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Punk Land

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There are many different places you can go to after you die. One such place is PUNK LAND, the punk version of Heaven. It is an anarchist's utopia of independence and individuality, where the parties are wild and the music is fierce, where everyone is allowed to be whoever they want to be... or, at least, that's how it was in the beginning. Now, something is different about Punk Land. It doesn't seem to be the same place anymore. Perhaps it's the new punk handbook that everyone must follow, which explains what is punk and what isn't. Or maybe it's the introduction of the punk point system, where every citizen must retain a certain number of punk points or lose their citizenship. It could be the organization of the Punk Police, which enforces punk behavior and mohawk size. Or there might just be something wrong with the Punk Council, the new corporate government of Punk land. Either way, Punk Land just doesn't seem to be very punk anymore...

The story follows Goblin, a deformed young hermit with a meat-mohawk who is perfectly happy haunting an abandoned gatehouse far outside of civilization with his pet dildo, Frog Strips, until two strangers named Nan and Mortician arrive at his doorstep with a crazy story that turns his quiet post-life existence upside-down. Goblin soon finds himself mixed up in a war between corporate punks and traditional punks that he really couldn't care less about. But without the help of Goblin, Mortician's sperm, and a blue-mohawked female assassin named Shark Girl, the utopian anarchy in Punk Land will surely be lost.

284 pages, Paperback

First published September 28, 2005

7 people are currently reading
1258 people want to read

About the author

Carlton Mellick III

119 books2,168 followers
Carlton Mellick III (July 2, 1977, Phoenix, Arizona) is an American author currently residing in Portland, Oregon. He calls his style of writing "avant-punk," and is currently one of the leading authors in the recent 'Bizarro' movement in underground literature[citation needed] with Steve Aylett, Chris Genoa and D. Harlan Wilson.

Mellick's work has been described as a combination of trashy schlock sci-fi/horror and postmodern literary art. His novels explore surreal versions of earth in contemporary society and imagined futures, commonly focusing on social absurdities and satire.

Carlton Mellick III started writing at the age of ten and completed twelve novels by the age of eighteen. Only one of these early novels, "Electric Jesus Corpse", ever made it to print.

He is best known for his first novel Satan Burger and its sequel Punk Land. Satan Burger was translated into Russian and published by Ultra Culture in 2005. It was part of a four book series called Brave New World, which also featured Virtual Light by William Gibson, City Come A Walkin by John Shirley, and Tea from an Empty Cup by Pat Cadigan.

In the late 90's, he formed a collective for offbeat authors which included D. Harlan Wilson, Kevin L. Donihe, Vincent Sakowski, among others, and the publishing company Eraserhead Press. This scene evolved into the Bizarro fiction movement in 2005.

In addition to writing, Mellick is an artist and musician.

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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
Profile Image for Donny.
2 reviews1 follower
March 20, 2008
This book was the first book I had read from Mellick. His style is like no other. I hate typing reviews so I'll keep it short. Punk Land was creepy, sickening, and oddly arousing with it's cannibal sex scenes. I recommend this to anyone who loves weird shit.
Profile Image for Richard Smith.
54 reviews9 followers
February 10, 2019
There is a lot going on here...commentary on religion, government and style. Not all topics are necessarily fully developed, yet the story is satisfying and entertaining.

Imagine a place where punk lifestyles, ideals and behaviors rule. Punk Land is that place. Punks denied access to heaven are exiled to Punk Land where they spend the afterlife as they did on earth. However, in a place where everyone is punk, different is the norm. Punk is the fashion and therefore no longer punk. A government forms, rules are put in place and non-conformists are punished. Even punk paradise succumbs to the faults and foibles of an earthly society.

The story documents the activities or a band of punks who endeavor to destroy the system and return Punk Land to a place where the individual rules and intelligent anarchy is the order of the day. Along the way, the reader is subject to heavy doses of blood, sex, irony, satire and action. Individually, some of these devices can be off-putting, but collectively they really work.

In addition, the characters work well together and are likeable and genuine. The situations in which they find themselves are bizarre and violent, yet intriguing and entertaining.

The coarseness of the "Bizarro" genre and distinctiveness of Mellick's style may tempt you to put the book down before finishing it - or worse yet, prevent you from picking it up. But if you have a passion for books that go beyond the boundaries of popular fiction and offer unique styles and perspectives, then Punk Land is your next read.
Profile Image for Speakwright.
8 reviews1 follower
September 3, 2012
Punk Land is really good at being what it is. When I found Satan Burger eight years ago in Texas, it was a battered and creased, being passed around a group of friends like some sort of drug, and that's kinda what Carlton Mellick III seems to be good at. I found Punk Land yesterday in a bookstore, the shock of recognition and the memory of that clandestine relationship was so great that I purchased it immediately and read it all that evening. (I will note that it feels a little unnatural to be reading a crisp glossy copy.)

The prose has shifted from the disjointed associative language of Satan Burger to a much more sentence oriented prosey YA narrative feel. Punk Land and Satan Burger both feature good natured, or neutral child-like male narrators. They are naive, incapable of significant action and loveably twisted. They have a somewhat innocent sex drive and are deformed in some major way. Goblin, the narrator of Punk Land, is a shy recluse who in was in life a collector of dildos, and in punk heaven is physically deformed to the point that it is difficult for him to walk. Although Goblin is supposed to have graduated from college, his consciousness is more slacker adolescent. Actually, everything in these stories is deformed in some major way, and all the main characters have a strong sex-drive (except for secondary male characters perhaps?).

The neotenous male narrator is largely why the books work. They make the somewhat simplistic plot and limited explanations of absurd events, as well as the odd spelling error, believable and endearing. Both novels take place sort of tangentially in the same universe. The Walm, a soul-sucking portal between Earth and other dimensions, appears in Punk Land as a link between a now-dead earth and punk heaven. Punk Land has an unusual physical presentation in that the book design seems conspicuously inept and awkward without hindering consumption of the text. The illustrations are zine-ish and terrible. The effect pretty appealing, and eventually even has an in-text explanation. "Grammar is not punk," so book design probably isn't either.

The plot takes the shape of a traditional action/adventure Odyssey type quest, (to save the world, to restore anarchy to Punk Land) with the exception that things just sort of happen to the narrator as a result of the supporting characters, who drive the plot. Death, drug use, sex, physical deformity, and discussions of various factions of punk and skinhead culture feature heavily, but in sort of a neutral tone. The main character accepts the presence of environmental factors, but doesn't seek out sex violence or drugs or factional alliance. Hybrid female characters are the most interested in perpetrating violence and sexual molestation, male characters seem the most prone to drug abuse, potentially as a way to escape responsibility.

The physical details of Mellick's worlds are wierd, grotesque and often disgusting, which is set off against the characters' apathy towards most physical phenomena. Punk Land, which was created out of Sid Vicous' imagination when he was chosen to be the god of Punk Land, affords all kinds of opportunities for strangeness, like Pizza Cats. Other things are a result of inter-dimensional travel, or attempts to infiltrate heaven. In any case, in Punk Land, worlds are malleable and shift quickly. The proliferation of ideas reminds me of a punk version of Piers Anthony.

Some reviewers wonder if Mellick's writing is feminist. While women are the major movers and shakers, and the main male character is generally nearly powerless, the female characters are uniformly predominantly horror-core sexual and are often motivated by harming and sexually molesting males. This seems mostly like a more uncommon appeal to a certain kind of male sexuality (the kinda guy who likes torture porn and suicide girls) than feminist, but because this view is not exactly a large part of the dominant paradigm, from my perspective it's not exactly offensive, but more of an item of curiosity. Mileage will pretty certainly vary.

Mellick is one of the main participants of a genre he created which he calls Bizarro, claiming kinship to film makers like David Lynch and Jan Svankmajer, as well as a cadre (a gaggle, a mosh?) of less iconic writers and a few presses. Mellick is not widely published outside of his own Eraserhead Press, but has published nearly 50 of his own books as well as the work of a smallish group of likeminded writers. Mellick says Bizarro has been shunned by libraries and bookstores, part of that reason may be because the content isn't likely to appeal to librarians, and there is no bookstore discount. Volumes are print-on-demand and non-returnable. This makes a sighting of an Eraserhead Press book in an actual bookstore (Bindlestiff Books, Philadelphia) unlikely and delightful.

Having an inefficient business model = punk. (But seriously, there's at least an attempt at pretty interesting marketing strategies behind the books, Mellick has or had something called the Avant Punk Army in which readers who want to promote the books gain points for actions. I tried half-heardedly to look into it, but it took me to Myspace, so I stopped.)

:)
65 reviews2 followers
October 8, 2022
Probably my least favorite Mellick book that I’ve read.

It’s short, but it was a slog, and it took me a bit to realize what my issue was. My issue is that the main protagonist, Goblin, is too passive. He doesn’t move the story along, the story moves him along and that’s boring.

There’s also the fact that the climax doesn’t feel climatic. It fizzles.

The cover looks good though.
Profile Image for David Barbee.
Author 18 books88 followers
November 20, 2008
I don't really consider this to be a sequel to Satan Burger, even though that's technically what it is. It's more of a bizarro espionage story with loads of famous punks and punk culture thrown in for flavor. And what flavor is it? I think its raspberry mixed with sewage mud. Delicioso.
40 reviews
January 20, 2025
One of the times a follow up surpasses the original! I guess you don’t technically have to read Satan Burger to read this one but I think you might miss out on things if you don’t. This is the story of the place punks go when then die and is a fantastic example of CM3 traits as an author. Crazy, obscene, ridiculous but also makes you think
Profile Image for Jonathan.
Author 13 books45 followers
September 4, 2013
I adored "Satan Burger," "The Baby Jesus Butt Plug," "The Haunted Vagina," "Sausagey Santa," and "Ocean of Lard," but for some reason this one just didn't tickle my fancy quite the same way. Honestly, I was a bit disappointed. Great ideas and images, occasionally funny, but there wasn't much of a narrative thrust. I think the problem here was that the many ideas going into it didn't come together quite so well--it might have worked better had the ideas been distributed into several different books, each one with a tighter focus. Often it seems like it is trying to tie as many great ideas in as possible, but the result is that all of them mean less. Take the Pizzza Cat. It's very funny. Unfortunately, it comes and goes and doesn't matter in the least. Or what of the Robot Stripper? One of the times I laughed hardest in the book was on the page regarding the "RULES OF THE ROBOT STRIPPER." But the Robot Stripper was there in the background for one chapter, then gone, with no real meaning. Essentially, by packing as many ideas as possible into Punk Land, few of them end up having any importance to the plot. They're just there as visual, conceptual, or comedic detours, rarely being particularly necessary. However, I wouldn't argue that they shouldn't have been cut, because the detours were some of my favorite parts in the book.

The main plotline, of course, deals with the disintegration of Punk Land as it becomes an increasingly fascist afterlife, and the ways in which it becomes fascist are ridiculous and fitting. It's a reasonable enough plot that takes a little while to get going--too much time is spent at the gates of Punk Land, with our "heroes" doing very little. Once we meet Six things speed up and go nuts and just get much better, but the slow beginning was hard to get through. The ending, too, left me with more questions than answers, and I didn't feel completely satisfied. I honestly found it all too easy to switch to reading other books, so it took me longer to finish this than it should have.

I think another problem I had was that I wasn't quite into any of the characters. Morte & Nan are of course funny quirky sorts, but practically nothing is done with them. Six is awesome and fun in that "violent fetishistic psychobitch" way that is common with Mellick's female characters, but doesn't really show up until well into the first half. I found Goblin to be a somewhat boring narrator, even though he had a cool look to him and had a funny dildo fetish. I don't know how to explain it--I just didn't like his personality, I guess. Kudos, though, for the first sentence of Scene 2, regarding why Goblin got kicked out of heaven. That alone made the book worth reading.

In the end, it's not one of Mellick's best, but I still recommend it to fans of him or Bizarro in general, especially those who are interested in all things Punk. I'll definitely reread certain parts of it.
Profile Image for Zoe.
Author 50 books68 followers
March 17, 2008
Imagine a place which exists somewhere between Heaven and hell, a land where punks have erected their own afterlife rather than try to get along in Heaven. Goblin is a guard who works at the main gate of Punk Land, and yet, no one has visited the security station or entered Punk Land in some time. So Goblin is surprised to find two people who arrive not through the gate, but from within Punk Land itself. And they have many more shocking revelations which Goblin decides must be put before the Punk Council.

During the trip through Punk Land, Goblin begins to understand that something has gone horribly wrong, and instead of anarchy, Punk Land is being ruled by corporate goons.

Then with the entry of Shark Girl into the story, the real horror show begins. Between Shark Girl and the actions of the Punk Council, this book makes the afterlife seem very unpleasant. Because once you accept that you can feel pain in the afterlife, the concept of being eternally shredded on a giant metal grater is pretty gruesome. And this is just one of the nasty surprises waiting for you in this book. If you're looking for a good Bizarro book with a lot of gore and laughs in equal portions, I'd recommend this book.
Profile Image for Zefyr.
264 reviews17 followers
November 3, 2015
Upon entering Noid, the atmosphere goes from peaceful nature sounds to blisteringly loud Oi! music attacking from twenty different directions.

"Now
this is Punk Land!" Nan says.

The city is much different than it was just a year ago. It has become a giant mosh pit. Skinheads and punks running through the streets punching and slamming each other. Oi! bands are playing everywhere and it's sometimes hard to distinguish between the band members and the audience. Perhaps half of the crowd are bands...And everyone is yelling, "Oi! Oi! Oi! Punk Rock and shit!" and shit.


If this sounds like a waste of time for you, it probably will be. If this sounds in any way appealing even if only on grounds of absurdity and fondness for bizarro shit, hey, maybe it'll appeal. It's like a better than average longform zine. I enjoyed it, I think. It was silly?
Author 52 books151 followers
May 27, 2014
Hanging With GG Allin In The Afterlife

Where do people like GG Allin go when they die? Punk Land, of course. It's like heaven, except for punks. And some of those punks may have talking dildo babies. And some of those punks may actually be human-shark hybrid assassins. Basically, this is a rad concept made better by goofing around with punk culture and punk lore, and by adding in a helping of cool characters and their weird pets/babies.
Profile Image for Nathan.
100 reviews4 followers
April 5, 2015
After reading this, I feel like CM3 wanted to write a Dummy's Guide to Punk just for the ironic satisfaction that such an effort would give. This work is an allegory for the commercialisation of popular revolution and the corruption of order-seeking hierarchy. It is a reinterpretation of the classic Crass song "Punk Is Dead". And it has the protagonist throwing dildos at God and punk icons. This is fun all around.
Profile Image for Dustin.
186 reviews
Want to read
July 10, 2012
Sequal to Satan Burger... It was part of a four book series called Brave New World, which also featured Virtual Light by William Gibson, City Come A Walkin by John Shirley, and Tea from an Empty Cup by Pat Cadigan. [note]
Profile Image for Jorge Palacios.
7 reviews1 follower
April 13, 2016
The sequel to Satan Burger is even funnier than it's predecesor. It's full of artwork, which makes the read even more surreal, and the humor and stakes rise and are off the chart in this one. One of my favorite books ever!
8 reviews2 followers
April 7, 2008
If you like punk rock. You will like this book.
6 reviews
July 18, 2009
Quite disappointing. The prose was weak; a forced sequel to the above average 'Satan's Burger'. Mostly, the type face made the novel feel even cheaper than it's cover promises.
Profile Image for Thomas Flynn.
50 reviews6 followers
August 30, 2009
The kind-of sort-of sequel to "Satan Burger," which I also loved. Much more of an engaging adventure. With shark girls.
Profile Image for Sean.
26 reviews
April 19, 2010
...threw a dildo @ God...my dildo's 'bruise never healed and probably never will. As if damage caused by God is eternal...'

Nice God.

Three stars so far.
Profile Image for Timb.
68 reviews4 followers
August 27, 2015
this was the worst book about a guy getting kicked out of heaven for throwing a dildo at God that I have ever read.
Profile Image for Michaela.
25 reviews2 followers
November 20, 2016
Completely insane and ridiculous but very enjoyable (especially if you're familiar with the different genres of punk culture).
Profile Image for Andrew Schultheis.
80 reviews20 followers
December 28, 2021
This book was impossibly dumb, it made me smile a lot. First Mellick, looking forward to reading more.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews

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