Contemporary Authors

• Monsters Secret Acres (Jackson Heights, NY), 2009
• Sick Secret Acres (Brooklyn, NY), 2016

1. Sick LCCN 2013956599 Type of material Book Personal name Dahl, Ken, author, artist. Main title Sick / Gabby Schulz. Published/Produced Brooklyn, NY : Secret Acres, [2016] Description 1 volume (unpaged) : color illustrations ; 31 cm ISBN 9780996273916 (hardcover) CALL NUMBER PN6727.D24 S53 2016 CABIN BRANCH Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE 2. Monsters LCCN 2009921273 Type of material Book Personal name Dahl, Ken. Main title Monsters / Ken Dahl. Published/Created [Jackson Heights, NY : Secret Acres, c2009] Description 200 p. : chiefly ill. ; 18 cm. ISBN 9780979960949 (pbk.) 0979960940 (pbk.) CALL NUMBER PN6727.D24 M66 2009 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms CALL NUMBER Comic Book 10017 Vault Set 1 Small Press Expo Collection. Prior special permission required to access this collection. Request by Comic Book number and issue/number date. Request in Newspaper & Current Periodical Reading Room (Madison LM133) Older receipts 2009 Signed ed. 2009 Signed ed.

• Weather - 2012 Secret Acres, Brooklyn, NY
• A Process of Drastically Reducing One's Expectations - 2017 Phase Eight Publishing,
• Welcome to the Dahl House: Alienation, Incarceration, and Inebriation in the new American Rome - 2008 Microcosm Publishing, Bloomington, IN

• Dog City Press - http://www.dogcitypress.com/post/48742507627/pay-attention-to-this-gabby-schulz

  QUOTE:
  gifted story teller whose cartooning work is jarringly incisive
  dirty secrets, gossip, voyeurism; getting a peek underneath the veneer of someone’s public persona to the really awful and disarming and pure, lovely, human mess that convention and sanity can’t expose. All the things that civilization is designed to snuff out, diminish or regulate, basically – the urges, vulnerabilities, fears, and dreams that hinder the smooth gear work of hierarchy, convenience, and tepid industrial business-as-usual
  It explores a painfully honest truth of the American experience in 128 pages.

  Pay Attention To This: Gabby Schulz

  By Juan Fernandezimage

  “I guess I’m still really attracted to that autobiographical stuff – dirty secrets, gossip, voyeurism; getting a peek underneath the veneer of someone’s public persona to the really awful and disarming and pure, lovely, human mess that convention and sanity can’t expose. All the things that civilization is designed to snuff out, diminish or regulate, basically – the urges, vulnerabilities, fears, and dreams that hinder the smooth gear work of hierarchy, convenience, and tepid industrial business-as-usual.” - Schulz in a 2007 interview with Steve Bissette

  Gabby Schulz/(pen name: Ken Dahl) is a gifted story teller whose cartooning work is jarringly incisive. It’s a real shame that not that many people know his work.

  Here’s your chance to learn more.
  Born in Honolulu, Schulz has spent most of his adult life in transit around the continental United States.

  Schulz’s early work consisted of self-published mini-comics that landed him work with independent newspapers, like Honolulu Weekly. While working for these publications, he honed a nimble political cartooning vocabulary.

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  However, as his politics moved further and further left of liberal, he found it harder to draw cartoons these publications.

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  In his own words

  “ It’s easy to draw a comic that convinces your average fence-sitter that George W. Bush is a monster. It’s a bit harder to convince them, in the same amount of space, that the entire two-party system of politics in the US is fatally flawed and has long been rotted out from the inside; that lobbyists and globalization have made our quaint notions of democracy irrelevant (if indeed they ever were relevant); that most of what you read in the paper is just a series of red herrings designed to throw people off the scent of any issue that actually affects their lives (or the lives of others – and God forbid Americans should ever care about those.)” - Schulz in a 2007 interview with Steve Bissette

  As he moved away from doing weekly political strips, he began create more emotionally charged, personal comics with a heightened political intensity.

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  He released much of this work in his self-published books, Blind Fart (2004), Taken for A Ride (2004) and NO (2005).

  As he amassed a larger body of work, Microcosm Publishing; an independent publisher and distributor based in Portland; approached Schulz to publish a collection of his most poignant work.

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  Welcome to the Dahl House : Alienation, Incarceration, and Inebriation in the new American Rome is the result of the partnership with Microcosm. It collects the comics Schulz produced between 1997-2007.

  The book includes stories of the humiliation and terror of airport security, the demeaning experience of being arrested, the despair ofhaving to sell off his possessions at a yard sale to pay his landlord, and more generally the horror of lost youth. It explores a painfully honest truth of the American experience in 128 pages.

  Rooted in the mode of 1990’s alt-weekly comics, Schulz bundles irony, bitterness and frustration into a ferocious ball of wit. His cartooning is notable because of his light touch and snappy dialogue. His work is far more cutting than that of his politically minded; zine-making; cartooning peers.

  Instead of throwing gut punches to shock and awe, Schulz creates genuinely funny and sympathetic narratives. Through labor thought and effor Schulz transforms stories of anger and frustration into moving accounts of life in the 21st century.

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  In 2007 Schulz completed a fellowship at the Center for Cartoon Studies. That same year, the first issue of Schulz’s story, Monsters, won the Ignatz award for outstanding Minicomic.

  In 2009 Secret Acres published published the collected edition Monsters. .

  A semi-autobiographical story about Schulz contracting Herpes, Monsters details on the physical symptoms and the traumatic emotional damage of the disease.

  Indicative of the emotional narrative of Monsters, the anthropomorphized Herpes virus Schulz draws; which grows into a large blob; mutters“I’m just another lifeform trying to survive in this weird, fucked-up world.”

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  Schulz most recent comic in print is Weather, a beautiful, hard hitting existentialist poop joke.

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  In a story that takes place at 40,000 feet above the earth, Schulz depicts the horrors of decaying health in the United States.

  For those interested in reading some of Schulz’s work, much of it is available for online.

  A particular highlight of this work is Gordon Smalls Endures the Wasteland. It serves as a great primer for the virtuosity of Schulz’ cartooning and his capacity to digest the existential tragedy of post-industrial American society.

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  Schulz recently put online an autobiographical story, Sick. Similar to Weather, Sick is about the horrors of getting sick without health care in the United States.

  Sick is a well spun yarn that serves as the record of Schulz’s own trauma. Unfortunately he has taken down Sick from his website because of the enormous amount of traffic that it generated and the ensuing problems that arose from his web hosting server.

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  Here’s hoping it makes it to print soon.

  I highly recommend you hop on over to his site and pick up some copies Monsters or buy a page of original art!

• Gabby Schulz Home Page - http://www.gabbysplayhouse.com/about/

  About
  Gabby Schulz and Ken Dahl are the same person. He was born in Honolulu, Hawai’i, and currently lives somewhere in Ohio Iowa Chicago.

  He is the author of the books Weather, Monsters, and Welcome to The Dahl House, as well as the forthcoming Sick, the first half of which originally appeared as a webcomic on this very site, & briefly shut the whole thing down when traffic exceeded our allotted bandwidth by about 1000%.

  Please direct all correspondence to: fantods@gmail.com.

• American Sexual Health Organization - http://www.thehelpernewsletter.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=237%3Aoffering-a-comic-take-on-herpes-an-interview-with-ken-dahl-author-of-monsters&catid=173%3Ain-the-media&Itemid=236&limitstart=2

  QUOTE:
  Through both vivid illustrations and an engaging narrative, Dahl tells a story that is both entertaining and educational. He offers straightforward facts about HSV while presenting an open and honest portrayal of the emotional issues surrounding herpes.
  Offering a “Comic” take On Herpes
  Print PDF
  Article Index
  Offering a “Comic” take On Herpes
  Gaining perspective
  Responses and reactions
  All Pages
  Page 1 of 3
  An Interview with Ken Dahl, author of Monsters

  In his semi-autobiographic comic novel Monsters, author Ken Dahl relates his personal tale of coping with a herpes diagnosis and his subsequent struggles to adjust to his status and navigate the world of dating and romantic relationships. Through both vivid illustrations and an engaging narrative, Dahl tells a story that is both entertaining and educational. He offers straightforward facts about HSV while presenting an open and honest portrayal of the emotional issues surrounding herpes.

  Since its release, Monsters has garnered not only critical acclaim, but several awards as well. In 2009, Monsters by Ken Dahlit was rated the 5th best comic of the year according to all compiled reviews and ratings on the Best Comics of 2009 Meta-List. In 2010, Monsters won an Ignatz Award, a prize in recognition of outstanding achievement in comics and cartooning, for “Outstanding Story” and was nominated for an Eisner Award for Best Reality-Based Work.

  Monsters recently made the rounds in the offices of ASHA and sparked some interesting discussions. We contacted Dahl to ask him more about his personal experiences and the creation of Monsters and offer his perspective on managing herpes. We’re pleased to be able to share his comments with our readers and encourage you to check out Monsters as well.

  It seems that both you and your partner struggled with a lot of questions and misconceptions after your initial diagnosis. Can you tell us a bit more about your diagnosis-did you receive any information and counseling with your test results? It seems as if you were both left with little support from that end.
  Yeah, the clinicians we both saw didn't really spend that much time explaining the situation to us -- their overall attitude seemed to be flippant bordering on apathy. We got the feeling that they either didn't think herpes was a legitimate health problem, or were just so desensitized by the number of cases they see that they were just tired of talking about it. Or maybe they were just trying to make us feel better by playing it down, I dunno -- but I don't remember there being a lot of information thrown at us at the time we learned about it; it was mostly just: "Yep, you got herpes. Seeya."

  So we were left to learn about it on our own, while trying to deal with the expected emotional minefield waiting for a couple discovering at least one of them has herpes. So there was a lot of shame, distrust, anger, suspicion, defensiveness, self-pity and confusion that got in the way of us dealing with the disease. And we didn't have anyone else to talk about it to, either-- it's a really awkward, humiliating subject to bring up with friends or family.

  Why do you think you struggled so long to come to terms with your diagnosis?
  Just sheer embarrassment, really. It's hard to get past the initial flood of shame about it, that period where you just want to ignore it and wish it away, where you're convinced that no one's ever going to want to touch you again. And then, when you realize you HAVE to learn more about it, it all seems like bad news, and there's so much conflicting information to sift through. Trying to educate yourself about herpes from scratch is actually really hard. There's no guide to tell you which websites or books or people to believe -- or at least there didn't seem to be back in 2003.

  And in my experience, even some clinicians don't give very accurate or useful information. In fact, I remember trying to schedule an appointment with a new doctor in Mesa, Arizona about my cold sores -- when I told the receptionist that I had herpes, she actually told me that the doctor didn't accept patients with herpes!

  So, drawing Monsters was as much to help me sort out the information myself as it was to help other normal, lay-people going through the same thing.

  We appreciate the fact that you not only tell a compelling and entertaining story, but offer a good dose of herpes education in Monsters as well (and are also glad you consulted and cited some excellent sources, Terri Warren and Peter Leone among them). Did you do much research on HSV before writing the book?
  Yeah, tons. Probably too much. If you're not a doctor or a scientist, and all you have is the internet, you end up reading all sorts of junk -- it's hard to tell which websites are giving the best, most current, most accurate information about herpes. And if you're reading scientific papers, there's a lot of specialized, idiomatic language to decipher. And frequently, an answer to one of your questions will bring up even more questions. So I ended up spending a few weekends in some college science libraries as well.

  And that was just to educate myself about my own disease. Drawing the book was way harder, because I was so afraid of giving OTHER people bad information! Actually, Terri Warren's excellent book The Good News About the Bad News came out just a few weeks before my book was due to my publishers, and it had so much great new information that I had to go back and change a lot of the facts in my own book, which were now out of date! I was probably the only person in the world who was disappointed to find out that herpes rates in the US had dropped in the past five years, just because it made parts of my book less shocking...

  Dr. Peter Leone was a HUGE help for me too, since he was kind enough to talk to me on the phone, which gave me a much more real-life, human perspective on what the scientific community's current theories about herpes were; he was also able to answer a lot of my more vague, puzzling, un-Googleable questions. He was also a walking encyclopedia of herpes knowledge, and actually gave me enough information for two or three more books on herpes. I really hope that my book makes all his and Terri Warren's help seem worth the effort.

  How much did learning more about herpes help you get some perspective on your HSV infection?
  Oh, tons. Once you learn that most people have herpes, or that 90% of them don't even know they have it, or that "cold sores" and genital herpes are basically the same thing, and so on, it all really helps to remind you that you're not a pariah or an outcast, that you're just as normal and human as anyone. I think it's probably especially important for HSV+ people to educate themselves about their disease, because that's the only way that we can get over the social stigma of it, which seems so out of proportion with the severity of the actual disease.

  It also helps to have all this information for when someone starts talking about herpes pejoratively -- because then, instead of letting them humiliate and alienate you, you can tell them how they're insulting most of the people in the room, and that they probably have it, too.

  It seems as though the turning point for you in Monsters comes not from knowing the information yourself, but from finding a new partner who is knowledgeable and understanding. Would you agree?
  The ending of Monsters is actually a condensation of a much longer, messier process -- but yeah, I think it's crucial to have the support of other people available, to understand you and talk you through things, and who can reassure you that you aren't untouchable or alone. I think the single biggest fear of anyone who has just found out they have herpes is that now no one will ever touch them or love them again, because they have a gross and contagious sexual disease. (This is most of why the book's called Monsters.) And you can read all the pamphlets and websites you want, but none of them are really going to convince you of the biggest, most important question that you have: Is my sex life over now? Because even after you're able to accept and deal with the reality of your own disease, there's no guarantee that anyone else will be able to.

  And of course, everyone AGONIZES over having "The Conversation" for the first time with someone they might have sex with. And with good reason—that conversation doesn't always go so well. I've had a few experiences with people who changed their mind about making out with me after finding out about my herpes -- which is totally fair. Thinking about sex and herpes brings up so many uncomfortable ethical questions: do we have a right to have sex anymore? Should we quarantine ourselves from the rest of the population, to help stop the spread of the disease? Is it possible to just give up having sex for the rest of your life, because of a non-lethal virus? Is it the skin rash that we're afraid of, or is it the social stigma? I guess we can only really deal with these questions on a case-by-case basis, as they arise with a particular partner, because anyone else who wants to be physically close to us is going to be put at risk -- and frankly, that's a little bit more than some people want to have to deal with.

  Did you ever reach out to any support groups or forums (online of offline)?
  For a while, when I was first learning about herpes, I was using the "hsv2" community on Livejournal -- it was a little less messy than most of the official discussion boards, and was pretty active. Most of the questions people posted were one of two types: either "Do I have herpes?" or "I have herpes; will anyone ever love me again?" And they generally got thoughtful, rational advice.

  As for other discussion boards, I never really used them because they always seemed so sprawling and anonymous to me; it was never clear who was reading my questions, or when they would answer them, or whether I could trust their opinions when they did. With Livejournal you could at least look at a user's profile and posts to get a general sense of how sane/smart they were. And I think the feeling that you were talking with actual real people was really comforting, in this case.

  One subject we have addressed many times in The Helper is the subject of stigma. How much do you think the stigma surrounding herpes affected you and your reaction to your diagnosis?
  It affected me A LOT, at first. It was unbearably, crushingly humiliating to learn I was now a person with a secret that will make other people not want to touch me -- and that I'd subjected someone I loved to the same fate. There was definitely more than one time in my life where I'd seriously contemplated suicide over it -- which now seems almost comically out of proportion. The stigma is without a doubt the only reason I ever drew a book like Monsters in the first place -- not only to get over my own irrational fear and disgust with myself, but also to try to help other people skip that whole awful step.

  In a way I feel lucky to have found out I have HSV, because it really forced me to take a look at what I think about sex -- and from there, what my culture thinks about sex. Having herpes outbreaks sucks, but what sucks more is being forced to initiate open, honest conversations about sex, in a culture that's constantly threatening to shame, alienate and punish people for having sex. So that was really hard to get used to. But now, I'm grateful for learning how. And if HSV hadn't forced me to be open and honest about my sexuality, then I might of been forced to learn in a much harsher way—for example, by contracting HIV.

  In Monsters we see a range of reactions-positive and negative-from partners and potential partners when you bring up the subject of herpes. Does this reflect your experience?
  Yeah. The book is essentially all reenactments of things that have happened to me -- although the final scene with the Hannah character is actually a truncation of a much longer, more complex series of events.

  Monsters has received both a number of positive reviews as well as awards. Have you had any negative feedback or reactions from readers?
  The responses have been almost entirely vehemently positive, which is not at all what I'd expected. The only reactions that can qualify as negative are just incidental, real-life stuff that happens with people who know I've drawn this book. Some folks will make herpes jokes about me in public, assuming (understandably) that since I drew a 200-page graphic novel about herpes, I must be fine with everyone knowing that I have the virus. But it turns out that it still hurts when people make herpes jokes at my expense, even if they are just trying to be funny. I think that's because the jokes are always along the lines of "ha ha you have herpes," and not "ha ha WE have herpes." Some people seem very eager to avoid thinking about herpes as a problem that involves them. Which, considering the statistics, seems a little crazy to me.

  Why did you decide to include the epilogue your discovery that your canker sores were not caused by HSV? While this is not an uncommon misconception (that HSV and canker sores are related ... not to mention the misconception that "cold sores" are not herpes), did this fact change your perspective on your diagnosis--or had you already come to the conclusion at that point that HSV is just a manageable skin condition?
  I think mostly I just didn't want to end the book with Ken & Hannah's "happy ending," because that would've almost been like pretending the herpes had magically disappeared. It was really important to me to leave the reader with a sense that, even if you do find someone to love you again, having HSV is still a responsibility you carry with you for the rest of your life, and ultimately, no one else will ever allow you to avoid that fact. I also wanted to make it extra clear how all Ken's worrying through the whole book basically amounted to nothing, and that rather than putting himself through all the hell of self-diagnosis and self prescription, a couple trips to a decent clinician or two would have saved him a lot of misery.

  The actual process of me coming to terms with HSV as a manageable skin condition is ongoing -- I still have days when it depresses me, and when I'm reminded that it's a problem. But it turns out that drawing a book about herpes, and selling it to thousands of people, is a great way to get over the stigma -- now that I'm known as the guy who drew a whole book about herpes, it's surprisingly easy to talk about having it. In fact, now my problem is I talk about it too much!

  You can learn more about Ken Dahl, Monsters, and his other works at the author's website, Gabby's Playhouse. Monsters is available from Amazon.com

• White Space - http://lospaziobianco.com/262-tragicomic-journey-world-herpes-interview-ken-dahl/

  QUOTE:
  It’s a tragicomic story about a guy and the awareness of his disease, in particular of his responsibilities in having sex and love with other people.
  . I started drawing Monsters for purely selfish reasons — to work through the issues of shame & disgust i was having dealing with herpes. I had only intended to make a few minicomics out of it, but then the first minicomic won an award, and then after the next minicomic a small publisher (Secret Acres) wanted to put out the whole story. So it got a little more serious after that, i guess.

  A tragicomic journey into the world of herpes: interview with Ken Dahl

  Costanza Baldini / November 7, 2013
  Gabby Shulz was born, and grew up, in Honolulu, Hawaii. He became famous for Monsters, a comic book published in 2009, under the pseudonym of Ken Dahl. Monsters is about herpes; herpes, yes you’ve read correctly. It’s a tragicomic story about a guy and the awareness of his disease, in particular of his responsibilities in having sex and love with other people.
  A love story, a seek for happiness inside yourself, but also an amazing and shocking trip in a too much real nightmare. If you wonder if you got herpes, probably the answer is, yes!
  Dahel is the author of Welcome to the Dahl house as well, published by Microcosm Press. If you want to follow him, that’s his personal blog: www.gabbysplayhouse.com.

  I think Monsters is the only comic in the world that speaks of herpes, how do you get the idea of talking about this topic? It ‘a autobiographical story?
  Yeah, it’s autobiographical, sadly. I figured that was the only way for a story like this to have an impact. Because otherwise, there’s probably much more important things to be reading about than how one white guy sort of, kind of might have herpes. I started drawing Monsters for purely selfish reasons — to work through the issues of shame & disgust i was having dealing with herpes. I had only intended to make a few minicomics out of it, but then the first minicomic won an award, and then after the next minicomic a small publisher (Secret Acres) wanted to put out the whole story. So it got a little more serious after that, i guess.

  Your comic has a very ironic tone, but there are also very strong images, what did you get and what was the audience reaction?
  The reaction has been universally positive, surprisingly. There hasn’t been anyone yet who has had much negative to say about it. There was one guy in a Goodreads review of my book who was upset at how irresponsible “Ken” was sexually in the book, but then, that was the point — to feel kind of grossed out by some parts of the book (and then, hopefully, realize how easy it is to do these sorts of things yourself).

  Your comic talks about herpes but it is also a history of research in themselves and at the same time a love story. There are many levels of reading. I want to know what was the message you want to send.
  I guess the message was
  1. You should know more about STDs, and
  2. Herpes isn’t anything to really get upset or ashamed about, because everyone’s got it anyway.
  Of course if i was just preaching to people no one would read the book, so I tried to make it as entertaining as possible, too. Actually i don’t know how much of any of that was intentional, i just tried to portray events in a way that seemed as accurate & as evocative as possible, & that’s just the way it came out.

  Reading your comic I thought two things. First of all somebody could do a comic talking about the same as AIDS, or perhaps it would be important to do.
  Yeah that would have made a much less whiny book! Someone did draw a graphic novel about HIV/AIDS actually, called Blue Pills. It’s sort of similar to Monsters except that the love interest is HIV+ and the narrator isn’t. And there’s a lot less panic and self-hatred.

  Second, I think that the “herpes” could also symbolize Ken himself with his character, his defects. In the end we are all carriers of some “mental illness” which includes our history and how we interact with others, we just have to be able to find a person who is not afraid and that we understand. What do you think?
  Yeah, that definitely is a best-case scenario. The ending of my book is actually the least-accurate part about it though; that one conversation Ken & Hannah have at the end of the book was actually just a condensed version of multiple, much longer conversations i’ve had with multiple people. And i still have those conversations today, really.

  I loved the style in which you designed the story so funny and full of original ideas, what are your favorite authors? Who inspires you?
  People keep telling me they see a Robert Crumb influence in my comics, and i used to love him (although he totally skeeves me out today). I also love Dave Cooper, and Julie Doucet, and most of what you’d expect — Dan Clowes, Chris Ware, Art Spiegelman….. blah blah blah

  In recent years, comics have multiplied educational or historical theme, I think that comics as a medium is particularly suited to teach even though this need not be its primary function. What do you think?
  Yeah i agree! It’s a perfect way to make the medicine go down easier. Actually just today i read a Noah Van Sciver comic that a local paper asked him to do about going to a museum (blogs.westword.com/showandtell/2012/01/noah_van_sciver_visits_the_den.php) and then this Lisa Hanawalt movie review (thehairpin.com/2012/01/war-horse-an-illustrated-review) and i realized how perfect it is to get cartoonists to write/draw about ANYTHING from their perspective, because if they are any good at all they can’t help pulling out all these great details that would be impossible to include with just text or photography. It’s amazing to me that more publications don’t pay cartoonists to do this.

  What are you working on now, what are your future plans? Do you know if there is any Italian publisher interested in publishing Monsters or any of your work?
  I know Secret Acres has been pretty good so far with finding ways to translate Monsters — i’ve already lettered a French and Spanish version, so i imagine an Italian (and German?) Monsters will happen someday. I hope so, i could use the money!
  As for future books — i’ve started a few different books but they’re all in limbo right now. For the past few months i’ve been updating my website with chunks of a story about getting really sick, and that’ll be done soon — then i think SA wants to publish it in book form. I wish i drew faster.

  I’m curious: why did you change your name? You were afraid of being mistaken for Charles Schultz? Here in the newsroom we were wondering if by chance you were a relative of a brilliant English writer Roal Dahl, but given your background I think not.
  Ken Dahl is actually a fake name i’d been using to draw comics since like 1997 — i’m sick of it now, but it came in handy as a pseudonym for drawing a book about an STD, for obvious reasons… I guess i’ve always wanted to keep my comics separate from my real life, otherwise i feel too much pressure to make people happy or at least not insult them, and that’s a terrible frame of mind for a cartoonist to be in.
  Being mistaken for Charles Schulz would be great though! Or Roald Dahl. But sadly i am related to neither.

  Interview made in January 2012

• Daily Cross Hatch - http://thedailycrosshatch.com/2009/10/13/interview-ken-dahl-pt-1-of-3/

  QUOTE:
  is grotesque, horrifying, sickening, expertly drawn, and funny as hell
  There’s clearly much more to Monsters than good old fashioned gross out humor. The book succeeds on that most fundamental level for confessional comics: it’s unmistakably the work of an artist working through his demons the way he best knows how: through his art.

  Brian Heater
  author interview
  Ken Dahl has herpes, and he wants you to know that you probably do too—in fact, he wrote a book about it. Released this month on Secret Acres, just in time for SPX, Monsters is grotesque, horrifying, sickening, expertly drawn, and funny as hell. Of course none of this will come as any surprise to those who picked up Dahl’s (née Gabby Schulz) Microcosm collection, Welcome to the Dahl House.

  What is surprising, however, is the book’s success on an emotional—and educational—level. There’s clearly much more to Monsters than good old fashioned gross out humor. The book succeeds on that most fundamental level for confessional comics: it’s unmistakably the work of an artist working through his demons the way he best knows how: through his art.

  Speaking with Dahl at SPX, it’s clear that, while ultimately effective, such a candid approach to self-therapy was perhaps not the easiest method. “You don’t have a choice but to admit it,” Dahl explains, “because you can’t wuss out and deny it, or be embarrassed by it, because I’m making temporary herpes tattoos.”

  But however such expression might ultimately affect Dahl’s sex life, we’re all better off for it, now having access to what is arguably the most entertaining STD pamphlet committed to paper.

  So you brought the tattoos to the show.

  Yeah. They came out all right.

  What’s the story behind them?

  Secret Acres does a little promotional thing with their books. We had a few sort of okay idea, like, oh god, I don’t know—but this is the first idea that seemed perfect. But it’s also destined to be the least popular tattoo in the history of temporary tattoos.

  What is it, specifically?

  It’s supposed to be a herpes sore.

  What’s the relevance of that?

  Oh, because the book, Monsters, is about this. It’s a story about a character who finds out that he has an STD and then spends 200 pages basically complaining about it, and then, at the end, finding out that he might not actually have it. It’s an odyssey—it’s an educational comic, as it was described by somebody, which is really ironic, because it was partially autobiographical, and it went from a state of complete ignorance to complete misinformation to complete misery, and eventual knowledge and acceptance.

  How is it educational?

  It had to be educational at some point, because it’s a 208 page book about this character basically obsessing over his cold sores. It’s simultaneously the least important subject ever and also one that infects and affects so many people. Also, there’s this huge stigma about it. It puts 70-80-percent of adults in this weird space where they can’t talk about it, and they have to feel really bad about it. But it’s also such a non-issue. I couldn’t explain how awful this was without actually putting down the facts about herpes, as we know them. It’s surprising.

  The shear volume.

  Yeah. Most people have it, and most of the people who have it don’t know they have it. Most people who have it don’t actually get symptoms, and most of the symptoms that people get aren’t actually herpes, so nobody really knows. Doctors don’t really know sometimes. And also, it’s incurable, and there’s all sorts of weird ways you can get it. Something like 40-percent of all college wrestlers have a form of herpes just because they’re always rubbing up against each other. It just seems like it’s really not all that big of a deal.

  The first half of the book is me, basically—well, the character—finding out that his partner has it, in a really awful way. And that sort of catapults him into the misery of “why me” and feeling like he’s to blame for everything. I guess it was just a comedy of errors more than an educational comic about herpes.

  In terms of stigma, you’re obviously putting yourself out there, simply by writing this book.

  Yeah, a lot of people are like, “man, that’s really brave of you. I wouldn’t have done that.” And it’s really not at all. It was just stupidity. It was just like, “I’m gonna draw another little comic about something.” I’ve always enjoyed drawing personal comics, so this is just the perfect opportunity to get…ugly…

  There’s a certain amount of distance when writing something that’s semi-autobiographical. Do you feel like people are still afraid to put themselves out there even in terms of something like that?

  Yeah, yeah, because it’s really embarrassing [laughs]. it’s really one of the stupidest things you can do, to publicize the things what we all want to keep secret. And some of the people that are in the comic are really angry—okay, well, one person. And I can’t really blame them. I didn’t know how else to tell the story in a way that was juicy and good and accurate and didn’t involve some of my friends and partners in some way.

  You sound a bit regretful and having done this.

  Oh yeah, well all of that was the lead-in to me saying: but also it’s the best thing I’ve ever done for myself, because it’s a great way to get over your fear of something, just to throw it all out and just bare it all, and not worry about the consequences for as long as it takes to finish the book. And then you don’t have a choice but to admit it, because you can’t wuss out and deny it, or be embarrassed by it, because I’m making temporary herpes tattoos. I’ve got nothing to lose now, and it’s really liberating. Now I kind of want to do it for everything else in life, because no one can make fun of me. What can they say that I haven’t already said?

  [Continued in Part Two.]

  –Brian Heater

  Take it from Ken Dahl: not everyone wants to be in your book about herpes. There’s a certain level of caution one must practice when entering the world of confessional comics—that goes double when your book is about as touchy a subject as, say, your battle with herpes.
  In this second part of our interview with the Monsters author, we discuss such considerations, and find out that Dahl would, in fact, write a book about AIDS—as long as it was, you know, funny enough.
  [Part One]
  Do you think the book would have worked with something really serious? Something like the clap? Something really debilitating?
  Like syphilis?
  Yeah. Something that’s basically going to eat away at your brain.
  Well, I think there’s enough gallows humor in the book that I think it could work. Totally. There’s nothing that can’t be made fun of, if you do it in the right way—or at least the things about it that actually are funny. There are things in the book are are just a bummer, and I’m not going to make fun of people who have it. There’s a line that I just won’t cross. I don’t want to make other people feel bad who have it. I would totally do a comic book about AIDS, too, because it’s just another one of those things that people don’t talk about enough. And if you can deal with it with humor, that’s great.
  People talk about it, but it’s always really overbearing. You don’t necessarily want to read that. There seems to be two approaches, the really dry side—usually a book about cancer. Or you can be Johnny Ryan, which isn’t especially educational.
  No, right. But it doesn’t have to be educational, necessarily, but it’s going to be educational, when you spend enough time on it. Unless you want to look like a complete idiot and just give people the wrong information, at some point you have to lay down the actual truth of what’s going on with your subject. Johnny Ryan obviously isn’t doing any of that. He’s just making fun of everyone, and that seems to work for him, I guess.
  Well, it’s funny.
  Yeah. But that wouldn’t have worked with my comic. That just would have been the most awful thing, ever. People would have lynched me. But that’s the weird thing about this comic, it’s kind of like a secret society. I feel like every time I get a good review or somebody comes up and seems unusually happy to read the book, it’s like, well, they probably have herpes. The odds are definitely good. Why else would they be so into this book? Which is awesome. There’s people who feel happy that this book is being done. I’m glad about that—I certainly don’t want to make fun of it, because I was relieved when I got over it. It’s almost embarrassing to talk about how embarrassing it was. I just never thought about it before. I thought it was just some gross thing that just sluts got, and people shouldn’t be allowed to have sex after they got it. That’s fucking ridiculous, of course. Most people who think that have it already.
  It’s not entirely autobiographical, of course, but at some point you’ve got to admit that there’s some of you in there.
  Yeah, yeah.
  Without going into specifics, what’s sort of things did you feel obligated to change around?
  Well, I learned that lesson the hard way, after drawing the minis. It was read by somebody who was in it. This person was really, really angry, and I guess justifiable. And I guess I didn’t realize that anybody was gonna read it. and then it won an Ignatz Award.
  Oops.
  Yeah! And then it got picked up by Secret Acres, and I guess I realized that this was for real, and I really had to consider people’s anonymity. And I don’t know, it’s just such a compulsive desire to just be real with the whole thing and give everyone’s real names. I love reading comics that are completely confessional, that feel like all of this is happening to the person who is drawing it, and none of this is fictional. They’re actually vomiting onto the page all of these things that happened. So I had to fight that urge. I think that most of the book did happen, but I got a little more creative with splicing together different things that did happen in ways that didn’t happen.
  Since you were, in effect, getting feedback in real-time—putting out a mini, getting feedback, and then putting out another—did it become less autobiographical as you went along?
  It did [laughs]. Because I was terrified at people being angry at me. And I learned to ask permission. By the end of the book, I ended up e-mailing people when I wanted them to be in book.
  So people were okay with that?
  Yeah. There was really only one other person who was a huge part of the book that I thought might be offended by exposed in that way. Because it’s about sex and nobody really wants to look at themselves having sex.
  And your style isn’t always the most flattering.
  Yeah, well, expect that person that I did write, at the end of the book, I tried—I drew her naked, but in the most flattering way I could. And I tried not to objectify her, also, even though there’s a scene that I was fantasizing about her. But she’s a really cool person, and I think she understood how this is important to me. And we’re still friends, so it wasn’t really an ex thing.
  [Concluded in Part Three]
  –Brian Heater
  n the third and final part of our interview with Ken Dahl, we talk lepers, the egotism of autobiographical comics, a why Ernest Hemingway wrote about police batons instead of penises.
  [Part One] [Part Two]
  You’ve never really done any comics out of spite?
  Only to myself. Yeah, I don’t want to make anyone feel bad. It’s really pathetic, because even that one person that got angry at me, even before I drew the comic, I thought that she would be—not flattered, but at least impressed with the amount of thought I gave to her character, because I really did make her look a lot better that she did in real life, at least as far as things went down and how she responded to all the stuff. And boy was I wrong. But yeah, it was not intentional. I just sort of fucked up.
  Having written this book that, in a sense, gets a little less autobiographical as it goes along, do you feel that it become less true as it becomes less literally true?
  Yeah, I though about that a lot, because I never really had to get all literary before. It’s so much easier to be autobiographical, because the script is all there, you just have to transcribe it. But I also realized that it would take like 800 pages to explain everything I did in the book, now. You look at Hemingway—The Sun Also Rises—it’s totally auto-bio.
  But it’s incredibly sparse. He obviously left stuff out.
  Yeah, right. He has to put symbolism.
  And edit.
  Yeah. It’s so utilitarian to use symbolism. At the end of the book, he’s sitting in the car and there’s a policeman that raises a baton. That’s supposed to symbolize his impotence or something. He’s not actually writing about his flaccid cock—and a lot of that was probably there just to get through the censors. It’s about not freaking people out. But luckily I don’t have that problem. But I think the problem is that you have to be good at writing comics if you don’t want to write auto-bio, but you still want to write about what happened. That’s why a lot of people, including me, don’t do it.
  You have to be a writer. I guess I tried to do that, towards the end. I tried to be a little more sly with the way I reveal the truth. I would have much rather been totally on the table with everything that happened. But when you’ve got 20 people that actually exist that were involved with this book—I also realize that most people who write stuff about all their friends often lose all of their friends, because they have to make a choice between telling the truth and having people like them. Obviously, if it wasn’t me, I would say, “you always have a responsibility to tell the truth, and it’s always going to make a better story.” But when it’s me, it’s different.
  But you can tell the truth without telling the literal truth.
  Yeah. There’s definitely a gray area where it’s hard to tell at what point your quality is dropping off and the juiciness factor is lacking.
  But you don’t want to be sensationalistic. You don’t want to do that just to do it.
  Yeah. Especially with a subject like STDs. You don’t want to get into a space where you’re mocking it or just exploiting it.
  Are you going to take a break before you do something else that’s autobiographical?
  Yeah, I kind of want to see what the response to this is, if people actually lynch me.
  Which would make a great comic.
  [Laughs] Yeah, “The Time I Got Lynched,” by Ken Dahl. But yeah, I’m worried that I might fall into that trap of autobiographical cartoonists, where they realize that people like their stuff, and all of the sudden they turn into the hugest douchebag ever, where it’s like, ‘I’m really important now.’ And then they get into real fine art stories. I can totally see that happen, because your head gets real big, and you know that everyone is staring at you, just waiting for you to draw that next gross thing.
  And when your work starts becoming about the people who come up to you, talking about your work, that’s where you begin to fall into the trap.
  Yeah, I know, that’s totally it. And it’s also your worst nightmare—I’ll just slip this in and run. But it’s never like that, because your name is on it, and you have a publisher now, and you’re getting paid for it, so you have to face the music. So, yeah, I can definitely see the desire to go into fiction at that point.
  I actually really want to do this book about a leper colony. It would be perfect, because it would sort of be about diseases, which I love drawing—I love just drawing gross stuff. But that’s historical fiction, and I’m not sure if I’m ready to make the leap into real comics.
  So you’re not actively working on anything right now?
  I’m sort of working on that, because somebody told me you have to put together a proposal, so I’m learning about all of that fancy real comics stuff.
  So you’re looking beyond Microcosm and Secret Acres for the next book?
  Yeah. Anyone who would pay me anything at all, really, to draw comics. That’s how I was able to finish Monsters. They floated me a few bucks to just hole up for 8, 12, 16 hours a day and just hammer it out. Otherwise I don’t think I would have finished it.
  Do you feel that, in terms of general excitement, this is a big step beyond Welcome to the Dahl House?
  Oh yeah, definitely! There’s obviously some filler in that book, because a lot of it was like 10 years ago. I don’t feel ashamed of this book at all, though. There aren’t as many errors to be embarrassed by.
  This is like new embarrassing territory.
  Yeah, I haven’t even learned to be embarrassed by it yet. But I’ll learn. I’m sure I will.
  –Brian Heater

• Bleeding Cool - https://www.bleedingcool.com/2012/09/25/a-dog-named-indie-gabby-schulz/

  A Dog Named Indie – Gabby Schulz
  Posted by Rich Johnston September 25, 2012 Comment
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  Louie Falcetti writes;
  Hello and welcome to what can be tentatively called a weekly (but confidently called a bi-weekly) (let’s just say regular) indie comics spotlight column, where I’ll be checking out books from the world of independent, small press and DIY comics and talking with their creators. I’m going to bring to you a world that I was totally unaware of until just the last year or so and I know that’s not a rarity, to spend most of your grown up comic book reading life never seeing beyond the capes and the cowls. Not that I won’t be talking about capes and cowls comics here, just the ones that probably won’t get optioned by FOX anytime soon (though maybe Michael Bay might be interested in Pizza Boy…)
  For my first column I chose Ignatz Award winning creator Gabby Schulz (also known as Ken Dahl). Monsters was the book that nabbed him the award and if you were writing an autobiographical comic about herpes you might use a different name too. If you’ve spent any of your time tumblin’ you’ve probably read him and not even realized it if you’ve seen this in your internet travels. I myself had never heard of him until a week before this year’s SPX a friend of mine lent me Monsters which kept me up real late with it’s honest, inventive story and beautiful pencils.
  Then at SPX I ran into Gabby, just as randomly as I had come across his work days earlier and I was able to pick up his latest, Weather, published by Secret Acres. Weather features a protagonist that those who have followed Gabby’s webcomics will be familiar with, Gordon Smalls, who now finds himself on airplane from hell as the most basic of bodily function is not only thwarted but every possible attempt at release is as well. Like Gabby’s other work Weather is not just what it looks or sounds like from a casual glance. It’s not a Seinfeld routine about how difficult everything on the airplane is and what’s the deal with that first class curtain? Schulz takes a familiar setting and a relatable scenario and uses them explore everything about the now (both his and ours) that’s wrong, from the way we treat each other, to the way we treat ourselves. However it’s not just a laundry list of complaints or a depressive ode to one’s navel, it has genuine moments of comedy born out of hard truths and ugly people. It also has genuine moments of beauty thanks to Schulz bringing watercolors into his work, like Dylan going electric (but without the snotty catcalls of enraged folk loving fascists) something that was already good becomes really great.
  In the world of Weather, like the world of Tom Goes To The Mayor, there are no beautiful people. Everyone is a gross collection of body parts and misunderstanding. Gordon isn’t so bad on the outside, but what’s inside him is. Literally. The art in the book shifts with the tone, so when it’s the unforgiving mugs of his fellow passengers, the attention to detail renders characters that would be at home on the pages of Crumb, or when Gordon is desperately trying to flush his underwear the art shifts again but to resemble a more comic sense of style not unlike a Sunday Funnies page from hell.

  Weather is a perfect example of why indie comics are so important and so worthy of our attention. When you leave the world of on-going titles and corporate trademarks you get to experience something that has become almost totally foreign in the work of the Big Two, honesty. And when a book is just a self contained piece of an artist, an expression that states its’ case and leaves but lingers in your mind, the difference between the two worlds is impossible to miss. And impossible not to celebrate, which is why I’m here with you and Gabby Schulz.
  First off, how are you enjoying Ohio versus New York?
  Ohio has been a great change from Brooklyn, where living meant misery & poverty. I had a pretty good job & pretty cheap rent, but I just couldn’t take the Bloomberg lifestyle. Everything wrong with America today (wealth gap, ecocide, head-up-ass self-absorption, spectacle-empty [over consumption] & rampant [over stimulation], race war, bald 1%er hedonism, naked catfood-eating poverty, the transformation of police into an extralegal paramilitary ultraviolent racist army for the rich, worship of glamor & youth & gadgets, vacuous gentrification, etc) is magnified tenfold by that city, so it was a hard place to be broke, old & introverted. I had my fun there for a bit & enjoyed my cake-delivery gig, but I just couldn’t take the horror. All I really want out of life is cheap rent & cheap beer, & as long as I’m stuck in the continental US, Columbus is pretty decent. (Don’t tell the Billyburg/Greenpoint kids though!)
  Can starfish really turn your insides to jelly?
  Ha not really. I guess the worst is the crown-of-thorns starfish & that’s just nausea and tissue swelling.
  I need to say that when I got back to my hotel room after the show and I saw the name “Gabby Schulz” on the cover my blood went cold. All I could think was that I had gotten confused and maybe you were just trying to be nice by not correcting me. I googled your name peering between my fingers I was afraid to look at the screen, thinking that I had totally made an ass out of myself. You go by two names (at least), and reading about your life, it sounds like you’ve always existed in between cultures/identities. In “Sick” the protagonist shuffles through costumes that always leave him tattered and torn. Has comic creating helped you come closer to figuring out your actual identity? Does the work exacerbate identity issues or help sift through the pieces?
  I guess the fake name helped draw a semi-autobiographical book about herpes. It helps draw comics in general when they’re detached from your real self, especially now with the internet and all. In fact even with the fake names, I’ll still be amazed if I’m ever able to get a real job again. Also getting a little distance from people when I’m drawing comics is good because in person I’m a polite & accommodating milquetoast and a little anonymity helps slough that off. (Sorry for the confusion though)
  Is “Gordon Smalls” a straight stand in for you or is he your essence turned up to 11?
  He’s what I’m terrified of becoming in about 12 years IF I had any mathematical ability whatsoever. He actually is based on a guy who used to come to Copwatch meetings when I lived in Arizona. There’s dudes like that in every city though, and they’re always riding a bike and usually had some sort of engineering-related career at some point. My heart goes out to them.

  In “Gordon Smalls Endures The Wasteland”, Gordon seems to be seeking peace, or at least a real alternative to the society that (rightfully) disgusts and irritates him so, (irritates seems to be almost too light of a word), but upon receiving a light hearted(ish) verbal jibe from the two men he meets in the woods, he immediately retreats. He’s a man who can’t get comfortable. Do you think that’s from within or without? Is there anyplace that Gordon could feel ok in, or is it just something within him that prevents him from being ok in his surroundings?
  Well, the without informs the within, so I’m sure it’s both. That comic in particular is especially close to home for me, since I was born & raised in Hawai’i from non-Hawaiian parents and then left. I really think there is nowhere “Gordon” could feel ok in, but isn’t that sort of the theme of America in general too? I think if you’re at all conscious of the history of this genociding, slave-founded, global-warring country, by now if you’re white & not at least a little uncomfortable you’re either an idiot or a monster.
  Speaking of being comfortable, the situation in“Weather”, starts with Gordon seeking comfort (of sorts), at least release. Both in “Weather” and “Sick” the protagonists can only escape their body inflicted misery by dreams of suicide. Though in “Weather” it seems to be less of a dour, capitulation and more of an escape. Why do you keep coming back to these themes? Is there only two options when confronted with the horror of modern living, eternal escape or living in misery?
  I think it’s a really important question these days, especially for (white, male, straight, educated, American) people like me — where’s the way forward? It’s easy to talk about it in overtly political terms, but harder to work through on a personal level. When I was more involved in activism things were framed as being very clear-cut, and yet there weren’t a lot of answers for the issues i have personally with identity & maleness & whiteness, mostly because most of the available answers amount to “your people suck.” Which is, of course, true. But, as a person who sucks, raised on a steady diet of suck in a terminally & worsening culture of ever-expanding suck, how do you live with that? How does one inhabit the monstrous shape of privilege? You can work to dismantle privilege” all you want & still not have an answer for how to live with yourself, in this system you represent & are a part of. Do I even deserve to reconcile my people’s legacy within myself? Do I even deserve to talk about that — another white guy, Loudly Expressing His Important Opinions? Or, while fighting to expose & dissolve things like patriarchy, white supremacy, homophobia, [male] dominance, capitalism, technology, etc., do you reach a point (as someone like me) where you’ve entirely alienated yourself from yourself? And is that a good thing? Is that inevitable? What is left of myself, after all that privilege has been betrayed? It’s not like I’m going to get adopted into a new community. I get the feeling that there’s a lot of people like me dealing with these same problems. At least I hope they are. As I get older I feel more & more that, if we are going to effectively abandon the old, shitty culture, we will have to create a legitimate new one in order to still be human — because the culture of radical youth, which is the best attempt at that we’ve had so far, is becoming increasingly unavailable to me. And frankly the attempts that I’ve seen at making that “new world,” from white progressives or back-to-the-landers or postmodern hedonists or gun-accumulating libertarians or even anarchists, haven’t been very inspiring. But then, no one in the history of political thought or literature (sci-fi included) have been very good at tackling the “so what happens now” questions. Even Marx’s ideas of the future were shit. So I guess these are problems I’m trying to work out for myself in my comics, as honestly as I can, using myself as the test subject.
  “Sick”, I have to say, is one of the scariest, most thought provoking, beautiful, honest comics I’ve ever read, on a computer or on paper, easily. The pacing of it especially, slow, deliberate, each scene with it’s own beat and rhythm. How do you pace your stories? Do you listen to music while you’re creating or is there just an internal meter that propels your works forward?
  It’s all internal, I guess. The way I drew “Sick” was different from how I usually draw. I didn’t even know how long it was gonna be when I started, or whether anyone would even read it; I just had a website & threw some shit up there. I wasn’t thinking in terms of a whole story with a beginning an an end — I just let it go where it wanted, in chunks. I thought that was the only way I could make it honest, because with subject matter as personal and sensitive as this, too much craft or narrative — too much literaryness or graphic-novelness or whatever — snuffs the life out of it. It’s so honest & self-eviscerating I have to basically trick myself into drawing it. It’s not always the best way to make comics (or live life) but I thought it was appropriate for the story (whatever that is).
  Body horror seems to be a reoccurring theme in your work as well, the way you use it however, to sort of eviscerate yourself rather than in a Cronenberg way of dealing with broader human societal issues creates this dichotomy of horror and beauty, as in “Sick” when you’re holding up the ball that contains all the angles of your life. To you, what’s more horrifying the world within or the world without?
  I think after drawing Monsters & really examining what it means to coexist with a parasitic virus, it became clear how presumptuous we’ve been in the “civilized” West to assume that we’re totally in control of our own bodies and minds. It turns out humans are not the Best Animal but are just one link in a vast, snarled, stuck-together, wending, gooey chain of life on Earth. Recent discoveries in parasitology have been pretty fascinating, & imply that there are a LOT more parasites crawling around in our bodies, affecting our choices, creating desires & fears, than we realize now. (See Carl Zimmer’s amazing Parasite Rex for an introduction to this stuff.) I’m horrified by all that, but also fascinated with the idea that we will — that we must — learn to accept these nebulous influences on our lives and identities, and adjust our perception of self to accommodate the thousands of little friends that have been working their influence on us since long before vertebrates were even a thing. Distinctions like “good” & “bad,” or even “self” & “other,” start to blur when you consider things like the fact that our mitochondria started out as sexually transmitted diseases:http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn4960-parasitic-invasion-credited-with-evolution-of-sex.html
  I love what you’ve been doing with water color, what made you start? The colors in “Weather”, they create this pallid, dirty palette that totally makes sense when dealing with the world of the inside of an airplane, at the same time, the contrast with the red, found everywhere outside the reach of the plane’s ugly, thick inhabitants, it’s a striking new direction for your work (I think, I mean I honestly discovered you myself a week before SPX).
  I think seeing the work of Eleanor Davis & a bunch of French authors like Brecht Evans & Johann Sfar really got me excited about watercolors, they made them look so fun — and i’ve always thought shading in photoshop looked awful, & crosshatching took forever, so I thought maybe watercolors were a way out of that. Also I finally got it in my head that I didn’t have to use xerox machines to print my work because it’s the 21st century, & I could use color whenever the hell I wanted. (“Weather” was my attempt to learn how to do it though, don’t tell anyone.)
  Secret Acres is putting out “Sick” in print next year, correct? Where can people find out more about that and other projects of yours?
  Yeah, I think it might be debuting at next year’s TCAF in Toronto in May. I guess the Secret Acres site or twitter might be the best way? Oh duh, also my own website, www.gabbysplayhouse.com, which is currently being weird but still sort of works!

QUOTE:
Primal doom has been done before in comics, but probably only rarely so glorious in grotesque detail.
Graphic novels
Martha Cornog and Steve Raiteri
Library Journal. 141.15 (Sept. 15, 2016): p70.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/

* Schulz, Gabby. Sick. Secret Acres. Jun. 2016.84p. ISBN 9780996273916. $21.95. GRAPHIC NOVELS

"To be or not to be?" Channeling Shakespeare's Hamlet via Hunter S. Thompson, Schulz (Monsters, as Ken Dahl) expands the premise from a focused pessimism of personal illness into a rumination on the futility of human life. In bed alone for weeks with high fever, bloody diarrhea, and gut spasms, the uninsured nebbish of a narrator obsesses in brilliant graphic metaphors about suffering, U.S. social inequities, his legacy of exploitative male privilege, and humanity's planet-wide destruction. And every self-critical memory comes boiling out as monstrous, dribbling faces that talk back to him. Primal doom has been done before in comics, but probably only rarely so glorious in grotesque detail. The squishy, viscerally reddened balls-to-the-wall horror draws wry fascination as well as dread-- think cartoonist Gahan Wilson not being funny. Schultz's art must be his own personal answer, for to create such a gorgeous, sardonic work of real-life terror is surely reason to live. VERDICT Schulz tears down the curtain shielding us from the often nasty realities behind our joys with fabulous beauty. Those interested in social justice, horror themes, and art styles will find much here to stimulate thought.--MC

QUOTE:
enters a Kafkaesque fugue state, in which the horror of modern existence is laid bare
Sick
Publishers Weekly. 263.23 (June 6, 2016): p69.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Listen
Full Text:
Sick

Gabby Schulz. Secret Acres (dist. by Consortium), $21.95 (84p) ISBN 978-0-9962739-1-6

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Languishing in his Brooklyn apartment while struck with a vicious illness, cartoonist Schulz (Monsters) enters a Kafkaesque fugue state, in which the horror of modern existence is laid bare. This collection compiles and completes the webcomic of the same name, originally published on Schulz's website. Beginning with a relatively straightforward panel structure and an introspective, self-loathing bent--Crumblike, but more virulent--Schulz explores how being uninsured and poor led him to question the value of his own life, from birth to presumably imminent death. Coming up with few reasons to stay alive, Schulz's nihilism turns its gaze outward. If the life of a "white, able, sane, middle-class, cisgendered male" has no meaning, then for what has the planet been plunged into an environmental and economic nightmare? Schulz gradually transitions from simple panels to elaborate illustrations, all endowed with frightening power from his expertly administered watercolors, which cast a gruesome shadow on the world. By the final gut-wrenching page, even the most relentless optimists will find cracks in their veneer, as Schulz establishes himself as a grim master of the form. June)

QUOTE:
Merging autobiographical comics and disease info, however, Dahl defies the genre's visual reticence
self-flaying humor throughout is marvellously ludicrous

Monsters
Ray Olson
Booklist. 106.6 (Nov. 15, 2009): p29.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2009 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
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Full Text:
Monsters.

By Ken Dahl.

2009. 208p. illus. Secret Acres, paper, $18 (9780979960949). 741.5.

The memoir of illness is a creative nonfiction staple that, optimally, marries the story of an interesting personality to information and counsel about a malady the reader or someone the reader knows may someday contract. Since sickness tends to be unattractive, such books are seldom clinically illustrated. Merging autobiographical comics and disease info, however, Dahl defies the genre's visual reticence. And because the complaint in question is sexually transmitted herpes, there are other reasons for visual reticence. But alternative comics, at which Dahl is the dabbest of hands, have never seen a pudendum, whatever its condition, and blinked. So there are plenty of afflicted genitalia on view, also mouths (oral is as common as venereal herpes), and because they're intended to underline Dahl's craven fear (he commonly draws himself inside a giant herpes cell or morphing into one), they represent worst cases only. The information Dahl parcels out as he spills his misery--almost entirely psychological and unnecessary, though he spun it out for five years--is sound, and his self-flaying humor throughout is marvellously ludicrous.--Ray Olson

YA/C: Good for older teens" health and sexuality studies. RO.

Olson, Ray

QUOTE:
satirist of progressive posturing a la R. Crumb
excellent artist
Welcome to the Dahl House: Alienation, Incarceration, and Inebriation in the New American Rome
Ray Olson
Booklist. 105.4 (Oct. 15, 2008): p31.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2008 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
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Full Text:
Welcome to the Dahl House: Alienation, Incarceration, and Inebriation in the New American Rome.

By Ken Dahl.

2008. 128p. illus. Microcosm, paper, $6 (9781934620021). 741.5.

Whether depicting himself directly as "a washed-up, has-been 'alternative cartoonist'" or vicariously in the adventures of bespectacled, unkempt Gordon Smalls, Dahl is a satirist of progressive posturing a la R. Crumb. He depicts himself possessed of the right "values," able to say the right things, but too pathetic to impress anybody. Unlike Crumb, who characteristically no sooner gets up on his moral propers than he crumbles in self-loathing, Dahl can rant for quite a while before inevitably deflating: see the epical "How to Steal the Food You Deserve," which the contents page lists, all too accurately, as "Gordon Smalls Goes to Jail." Dahl/Smalls isn't his own worst example, though. "The Origin of Army Guy" hilariously shows even the most un-PC institutional stooge talking the talk, utterly cynically, of course; a nice touch here is that the fork-tongued recruiting sergeant is a dead ringer for Beetle Bailey's Sarge. An excellent artist, Dahl draws in manners ranging from simple, figure-against-blank-background strips to cartoon-figure against more and less detailed, realistic backdrops--and always expressively.--Ray Olson

YA/M: Sociopolitically hip older teens will dig Dahl's humor. RO.

Olson, Ray

QUOTE:
strong story about the human dimensions of a virus that affects millions and an accessible treatment of important information
Dahl, Ken. Monsters
Julia Cox
Xpress Reviews. (Jan. 15, 2010):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 Library Journals, LLC
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/reviews/xpress/884170-289/xpress_reviews-first_look_at_new.html.csp
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Full Text:
Dahl, Ken. Monsters. www.secretacres.com. 2009. c.208p. ISBN 978-0-9799609-4-9. pap. $18. GRAPHIC NOVELS

This is definitely the most entertaining book you'll ever read about herpes. Dahl (Welcome to the Dahl House) takes us on a harrowing but humorous journey from discovery through horror, denial, shame, guilt, and finally acceptance. Ken has no idea he may be infected--until he finds he has given herpes to his girlfriend. It feels like a death sentence: not only the end of this relationship, but any relationship. Things finally change for Ken when he opens up to a partner, actually gets tested, and receives some accurate information about herpes. Expressive and often explosive black-and-white art creates well-defined characters and brings Ken's interior world to life (the monstrous talking sores that follow Ken around are particularly effective as his inner voice of doom and misery).

Verdict Recommended for mature teens and adults. Although the frank sexual discussion (and images) may not be suitable for every high school library, this is both a strong story about the human dimensions of a virus that affects millions and an accessible treatment of important information.

Julia Cox, Penticton P.L., B.C.

Cox, Julia

Cornog, Martha, and Steve Raiteri. "Graphic novels." Library Journal, 15 Sept. 2016, p. 70+. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA463632480&it=r&asid=33c8813e2c5af7e87dcc01c39af94c7b. Accessed 5 Mar. 2017. "Sick." Publishers Weekly, 6 June 2016, p. 69. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA454731006&it=r&asid=f9f67c113da53bdbe2925da58ba0d2b6. Accessed 5 Mar. 2017. Olson, Ray. "Monsters." Booklist, 15 Nov. 2009, p. 29. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA225315726&it=r&asid=43259cc36a7b6dfe313f63de796f86d9. Accessed 5 Mar. 2017. Olson, Ray. "Welcome to the Dahl House: Alienation, Incarceration, and Inebriation in the New American Rome." Booklist, 15 Oct. 2008, p. 31. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA187961483&it=r&asid=8f8658a996fad7445e9e4354a4bf2589. Accessed 5 Mar. 2017. Cox, Julia. "Dahl, Ken. Monsters." Xpress Reviews, 15 Jan. 2010. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA217432221&it=r&asid=aaed7c555b98ca87534b502199ce3e7e. Accessed 5 Mar. 2017.

• Comics Journal
  http://www.tcj.com/reviews/sick/
  Word count: 930

  QUOTE:
  , in Sick, Schulz’s illness is the avenue that leads him to simply confirm all of his worst fears about himself and the world surrounding him: “The sickness had become me.” This is uncompromising work by a brave and powerful artist.

  Sick
  Gabby Schulz
  Secret Acres
  21.95; 84 pages
  BUY IT NOW

  REVIEWED BY ROBERT KIRBY MAY 20, 2016
  Schulz01coverThere’s a line I’ve always remembered from a minicomics review in the great ’80s underground anthology Weirdo: “Spill some ink.” I find it a handy little reminder/admonishment to plumb the depths in my own comics, to be as honest as possible. And I’ve thought of the phrase many times when reading work I found banal, emotionally dishonest, or simply unclear in intent. Spilling Ink: “Dig Deeper or Don’t Bother.”

  Spilling ink appears to come naturally to Gabby Schulz (also known as Ken Dahl). In his writing and art, Schulz offers brutally frank self-assessment worthy of R. Crumb at his most lacerating; grim, grotesque imagery that often metastasizes into Cronenberg-esque body horror, and scathing outrage toward American societal inequities that any hardcore anarchist or hard-left political cartoonist would appreciate. In Sick, Schulz doesn’t just spill ink, he spills blood and guts: bright, red & squishy, in operatically grotesque, often nightmarish drawings. He depicts the title illness in full-scale body-horror mode, which in turn triggers an intensely self-loathing self-examination, which in turn bleeds into a scathing indictment of the American body politic. It’s a challenging 82-page primal scream, like a performance art piece—the kind Karen Finley was famous for in the ’90s—in illustrated form, viscerally tearing apart all the personal and social filters we construct like armor, to keep ourselves going, to stay sane.

  Schulz gets right down to business, opening with a vivid description of his sudden malady: “Once I got sick. Real sick. A brain-melting fever, constant liquid shits, uncontrollable shivers, horrible nightmares. A tearing pain like a giant claw was scooping out my guts […] After a couple of nights of this,” he continues, “I started to worry.” From there on his narrative begins slipping in and out of reality and bitter fantasy, much like a fever dream. He first depicts a fruitless trip to the ER, where he’s treated the way anyone with no money, no health insurance, and no resources can expect in our country: a contemptuous doctor hands him a block of “Extra Strength Debt” and tells him, “Come back when you’ve got a real problem and a real JOB.” With more than a touch of black humor he envisions health care as experienced by those who can actually afford it:

  Schulz02
  Back in the sickbed of his dingy little apartment, Schulz ruminates on past regrets, his grim present, and gets full-blown existential about the state of the world. From here on, Sick is quite different in tone from Schulz’s previous works: his collection of short comics Welcome to the Dahl House (Microcosm, 2008), or his previous book with Secret Acres, the double Ignatz Award-winning Monsters (originally published in 2009 and newly released this month). Monsters, a frank, wonderfully entertaining (and quite funny) autobiographical look at the trials and tribulations of having oral herpes, presents Schulz/Dahl as an obsessive worrier, able to take a medium-level problem like herpes and blow it up to biblical proportions. The antagonist, ostensibly the (often-anthropomorphized) herpes virus, is actually Schulz himself. An intense, glass-half-empty sort of fellow, he torments himself throughout with his insecurities and seeming inability to reconcile his feelings of shame and self-loathing. Ultimately, Monsters wraps on a lighter note, with an unexpected resolution to Schulz’s health problem—and he even gets the girl in the end.

  Sick offers up no such redemption, as Schulz takes us with him through his physical and mental freefall: “My whole oh-so-precious existence looked like just a soap bubble floating on a big black sea of nothing.” When his illness breaks after eleven days, his spiritual malaise continues, leaving little relief.

  Schulz03
  Sick, a sucker punch of a book, will not be for everybody (“Trigger Warning” crowd, please take note). Upon my first reading I was taken aback at its unremitting bleakness. Schulz has a real talent for identifying those little pockets of dread that punctuate our days and nights, lingering over them and illustrating them with gusto. His gorgeously grotesque visuals, often framed in washes of a nauseous green with accents of raw-meat red, recall somewhat the great Ralph Steadman; while one sequence in particular—Schulz reliving a horrifying childhood nightmare—reminds me of Josh Simmons at his most merciless. Schulz captures the experience of sickness with uncomfortable accuracy: the woozy slipping in and out of consciousness, the sense of health and wellness becoming but a distant memory–and of pain and illness defining all of one’s existence. Sick joins other books in the growing genre of graphic memoirs dealing with health issues, among them Ellen Forney’s Marbles, John Porcellino’s The Hospital Suite, and Jennifer Haydn’s The Story of My Tits. While those books offer stories of people who navigated through their physical and mental problems to the point of reaching new possibilities for their lives, in Sick, Schulz’s illness is the avenue that leads him to simply confirm all of his worst fears about himself and the world surrounding him: “The sickness had become me.” This is uncompromising work by a brave and powerful artist.

• Foreword Reviews
  https://www.forewordreviews.com/reviews/sick/
  Word count: 383

  QUOTE:
  profoundly honest and disturbing graphic-novel account of a fifteen-day illness that pushed the author to the brink of death
  Schulz’s art is as good as any independent cartoonist working today—grim and graphic, but also frank and penetrating
  Sick

  Reviewed by Peter Dabbene
  August 26, 2016

  Sick is Gabby Schulz’s fever-dream, the profoundly honest and disturbing graphic-novel account of a fifteen-day illness that pushed the author to the brink of death.

  Gabby Schulz (also known as Ken Dahl) is the author of several graphic novels, including Monsters, an examination of the effects of herpes. So the disturbing, grueling experience of Schulz’s sickness and self-reflection is a perfect subject for him in Sick, which proves to be funny, dark, and provocative. Schulz attempts to treat his illness, but it quickly spirals out of control—lacking health insurance, Schulz begins to consider his life choices, and even considers suicide before the book, like his illness, culminates with a savage indictment of human society.

  It’s this sharp-edged look at politics, religion, and people, just before Schulz’s recovery, that elevates the book from a simple (though morbidly fascinating) autobiographical tale to a scathing work of criticism. The fact that Schulz’s rage may have been fed by his discomfort and despair doesn’t detract from its impact.

  Schulz’s art is as good as any independent cartoonist working today—grim and graphic, but also frank and penetrating. With plenty of anatomical details and ailments shown and described, Sick isn’t for the easily grossed-out or offended. But those looking for a vital, independent voice to follow in the footsteps of Robert Crumb and others should give it a try—some of Schulz’s images and ideas will linger, like a stubborn infection, long after the book’s cover has been closed.

  Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The author of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the author for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.

• High-Low
  http://highlowcomics.blogspot.com/2009/11/public-service-announcement-monsters.html
  Word count: 1296

  QUOTE:
  At its heart, this is a book about ethics in its truest sense: what do we do about others? How do we relate to them, and why do we want to? Do we treat them as objects at hand or as ends unto themselves? Dahl was confronted by a scenario that forced himself to ask these questions every time he wanted to kiss someone, have sex with someone one or initiate any kind of intimate contact.
  is both a funny confessional story highlighting the mistakes of its protagonist and an attempt to open a dialogue, and it's a rousing success on both counts.

  SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2009
  Public Service Announcement: Monsters
  Rob reviews the bracingly personal new comic from Ken Dahl, MONSTERS (Secret Acres).

  Ken Dahl's MONSTERS created a sensation when its first few chapters were released as minicomics, winning an Ignatz award. In their original format, the minis were barely-disguised autobiographical comics about a particular relationship he had and how it came crashing down when both partners realized they had herpes--and that he probably gave it to her. The final version, published by outstanding small press concern Secret Acres, changed some of the details and appearances but left the emotional core of the book intact. Dahl, working very much in the tradition of underground comics, created a hilarious but bracing story about living with a disease that by its very nature creates a state of perpetual alienation. The craving for intimacy is permanently balanced by an intense feeling of guilt and self-loathing, a sense of not being worthy of intimacy because of the disease. That feeling is further multiplied by the understanding that while herpes is incurable, it's not especially harmful. There's always the temptation to simply withhold one's diagnosis from potential partners.

  After all, as Dahl noted, something like 60% of all adult Americans has herpes in one form or other--but most people don't know it. For a conscientious person, the feeling is akin to shoplifting being the only method one can use to obtain a product. Shoplifting is clearly a crime and an ethical lapse, but the line between right and wrong becomes very thin at that point of desperation and little harm that can be caused.

  MONSTERS turned from the dynamics of a particular relationship to the specifics of day-to-day living with what was once euphemistically called a "social disease". Dahl infused the book with a weird tension. It's part confessional, part educational comic, part gag book at his own expense. Living with constant pain in his mouth, and without proper insurance for medication that might help, led to a miserable day-to-day experience. At the same time, Dahl felt guilt for being that miserable, considering that nothing was really "wrong" with him. Of course, the worse part of the experience was the sense that it was not only not possible to experience intimate contact ever again, but that he didn't even deserve intimacy. What separated this book from simple melodrama was two things: Dahl's acidic sense of humor and his virtuostic linework.

  Dahl used a clever trick in depicting life with the disease, creating an anthropomorphized version of herpes as a sort of constant companion. Dahl leaned heavily on the comically grotesque in the depiction of his "friend" as well as himself, going over the top on many pages for humorous effect. Crumb was an obvious influence on his line, but there's a bit of Peter Bagge in there too, especially in terms of character design. Any influence he took from others was mostly that of inspiration and boundaries of what was possible in comics--seeing what could subjects could be addressed. Dahl is very much an original, who manages to walk the line between intense rendering and clear page design. His figures went from simplistic to naturalistic to cartoony, sometimes all on the same page.

  MONSTERS is a book that has a lot of narrative text, but it's just in support of the intensity of the images on every page. Dahl either employs a funny drawing or grotesque drawing in nearly every panel, powerfully underlining the central theme of unearned alienation. It's a tribute to his skill and sense of humor that this unrelenting intensity doesn't become overwhelming to the reader. It does help that Dahl employed several series of silent pages, including detailed renderings of actual herpes sores, the morning routine of assorted pills and powders and a hilarious sequence where the herpes-ridden finger of god squashes his head.

  The central plot arc of this story is a simple one. Dahl goes from oblivious, to denial, to shirking of responsibility and knowledge of herpes, to overobsessing about the details of the disease. The quotidian details of the various "homeopathic" remedies he tried to relieve his oral discomfort dovetailed neatly with several hilarious sequences depicting his job making food at a Whole Foods-style, vegan grocery store. Dahl excels at depicting screaming, pompous & deluded lunatics from all walks of life, but he saved a special sort of venom for the health food fanatics he used to serve. That sequence pointed out that stress tended to trigger his pain, but it also pointed out how much he was beginning to hate a group of people that he theoretically thought of as like-minded folk. Overcoming his fear of humiliating rejection and self-loathing, the feeling that he deserved to be alone, became his biggest task, one that he finally achieved when he acknowledged his need for intimacy with a particular person while being honest with her. When she told him it wasn't really a big deal, Dahl depicted himself as having layers of slime and goo falling away from his skin, revealing just another person. He even had sympathy for the anthropomorphized disease, acknowledging that it was just another form of life trying to get by.

  That climax is followed by a twist-ending epilogue that comically took the rug out from under Dahl, rendering five years of his life a "corny sex-ed PSA". It's an ending so unlikely that it has to be true, but it didn't nullify the emotional truth of what he was trying to accomplish with this comic. There are a number of pages of fairly didactic material, but Dahl's skill as an artist (and some truly gross drawings) made these fascinating to read. Slightly less interesting was the time spent on the laundry list of foods he was trying to avoid, and how that clashed with his attempt at the time to be a vegan. The book was at its best when Dahl simply went about his day and tried to figure out how to relate to others.

  At its heart, this is a book about ethics in its truest sense: what do we do about others? How do we relate to them, and why do we want to? Do we treat them as objects at hand or as ends unto themselves? Dahl was confronted by a scenario that forced himself to ask these questions every time he wanted to kiss someone, have sex with someone one or initiate any kind of intimate contact. It underlined not only the ways that we take such things for granted, it illuminated the entire issue of how our material needs intersect with our conception of self and other. It also highlighted the ways in which society's taboos on openly discussing sex and sexuality lead to situations where disease is spread. MONSTERS is both a funny confessional story highlighting the mistakes of its protagonist and an attempt to open a dialogue, and it's a rousing success on both counts.

  POSTED BY ROB CLOUGH AT 6:18 AM
  LABELS: KEN DAHL, MONSTERS, SECRET ACRES

• Graphic Medicine
  http://www.graphicmedicine.org/comic-reviews/monsters/
  Word count: 591

  QUOTE:
  There is a lot of information in this book. It does an excellent job of informing the reader about living with Herpes. ...but Hell, forget education, the reason you should buy this book is because it is just such a good story… a tragicomic drama of the first order.
  The funniest book about herpes you’ll read this year.

  Monsters

  FacebookTwitterPinterestGoogle
  Author: Ken Dahl

  Format: Perfect Paperback

  Pages: 208 pgs.

  Publish Date: September 14, 2009

  Publisher: Secret Acres

  Catalog ID: ISBN-10: 0979960940
  ISBN-13: 978-0979960949

  Review

  The funniest book about herpes you’ll read this year.

  Let me make my opinion clear from the outset: this book is superb. A work of genius. I don’t think anyone is able to graphically imbue their characters with such a sense of anxiety and dejection as Ken Dahl does.

  Many thanks to Martha Cornog for allerting me to the work of Gabby Shulz, a.k.a. Ken Dahl who, according to his blog, still plods on in a series of day jobs in order to pay the bills. He deserves great things, indeed he has just won an Ignatz Award for Monsters. This book seems hard to get in the UK but can be ordered from the publisher or, better still, from the author himself. HERE

  I could not put this book down, and seriously annoyed my girlfriend by reading it in bed when she was trying to sleep. It made me laugh out loud, chortle and cringe and the air was punctuated ‘Oh NOOO!’s and ‘HAHAHA’s until I was told in no uncertain terms to ‘PUT THE BLOODY LIGHT OUT’. Herpes, obviously, isn’t funny, but Ken is funny, his drawings are funny, the way his characters morph into dogs, viruses and monsters is funny and his observational humour is spot on.

  Anyway – the story…. it is ‘semi-autobiographical’. Ken has a cold sore. He’s blissfully happy with his girlfriend Rory until he transfers his Herpes Simplex type1 to her ‘nether regions’, at which point things start to deteriorate. His love life and emotional well-being take a big turn for the worse. He manages to accidentally infect at least one other girl, who never forgives him, and is publicly humilliated by his friends, who by now all know what he has done. As pain and guilt eat into his psyche, he starts to see himself as an oozing, STD-ridden monster. He seeks solice in abstenance, but finds the lack of human contact unbearable. He has no health insurance and cannot afford expensive antivirals, so arms himself with an arsenal of dubious naturopathic remedies. Redemption is found, however, in self education and the love of a good woman, and the story has a hopeful ending.

  There is a lot of information in this book. It does an excellent job of informing the reader about living with Herpes. It also says a lot about life, friends, love and, er, worrying excessively. It should be required reading for any healthcare professional with even a passing interest in Genitourinary Medicine, but Hell, forget education, the reason you should buy this book is because it is just such a good story… a tragicomic drama of the first order.

  After reading this I had to get ‘Welcome to the Dahl House’ which is a collection of strips, zines and minicomics. It too is brilliant.

• Pop Matters
  http://www.popmatters.com/review/welcome-to-the-dahl-house/
  Word count: 737

  QUOTE:
  ” displays impressive range and talent
  Welcome to the Dahl House
  The fine line work is able to capture the subtility and extent of Dahl’s condemnation of disaffected American culture, while the broad strokes of his other pieces decry a loss of innocence.
  BY ERIK HINTON
  8 October 2008

  In popular culture, we talk about throwbacks all the time. Football teams put on garish uniforms as a tribute to their garishly designed pasts, MTV trudges through every bit of television and film history to pay homage to the tripe that paved the way for the station, college freshman wear Pavement t-shirts as if they were not eating dirt cups the last time Pavement was relevant. Throwbacks are not necessarily dangerous; they just elicit a nostalgia that is not always authentic. Surely, the Pavement-shirted 18-something will make a lot of very interesting friends but the fellowship is founded on tenuous connection.

  I cannot help but approach Kenneth Dahl’s Welcome to the Dahl House with similar suspicion. Filled to the brim with one-off comics about zines, punk culture, and the Gen-X fallout, the book is very much a relic. Paging through, I am taken back a little more than a decade to a time that I cannot remember because I was simply too young. However, by skill more than coercion, Dahl makes me feel bitter about the state of zine publishing and the Tipper Gore morality.

  cover art
  WELCOME TO THE DAHL HOUSE
  (MICROCOSM PUBLISHING)

  OFFICIAL SITE
  AMAZON
  This is what unnerves me and makes the experience of “Dahl House” not an entirely pleasing one. Although Dahl is explicitly transparent that the élan vital of these works is personal experience, I cannot but feel implicated. There is something about Dahl’s alternative everymen characters, which forces the reader to feel they are speaking for them. Is this necessarily a fault of Dahl? No. However, one must approach this volume cautiously.

  As to the art in this volume, “Dahl House” displays impressive range and talent. Alternating between detailed, gritty illustrations and simplistic Sunday paper style art, Dahl manages to extend his commentary on “alienation, incarceration, and inebriation in the new American Rome” to many foray. The fine line work is able to capture the subtility and extent of Dahl’s condemnation of disaffected American culture, while the broad strokes of his other pieces decry a loss of innocence. To see Beetle Baily’s Sarge transformed into a vicious figurehead of the American army is a profoundly unsettling transformation of a classic cartoon. Such a move undermines the innocuous appearances that American culture puts forth.

  Dahl’s dialogue falls somewhat short of his crafty illustration. Often bombastic, Dahl overreaches from time to time and becomes a parody of his own medium. Although, this might be the effect he wants to achieve. A dog in a cape laments: “Because of their brief moment in the spotlight as ‘Generation X’ accessories, zines in the 90’s have been largely rejected and abandoned by the same ‘counterculture’ types that once espoused them…the secret is out, the jig is up, and minds of talent and purpose have all but evacuated the ‘zine world’ towards newer, cooler, less corrupted frontiers.” Clearly, Dahl does not believe that pithy dialogue written in this manner is best, but what he obtains is a comic that teeters between smug, wordiness and self-reflexive critique.

  Ultimately, this is the most problematic aspect of Dahl’s work. Although quick to diagnose social ills, it even more quickly retreats into musings on how ineffectual comics are and how even the comic you are reading is thoroughly flawed. Dahl traps readers between his incredible powers of persuasion and his equally well-trained powers of self-deprecation. The entire experience leaves you saying, “Oh yes I do hate that about America…Oh, I hate myself for thinking that.” Continually he forces you to vacillate between condemning culture and condemning your viewpoint.

  All in all, “Dahl House” is a nicely put together collection of a talented artist’s work over the past few years. However, an inner conflict of Hamletic proportions undercuts the enterprise. Caught in the crossfire of Dahl’s own mind is a fascinating experience but a frustrating one as well.

  WELCOME TO THE DAHL HOUSE
  Rating: 6/10

• Fangirls Are We
  https://fangirlsarewe.com/2015/09/23/welcome-to-the-dahl-house-by-ken-dahl/
  Word count: 334

  QUOTE:
  it really shows off how upset the main character (Gordon Smalls, through most of the pieces) is with things
  It allows you to let your inner grump out
  Welcome to the Dahl House by Ken Dahl
  Posted on September 23, 2015 by Emily Althea
  I picked up this comic a couple weeks ago at Earthworld because I liked the size. It’s a small format book, much like a zine, and seemed to have art I enjoyed in it. I got it home and read it, and was incredibly happy that I picked it up.

  dahlhouse

  Welcome to the Dahl House is a collection of pieces by Ken Dahl. They came from zines, which explains the size. The bi-line of the book is “Alienation, incarceration, and inebriation in the new American Rome,” which is immensely fitting, after reading it.

  The introduction warns readers to be mindful of where one piece ends and another begins, and I’m glad I read that, because they melt almost seamlessly together. Though there are titular panels, the pieces picked work so incredibly well together, that it can almost be read as a single piece.

  dahlhouse2

  I loved this comic. I love the lack of color and style of the art; it really shows off how upset the main character (Gordon Smalls, through most of the pieces) is with things. He’s upset about the government, about love, and about life in general. I could definitely relate to him, and I really enjoyed that.

  This, unlike many of the comics I’ve been reading lately, is not an all ages comic. There is nudity, sex, and profanity all over it, and it’s phenomenal. I highly recommend this to everyone. It allows you to let your inner grump out, and take a step back to reevaluate some stuff.

  All images and characters depicted are copyright of their respective owners.

• Comix Cube
  https://comixcube.com/2012/07/
  Word count: 149

  Weather
  By Gabby Schulz
  Pub. Secret Acres, 2012
  gabbysplayhouse.com
  secretacres.com
  This is a Gordon Small comic and that means a laughing good time with a money-back guarantee! As the title suggests, “Weather” is a breezy, summery short tale about the effervescence of life itself. However fleeting, Gordon Small embraces life with all of its turbulence and small pleasures. Under cartoonist Gabby Schulz’ master hand, Gordon Small absorbs with wide-eyed wonder the ambient details that ultimately encourage us all to cling to this wonderful world by the tiny finger holds afforded to us!
  As you can tell, I’m deeply moved by “Weather”‘s joyful perspectives and optimism. A must-have for any fans of James Kochalka or John Porcellino.
  A special nod should be given to Mr. Schulz’ friend Brandon who inspired Schulz to draft this arresting and captivating fable.

• Mental Floss
  http://mentalfloss.com/article/83402/13-most-interesting-comics-july
  Word count: 225

  QUOTE:
  probably the most inventive cartoonist working in comics that many readers still have never heard of, and this is his most masterful piece of cartooning to date
  Mental Floss
  http://mentalfloss.com/article/83402/13-most-interesting-comics-july
  Rich Barret
  July 1, 2016
  Gabby Schulz has a penchant for exploring stomach-churning health issues that no one else wants to talk about. He did this with his award-winning graphic novel about oral herpes, Monsters, and now his latest book, Sick, starts with the author suffering a more severe but unknowable malady that has him doubled over in pain and disoriented by disturbing fever dreams. His problem is magnified by his lack of income and health insurance, and the helplessness of being sick is eating away at his entire sense of self. Schulz uses the book to explore topics as broad as class inequity in the United States and as specific and personal as his own psyche.
  You may have seen Sick online when it was first serialized a couple of years ago, but in this new edition, Schulz seems to have repainted the artwork to give it a more rich and visceral feel. He is probably the most inventive cartoonist working in comics that many readers still have never heard of, and this is his most masterful piece of cartooning to date.

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