After you've been repulsed and fascinated by Biologic Show #0, you'll find you crave of Al Columbia's horrific machinations... and voila! As positively innard-twisting as a bad acid trip... actually, Biologic Show #1 has a lot in common with a bad trip, including visuals at once horrifying and transfixing, nightmarishly terrifying themes, cute li'l critters and kiddies that, upon close inspection, reveal themselves to be not so cuddly at all... This issue, the 17-page "Peloria" takes Pim and Francie on another frolic. Pim's looking for Francie, Francie's looking for Pim, a friendly stranger offers Francie a ride in his big, shiny car... uh oh. Also, a 7-page romp in which Seymour Sunshine has a yummy sundae at Mr. Moxie's — oops! Was that cherry from the "bad cherries" jar? It looks so much like the "good cherries" jar... sorry, Seymour! Mmmm!
You have never read a comic like The Biologic Show.
Created, written and drawn by Al Columbia, The Biologic Show (published by Fantagraphics) was released in 1995 and is a collection of short stories that could best be described as unsettling. This is a horror comic, of sorts, but not the type of horror that deals with giant monsters or things that go bump in the night. No. The Biologic Show deals with the horrors of the subconscious, real world nightmares filtered through an unstable psyche and spat onto the page in stark black and white. Think along the lines of David Lynch's ERASERHEAD and you're getting close.
This issue (and it's sister issue, known only as issue #0) feature Columbia's recurring characters, Pim and Francie and Seymour Sunshine, undergoing mental torture and being subjected to the confusing, disconcerting and horrific whims of Al Columbia's imagination and simple but highly expressive art.
It is unfortunate that more issues were never produced, but if you are a lover of fringe art and if you like to not be able to turn the lights out after reading a comic, for fear of what your own mind will do to you, then The Biologic Show is for you.
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