Comics / Digital Comics

Goats: Showcase Showdown

By Leroy Douresseaux
July 14, 2010 - 13:58

Goats: Showcase Showdown cover image is courtesy of barnesandnoble.com.

Goats is a long-running webcomic that began appearing back in 1997, so that makes creator Jonathan Rosenberg a webcomics pioneer.  Del Rey is publishing four and a half years worth of Goats comics, some of which will be revised or entirely new, in trade paperback.  Del Rey has already published Goats: Infinite Typewriters and Goats: The Corndog Imperative, the first two books in The Infinite Pendergast Cycle and recently published the third book, Goats: Showcase Showdown.

Goats revolves around two friends, Jon Rosenberg (the author’s cartoon alter-ego) and his drinking buddy, Phillip Karlsson, who spend their time at the Pub Stub (or Axis Pub), a bar which somehow bridges the multiverse.  In Infinite Typewriters, Phillip, a programmer, ate God after He turned Himself into a pork chop on a dare.  In The Corndog Imperative, Jon and Phillip were perfectly happy to wait for the end of existence, drinking heavily and chatting with, “God’s Bartender,” Alfred, who is in charge of the Pub Stub.

Phillip was kidnapped and is still much sought after in Showcase Showdown.  Now, he’s fighting to obtain a typewriter that monkeys use to shape reality.  Meanwhile, Jon finds himself contractually obligated to work for One Death, the Mayan Lord of Death and boss of a corporate netherworld and consultancy firm.

After the strangeness of the first two collections, Goats: Showcase Showdown seems strangely coherent and understandable (or I’ve finally read enough to be comfortable with the series, it subplots, and characters).  It is also consistently the funniest volume of the three.  While Rosenberg skewers pop culture and media and satirizes Internet and computer cultures, his strength as a writer of comedy is that he isn’t shy about exploiting human frailty and nonsense.

Sometimes, authors are afraid of seeming cynical or are so concerned about making their characters likeable that they ultimately pull back from depicting how desperate people are to get what they want and how far they’re willing to go.  People can be shockingly petty, unbelievably stupidly, and desperately violent in trying to get money, sex, power, and, in general, their way.  Rosenberg has fun with that and even transfers basic human lusts and greed to aliens, broccoli, fish, animals, and primates.  That’s why at least 90 percent of Goats is just plain funny.  Behind the surreal, fantastical façade is a parody of us, and laughing at Goats is better than admitting how right it is.

A

www.goats.com

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12