COMICUM by Majenye (Mini Kus! #124)

COMICUM starts as a tongue-in-cheek send-up of the fan culture surrounding comic cons, which for me is highlighted by a hilarious page of non-sequitur back and forth between a string of seemingly random cosplayers encountering each other amid the morass of con-goers, disparate interests and attitudes just intersecting and careening off each other into the grand void of the con. It goes something like this: Q: “Want some pineapple juice?” A: “Let’s go to the toilets again…” Q: “I love yoga and meditation.” A: “I prefer fentanyl.” Q: “This is the worst comic convention I’ve ever been to!” A: “This is the best day of my life!” Majenye reappropriates all manner of characters, from superheroes to furries to manga to TV cartoons, with several scenes of cosplay gone awry and family violence, all awash in vibrant colors and a stubbly tactile grit in the art that feels so good to my eye. If COMICUM stopped there – reminding us that everyone is into something, and it’s best not to “yuck” someone’s “yum” – it would already be a strong work, but suddenly it goes a meta-step further and becomes VERY interesting. Majenye then begins to pull the lens out from the con experience itself to add larger context, we’re reminded that we’ve witnessed pre- and post-con scenes. We’ve seen the preparatory anticipation of the con as attendees go about the drudgery of their daily lives. We see the post-con return to solitary artmaking and documentation once all the revelry of the convention has passed. Majenye doesn’t stop there, continuing to pull the lens even further back against the very fabric of space-time to bookend the con like waves rippling out from a stone thrown into a placid lake; we’ve seen a primordial animal kingdom as prologue, juxtaposed with an eventual return to nature as this society collapses before us in bacchanalian ritual. We see a prequel prophecy in the year 1599, then juxtaposed with a post-script about human extinction in the year 7682. It’s fantastic. There’s so much going on in COMICUM, so rapidly as it builds momentum along its own time continuum, that you might even miss the quick sly visual reference to the bizarre Golden Age gem I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets! by Fletcher Hanks. That was just the cherry on top of a book that had already won me over long before. This is top-shelf work functioning on multiple levels, with humor, sub-cultural insight, and meta-commentary all working in perfect harmony. This is one of the best books of 2024.