Comics

Comic review: ‘Megahex’

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J. Caleb Mozzocco

Four stars

Megahex By Simon Hanselmann, Fantagraphics Books, $22.

Simon Hanselmann’s online Megg, Mogg and Owl comic strips are now available in a convenient, tree-killing format under the new title of Megahex, which follows three roommates who spend their days and nights sleeping, drinking, smoking pot, watching TV and occasionally partying with friends like Werewolf Jones, who is an even worse human being than any of them.

Not that any of them are human beings, at least, not in the way they’re drawn. (Their behavior, on the other hand, is all too human.) Megg is a green-skinned Halloween witch, Mogg is a black cat (and also Megg’s lover, adding a layer to the meaning of the term “familiar”) and Owl is an anthropomorphic owl. And why is that? Well, it’s certainly funnier that way.

Of the three, Owl is the only one at least trying to escape the trap of their lifestyle. He’s the butt of his friends’ many cruel jokes, their delayed consciences never kicking in until things have gone way too far. Owl’s attempts to escape form the arc of the book, which actually reads like an episodic graphic novel when the strips are all collected like this.

Featuring old-school underground comix, but with the style and serial nature of even older-school Sunday newspaper comics strips, Megahex is the sort of comic that could only gestate on the Internet, and only find final, full expression in book form from a publisher like Fantagraphics.

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