If you squeezed the pungent, juicy meat of Slow Jams long enough and hard enough, it would probably yield a few drops of
something resembling a plot. But that would ruin it. It's not untrue that there's a simple
boy meets girl, boy becomes obsessed with girl, boy stalks girl, girl's
giant Rastafarian boyfriend beats the holy fuck out of boy type story somewhere at the heart of the
comic book. But there's so much
more, for instance, "
the greatest masturbation sequence ever" (according to the author).
Slow Jams has been released twice. The first time around, the author,
David Choe (you can see his other projects at www.davidchoe.com), went to
Kinko's and Xeroxed off 200 copies. Then one
Peter Laird gave him $5,000 to re-release it with extra stories, photos, and
lovely full color cover art.
Slow Jams itself is the story of
Dixon Triconderoga,
lapsed art student and oversexed
stoner punk. After moving back to LA, he meets Yummi at a friend's dinner party, makes an ass of himself, and watches her drive off with the aforementioned giant boyfriend. He can't get her out of his head, so he sends her a letter care of a mutual friend and promises to wait for her outside
Mann's Chinese Theater on the last day of May
every year until he dies or she shows up.
It's a great book. It contains much more honesty than most other
indie comics, despite being purposefully
dumbed down (i.e., lots of "
cute misspellings" and lots of blah-blah-blah about
hot chicks). The art is great, the layout is irritating but captivating nonetheless.
Choe has done a lot of other stuff since Slow Jams. He's been involved with
Juxtapoz,
Non, and he has a book of his art for sale on his web site. The man is a genius and well worth checking out.