Comics / Digital Comics

Goats: The Corndog Imperative

By Leroy Douresseaux
January 7, 2010 - 15:20

Goats: The Corndog Imperative cover image

Goats began appearing on the web back in 1997, making its creator, Jonathan Rosenberg, a webcomics pioneer.  Del Rey is in the midst of publishing a planned three-book set that will reprint about four and a half years worth of Goats comics; some of the material included in the books will be either revised or new.  Goats: Infinite Typewriters was the first book of this trilogy, Goats: The Infinite Pendergast Cycle, and this past December saw the release of the second book, Goats: The Corndog Imperative.

Goats revolves around two barflies, Jon and Phillip, who spend their time at the Pub Stub (or Axis Pub), a bar which somehow bridges the multiverse.  In Infinite Typewriters, Phillip ate God after He turned Himself into a pork chop on a dare.  As The Corndog Imperative opens, Jon and Phillip are perfectly happy to wait for the end of existence, drinking themselves silly and chatting with Alfred, who is in charge of the Pub Stub and is also “God’s Bartender.”

Apparently, reality is running on a laptop computer somewhere out there.  This laptop also has a virus that will end all universes in 2012, but not everyone is down with that.  The farming dimension of Topeka Prime kidnaps Phillip, who is a computer programmer, because their rulers (led by an irascible gray-haired matron) believe Phillip is the “Programmer” foretold by the Great Farmer’s Almanac – the programmer who can prevent the end of the universe.

Jon, who isn’t a programmer, is kidnapped by the Middle Pangaeans – humorless, gun-toting mercenaries.  They believe Jon is the “Programmer,” but all Jon knows is a little JavaScript.  Meanwhile, the dual personality, Fish/Fineas and occultist/Satanist chicken, Diablo, continue their hunt for Diablo’s son, a trash-talking, growth-stunted, cunning chick named Oliver (or as he calls himself, Oliver Malcolm X).

Goats: The Corndog Imperative is even stranger than Goats: Infinite Typewriters, the first collection.  Those who found Infinite Typewriters difficult to decipher may find it hard to believe that The Corndog Imperative’s plot is harder to describe, especially if you want to go into detail.  On the other hand, that isn’t important.  For all its nerd humor and inside jokes based on everything computer (software, hardware, programming, etc.), science fiction, fantasy, comic books, media and pop culture, Goats is a pointed satire of the broader American culture.

Underneath its sci-fi rags, Goats hides a rather sharp blade that can punish in so many different ways, and the objects of its desire to dissect and poke fun at are the actions, attitudes, foibles, and folly of Americans.  Goats may be the Bloom County of webcomics.  Bloom County, a 1980s newspaper comic strip, was set in an idyllic rural Midwestern town, but creator Berkeley Breathed’s target was America-at-large.  Jonathan Rosenberg’s strip is published on the web and is set in a sci-fi world, but that doesn’t make Goats less than a newspaper cartoon.  None of our modern silliness can escape Rosenberg’s sharp eye and exacting satirical scalpel.  Also, lovers of comics should not be put off by Goats’ absurdity.  Instead, they should embrace it and enjoy the chaos of Goats: The Corndog Imperative.

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www.goats.com

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12