Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Comic Books >

STRAY TOASTERS. Bill Sienkiewicz and Memories.

18:44 / 29.08.05

Does anyone remember an old graphic collection of comics called Stray Toasters? I remember it really well, the art was done by Bill Siencewitz, one of my favourites. It evokes memories of others such as "Mister X" and of the late Eighties. It was actually a good comic, surreal and to do with a maniac electrical appliance. Like the paranoia of the old Roman Polanski film about Sharon Tate going mad with a seething agarophobia and also wierd shit that happens in the block.
If you remember please type in, also what other memories does it evoke or invoke for you? For me it was the jump from normal hero and anti-hero archetypes of the comics you would read as a kid to reading mature independant and adult and sometimes challenging fiction.

18:56 / 29.08.05

dont need to go too far back to recall this series. i have the latest collected version of the whole thing.

it does make me wish that billy-boy would do something else like this comics wise. its time, sinky. its time.

bill s. did a quick sketch of a toaster for me when he was doing a signing at a small comic shop few years ago. now THAT is something i have fond memories of. because i cant find that sketch anywhere. *grumble*

19:11 / 29.08.05

I remember that for a very long time I envisioned Sienkiewicz to look like Egon, the white-haired, moustachioed protagonist of Stray Toasters.

Toast and jam

It

Smells

Like.

ORANGES

Haus of Mystery

19:16 / 29.08.05

I love Shinkywitz, but is it good beyond the art. Cos I've been real tempted.

19:41 / 29.08.05

I dunno. It looked beautiful, but it never worked for me as a story. it's narrative struck me as a mess.

Does anyone want to speak up for the script?

20:57 / 29.08.05

I can't even remember much of the script - as the Predator said "There's killing to be done."

Demented juxtapositions of life in an American flat with appliances which mete out a slick and bizzarre lust for murder, mayhem and quintessentially mind control.

I rate his art way above Dave McKean, though that's a hard one (fnar, fnar!).

It was like that sod from Czechslovakia who produced a masterpiece based around "Alice In Wonderland" which had animated meat and inanimate objects suddenly come alive and scuttle over the floor, like in "Une Chieun Andalou" the Breton - Dali classic.

I think there was a large kill factor and also think a little relationship was involved and as opposed to la petit mort it was la grand mort.

Brutal artwork and bon appetit the layout was paramount especially the Craft of the Words.

Cue: Paranoid Schizo examples - Oh No, The Microwave Is After Me & Is In Collusion With The Breville For Supremacy Of The Kitchen, And It Hates My Partner So It Will Strike A Deal With Me For Hot Appliance Sex! (Was it like that or have I had a consensual hallucination?)

21:20 / 29.08.05

No, it didn't work for me at the time. I think I reread it a few years ago and was equally puzzled. I may try it again, though. Style over substance is what it screamed to me. I can't believe anyone can say that it's a better work than Cages, though. Cages is confused, but makes no pretense: it's pretty and funny and sad, but it's not trying to be the greatest comic ever; it's an experiment. Stray Toasters was just showing off, as I recall.

Haus of Mystery

21:34 / 29.08.05

I'd always place Shenkeewitzch above McKean however. Found some of the Titan Dredd reprints from the 80's, and his covers are amazing. So few American artists can nail Dredd. And Elektra: Assassin is, for me, one of the defining comic art statements of the 80's. That said I'm not convinced by Stray Toasters from what youse are saying...

(threadrot - remember McKeever's 'Plastic Forks'? What was it with the early 90's and pretentious obscure titles?)

21:47 / 29.08.05

I'd take the flawed masterpiece CAGES over the vulgar excesses of Stray Toasters. But then I read my comics as well as look at the pretty pictures...

What is interesting about Sienkiewicz is the amount of mainstream superhero comics he's done - as well as other even less obvious projects - from New Mutants to the Marvel comics adaption of DUNE (something you should still be able to find in the back issue bins for cheapness...). For my money tho, my favourite Sienkiewicz is his collaboration with Alan Moore in Brought to Light... Pity that so few people have actually seen it though...

01:38 / 30.08.05

You can find Brought to Light on any decent P2P network.

02:53 / 30.08.05

I scored a Claremont/Sinky New Mutants TPB for 2 bucks at a comic shop sale recently, and have been enjoying using it as raw material for collages. Very pretty art, shit writing (hey, it's claremont - what'd I expect?).

m.

05:31 / 30.08.05

"I'd always place Shenkeewitzch above McKean however."

Once upon a time, I would have agreed with this statement, but McKean continues to grow and experiment as an artist, while Sinciewicz has apparently stagnated to the point where he needs to do stints inking Marvel Comics (love the MU, btw) to make ends meet (or has little ambition in comics other than to ink Black Widow).

It's a sad state of affairs, but Sinciewicz seems to have done little of note since he quit BIG NUMBERS. McKean's art books, his kids books, his upcoming movie, all show a vibrant, active artist who loves to experiment and move forward. For whatever reasons - and I have heard speculations - poor old Bill is stuck in rerun mode.

08:45 / 30.08.05

senikeniwickz is certainly a talented fellow, stray toasters is a great piece of work, i have particularly fond memories of the back covers.......I liked it enough to grab the hardcover special edition (someone had told me it would not come out collected in any other form, and i could not find my single issues, found now, if any one wants to make an offer on the collection)

http://www.upcominghorrormovies.com/movies/straytoasters.php

(old news, probably in hollywood hell by now....)

some of the single pices in baron stories various project anthologies were a bit.....deeper...

but you cant compare him to mckean, mckean is sublime. mckean is more twisted, if a little less showy, mckean knows the power of space, and rythym, and clarity, and if necesssary, density, mckean can tell a tale, wrap you up in it, some of his cover works tend to be a bit "by the numbers" but only some.

Haus of Mystery

09:55 / 30.08.05

But then I read my comics as well as look at the pretty pictures...

Needlessy bitchy comment Sleaze. I was talking about him as an artist, not a writer. Which is precisely why I've not picked up 'Stray Toasters' for fear of it's unreadability. Since you know nothing of my reading tastes,try not to be so patronising.

19:12 / 30.08.05

Sorry McGyver - that came out a lot more harshly than I intended.

But yes, I was looking/thinking of Sienkiewicz as a comic artist, as opposed to an artist. Or rathere the reverse, if you follow me. Sienkiewicz creates beautiful pictures, But I didn't get the impression that he was narrating with his artwork. As opposed to McKean, when left to his own devices...

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

19:21 / 30.08.05

Bear in mind that I haven't read it in a few years, but I thought story-wise it was pretty fucking excellent as well. The demon holidaying on earth was a nice touch... "and get me a lawyer, dad. The divorce kind... they're real slimy". One of those comics that made little sense when read month by month, but when read all in one go was quite a neat little tale.

Haus of Mystery

08:44 / 31.08.05

No problem Sleaze - I was pretty cranky myself.

yawn - thing's buddy

13:12 / 19.09.05

even as a 16 yonk old I knew that the writing on this book was shiddy cent.

great art tho, photocopies of which got me through various art classes at uni circa 90, 91.

few small images that contained wank material as well as far as i can remember (smallish tits being grabbled from behind - side shot, big nipples, very fuckin painterly)

miss wonderstarr

15:30 / 19.09.05

few small images that contained wank material as well as far as i can remember (smallish tits being grabbled from behind - side shot, big nipples, very fuckin painterly)

I don't want to sound like a prissy prude, but I am a little surprised by and uncomfortable with this comment, which reads to me like either genuine crude sexism, or a put-on pose of crude sexism.

I agree though that even when I read Stray Toasters at 17, I felt it was style over substance. The art is often gorgeous, always inventive -- a beautiful hybrid of scratching, sketching, montage, typeface, loving portraits and torn-up photos -- but I really didn't feel the story came together at all. Compared with Elektra: Assassin, which itself threatens to fall apart in fragments by the end, as if the artist started leading the writer and could barely be controlled, I found it very unsatisfying in terms of plot and narrative.

miss wonderstarr

16:38 / 19.09.05

By the way, someone has reminded me that I once had an argument with Yawn. I honestly can't remember what it was about. (It wasn't the "Roth novel vs issue #2 of Klarion" thread?) The above isn't meant as a personal dig; the language and attitude just surprised me a little because of its unapologetic objectification of women.

But as can be seen, I agreed with Yawn about the comic itself.

Haus of Mystery

19:29 / 19.09.05

It was a reference to teenage wanking. I know when I was a hormonal teenage nightmare I jumped for joy whenever there was a flash of nudity in comics, as I was too young and embarassed to get myself a bongo mag. I think you're overreacting a bit.

miss wonderstarr

19:44 / 19.09.05

I'm willing to accept that. I'm sure I wanked over comic books myself -- I certainly drew my own material, the artwork becoming increasingly sketchier as I neared my carnal goal, and as such I'm in the good company of Wallace Sage from Flex Mentallo.

What brought me up short was more yawn's language, which you might expect in a porn mag lettercol but which I was surprised to see on a forum that (I thought) tries to avoid needless sexism.

But I don't really want a row about it. I'm fine about explaining my response; I'm not seeking to argue.

miss wonderstarr

21:11 / 19.09.05

Here's a not-very-good reproduction of three panels from the comic. I think there are nine panels on the page, so you can see the image of a naked woman being violated by a giant screw and apparently enjoying it is just one of many, in different styles, representing different ways of seeing and thinking by different characters in various frames of mind.

I feel you could think about this in a few ways:

that to focus on this single small image (and there are other similar images in the series, but not all that many) as an aid to masturbation is to pick it out of the near-chaos of competing styles and visual references that surround it

that the picture of a woman enjoying being screwed by a giant screw is maybe disturbing rather than sexy (a matter of opinion I expect... I don't know whether the artist's intention should matter)

that, on the other hand, Sienkiewicz is drawing on soft porn, playboy-style images among others in his book, and that the original type of photography he's quoting from here is meant to be erotic.

I remember at the time of publication, this particular panel was lifted out for reproduction and criticism in the fanzine FA, kind of the Barbelith of the pre-internet age, and that the editor, Martin Skidmore, opined that it was a disturbingly sexist panel. But that's just a point of interest.

Haus of Mystery

22:26 / 19.09.05

Sorry, but what's your point?

00:02 / 21.09.05

All bullshitifying aside (sexist/objectification/blah blah blah), I think it's enormously telling that I TOTALLY flashed on the afore-mentioned tits-grabbing panel as it was described, as if someone had reached into my very id and poked something vital -- much the same way I kinda blinked and probably blushed when I saw (in the '80s comic design thread) the repro of a Stray Toasters panel that featured the same character in the buff. Whether I ever actually spanked my monkey over an issue of Stray Toasters I honestly couldn't tell you, but it definitely left an engram, man. I'm not really too sure where I'm going with this, but all of a sudden the idea of sexual imprinting via mature readers comics that fall into woefully immature (and invariably sticky) hands is way more interesting to me than whether it's sexist to say that tits turn you on when, in fact, tits turn you on (although pretentious painted-art comics tits probably don't work for anyone as well as they do for teenaged boys).

Going deeper, there's a whole other question of whether erotic images can be used in the service of an "adult" story (by which I mean to say, stories intended for the very adults who, to judge from myself and the afore-mentioned poster, were clearly NOT the actual audience of Stray Toasters) without it coming across as anything more than a puerile joy in the sight of lush boobies...and, further, why must such a joy be puerile? Do not the mature amongst also enjoy the sight of (even cartoon!) nude and healthy representatives of the gender which is most inclined to make us stiff/squishy? It's a real can of worms you guys have opened here, let me tell ya.

On the script front, I remember virtually nothing about the story of this comic, if that says anything.

miss wonderstarr

06:35 / 21.09.05

Sorry, but what's your point?

My point was to suggest a few ways of considering that panel.

yawn - thing's buddy

09:50 / 03.10.05

thanks doc!

16:38 / 17.08.08

Have it but haven't read it. Whatever happened to Seinkiewicz? He was my favorite but a gander at Black Widow crushed my expectations.

01:05 / 18.08.08

Not a comment on Stray Toasters itself, but it's funny to see people in this thread all writing Sienkiewicz's name phonetically (and getting the phonetics wrong). He actually does it himself at this point - his recent promotional materials all say "Sin-KEVITCH" in place of his actual name, presumably because no one can ever pronounce it properly.

14:35 / 18.08.08

I lost my copy (copies) of Stray Toasters about 20 years ago, and I still can't find it.

That and Unknown Pleasures. The same person probably borrowed both.

And everyone knows that Sin-KEVITCH is just Dave McKean's pen name for when he does non-collage work. Or vice versa.