stumple across a drug deal with THEM ending up with it. Ivor comes up with the idea to sell the drugs to the mobster, instead of the moonshine, not knowing they were the mobster's to begin with.
It should be noted that a good ninty percent of this book is written so that the characters speek in an Irish dialect, but it just adds to the charm. You quickly get accustomed to it. If there's something you don't understand, look in the back, a glossery is provided, along with probably the sickest pictures in the book.
This is definatly not a book for anyone who gets offended easily, or even not so easily. You have to just keep reminding yourself: "IT'S JUST A JOKE!" If it's true that everyone has a limit, "Dicks" aims to find it: either with the language, the art, "The History of Wanking," or maybe even with "Trio:The F-ing Whore" who can't help but take on three guys at once.
Yest, it is over the top. Yes, it is dis-tasteful. Yes, it is crude and vulgar...BUT THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT! It tries to find every button it can, and like that annoying little kid at the elevator, it just keeps pressing that button. I've never been a fan of the term "pushing the envelope," but this, my friends completely sherds and spits on it.
On the back of the book it says that this guarentees it's creaters Garth Ennis and John McCrea (The team that brought us Hitman from DC Comics) a place in hell, and if you read it you'll be sent there too. Well...I've read it, I loved it, I hope theres more some day. If that condems me to burn in a lake of fire, then I hope I get to meet those two.

PLEASE NOTE: This TPB contains quite a bit of naughty language, psyche-scarring sexual situations that leave nothing to the reader's imagination, and cartoonish, over-the-top ultraviolence that makes the films of Quentin Tarantino look downright tame. This booger is DEFINITELY for adult readers only!

On with the review...

Some time back the owner of the local comic shop I frequent threw this into my saver box as a recommended book. He figured that, since I was generally into the four-color scribings of Garth Ennis, I'd likely also dig this collection of bizarre situations and over-the-top dark humor from the mad Irishman and his 'Hitman' cohort, artist John McCrea. Unfortunately, I found the misadventures of the two titular pub-hoppers goin' 'round Dublin (or was it in Belfast, Northern Ireland? I forget...), gettin' into all sorts'a weird jams and raising a general ruckus a little TOO strange and over-the-top for my tastes. Maybe I'm not Irish enough to appreciate it, who knows. And it didn't help that McCrea decided to make the artwork ludicrously cartoonish, which-- despite the fact it gave this weird comic the proper look and atmosphere to a degree-- didn't look nearly as professional nor as carefully drawn as the renderings he did for 'Hitman'.

On the upside, Ennis & McCrea threw in several mini-adventures that I got some good laughs out of. One set of three-page shenanigans involves "Trio the (eff)in' Whore", whose very presence seems to cause men to lose all control of their libidos. I never thought I'd find the term "bacon flaps" funny until I read the Trio shorts.

Hee hee... "bacon flaps"...

See what I mean?

Then there's the "worst idea ever for a comic book superhero", The Aborter™. With aspirator in hand he flies around the big city on his never-ending mission to terminate the unwanted unborn, as well as put those pesky pro-lifers in their place. The Aborter's adventures usually end with the sudden destruction of the offices of the comic book's publisher. Which just goes to show that The Aborter might not be ready for his very own solo title just yet...

Bottom line: If you're looking for a truly funny funnybook written by Mr. Ennis that has all the ludicrously strange predicaments and hilariously horrific blood-and-guts that you've come to expect from the man... well, I suggest you check out 'Adventures in The Rifle Brigade' (www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1401203531/qid=1093554258/sr=1-44/ref=sr_1_44/103-1978159-0347843?v=glance&s=books) instead of this mass of confusion. Although `Rifle Brigade' isn't quite as sick or twisted as `D!cks' is, it is easier to follow, and funnier.

'Late