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THE LEATHER NUN
A Review By: Bizarre Magazine
The following review by David McComb appeared in Bizarre Magazine #144 in December 2008.
An irresistible glimpse at the weirdest comics ever made.
Golden-haired innocents falling in love with bloodthirsty Nazis. Redneck truckers fighting to suppress their homosexual urges. Amputee sex parties where everyone licks each other’s stumps. Popsicle superheroes, lesbian superheroes, killer pussycats. Perverts, monsters, death, gore, hippies, monkeys… and a muscle-bound, Spandex-clad president Ronald Reagan busting Bolivian drug lords with wily wisecracks and a roaring machine gun. Welcome to the weird world of underground comics, a dark and strange place often unseen by Joe Public, but a delight for fans of the strange, forbidden and gratuitously odd.
When casting light on these rare gems, authors Paul Gravett and Peter Stanbury let the pictures do the talking, by reproducing a selection of the most outrageous comic covers published since the 1940s, along with a smattering of text to put each page into context. It’s hard to choose a favourite among the dozens of forgotten strips they’ve dug up, but child-friendly guides on how to shoot a rifle, the adventures of military chaplains on the frontline of World War II and sports start Charles Barkley fighting Godzilla with little more than a basketball are just a few of the comics that have made Bizarre laugh, gasp and wonder how these crazy cartoons ever got published in the first place.
The sort of book Christmas stockings were made for, you’ll read The Leather Nun again and again, and it’ll doubtless inspire the creative among you to dream up your own twisted ‘toons.
