Edited by Craig Yoe, $19.99, Fantagraphics Books

Crashing in the wake created by last year’s smash hit Fletcher Hanks retrospective I SHALL DESTROY ALL CIVILIZED PLANETS, Fantagraphics’ latest collection of lost and forgotten comics from the 40’s arrives in the form of BOODY.  If Hank’s stories were fascinating for their anger, lunacy, and wild urgency, then these rediscovered gems are a revelation for being every bit as strange, but seemingly on purpose.

It’s akin to David Bowie coming along and taking the unstoppable id of The Ramones and The Stooges and crafting something much more complex and layered.  Of course, I actually prefer The Ramones and The Stooges to Bowie, but that doesn’t mean I can’t occasionally snap along to Speed of Life.

And anyway, the Bowie analogy ends there.  Far from being as weirdly androgynous as Ziggy Stardust, Boody’s comics are jam packed with sex.  He draws babes the way babes used to be drawn, with sturdy flanks and powerful pelvises.  Look no further than “The Mysterious Case of Mystery Mountain,” where a beautiful hillbilly named Babe is lured into a strange land where a society of all male centaurs trap women and ride them around for sport.  I’m not even sure what kind of sex that hints at, but damned if it isn’t some kind.  If that’s not your bag, how about the story of Sparky Watts, the boy who shrinks unless he’s constantly blasted with cosmic rays, or Mrs. Gooseflesh, who loves nothing more than “The pop—ee—de—pop of a good compound fracture!!”

Get it together, America.  Check out this strange book and dare to dream, one last time, because dark days are ahead, and when the bullets start flying you’ll wish you spent more time laughing. 

Three cheers for sturdy flanks!