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Prison Pit #1-6
Prison Pit: The Complete Collection
Prison Pit is a planet full of repugnant intergalactic criminals, drug-filled slugs, and now Cannibal F***face (CF). From 2009 to 2018, the crudely manic pen and mind of Johnny Ryan documented the mayhem and mutation as CF loses his arm to a vile beast, replaces it with a symbiotic bug that gives him a steroid-like jolt, and seeks grisly revenge against any and all creatures that get in his way. To find his way out he must do battle with his arch-enemy Slitt, the only one who knows how to escape the hellscape they inhabit. Finally, CF is pitted against the very system that shaped him into the avatar of death and destruction he has become.
736 pages, Hardcover
First published July 1, 2020
5 people are currently reading
212 people want to read
About the author
Johnny Ryan
96 books81 followersJohn F. Ryan IV (born November 30, 1970, in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American comics creator, writer, and animator. In a throwback to the days of underground comix, Ryan's oeuvre is generally an attempt to be as shocking and politically incorrect as possible.
Ryan started his career self-publishing Angry Youth Comix, a series of eleven mini-comic issues from 1994 to 1998. In 1998, he began showing his work to Peter Bagge, creator of Hate comics, who introduced the material to Eric Reynolds of Fantagraphics. In 2001, Fantagraphics began publishing volume 2 of the series.
Among Ryan's creations there are the comic strip Blecky Yuckerella and the comic book series Prison Pit.
In animation, Ryan has worked as story editor for the Looney Tuness and co-created the Nickelodeon show Pig Goat Banana Cricket with Dave Cooper. Ryan and Cooper have collaborated on a number of comics as well, usually under the pen name 'Hector Mumbly'.
Ryan's illustrations have appeared in MAD, LA Weekly, National Geographic Kids, Hustler Magazine, The Stranger, and elsewhere. Ryan has also done work for clients such as Nobleworks greetings cards, Rhino Records, and Fox TV. His comics have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese and French.
Ryan started his career self-publishing Angry Youth Comix, a series of eleven mini-comic issues from 1994 to 1998. In 1998, he began showing his work to Peter Bagge, creator of Hate comics, who introduced the material to Eric Reynolds of Fantagraphics. In 2001, Fantagraphics began publishing volume 2 of the series.
Among Ryan's creations there are the comic strip Blecky Yuckerella and the comic book series Prison Pit.
In animation, Ryan has worked as story editor for the Looney Tuness and co-created the Nickelodeon show Pig Goat Banana Cricket with Dave Cooper. Ryan and Cooper have collaborated on a number of comics as well, usually under the pen name 'Hector Mumbly'.
Ryan's illustrations have appeared in MAD, LA Weekly, National Geographic Kids, Hustler Magazine, The Stranger, and elsewhere. Ryan has also done work for clients such as Nobleworks greetings cards, Rhino Records, and Fox TV. His comics have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese and French.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 82 reviews
August 22, 2020
What the fuck did I just read?
October 7, 2020
An ultraviolent, punishing tale of toxic masculinity, literalized by never-ending violence (often genital) depicted graphically throughout the text. Ryan unleashes what a lot of other comic storytellers repress, and he takes glee in the possibility of artistic gore, monstrosity and lyrical violence, reminiscent of film directors like Quentin Tarantino or John Carpenter -- and then some.
It’s a NC-17 book that no trigger warning could ever contain. It takes glee in gore; and it’s quite funny, albeit juvenile in the constant return to d*ck jokes that become a crutch even if -- in a bizarre way -- they are crucial to the “plot.” And in a book like this, maybe readers wouldn’t care about the plot. But it does work well. The story is bare boned and intensely focused on survival and escape, infusing the familiar prison breakout scenario with an alien planet to allow Ryan’s imagination to run wild. The protagonist is a prisoner attempting to survive on an alien planet rife with bad boy monstrosities who keep getting in his way. He uses brutality and might (and occasionally his wit, which is probably more accurately defined as his RAGE) in ways that adapt to ever-evolving situations which mount weirdly (especially as his body adapts to the environment, embracing change as strength) until he finally faces a phalanx of imaginary monsters before confronting the ultimate prison boss in an all-out climax of volcanic violence. If movies like Kill Bill and stories like Battle Royale were put into an underground comic, set in space, and directed under the influence of a dangerous eightball laced with experimental synthetics and cut with Viagra, you’d get Prison Pit. It’s a gloriously deranged, perverse run.
And run it is, for it is a fast read, despite the lengthy page count in the wonderfully bound hardcover edition. It’s fun to race through the chapters without having to wait for individual issues to come out, and to think about the story arc as a whole. The book is such a raw and violent affair that it seems silly to even try to make meaning out of it beyond just the emotional experience of rage-against-the-proverbial-machine that it dramatizes. It could be a Freudian masterpiece, or a clever gender parody of masculine excess and desire via body horror... or maybe it’s just pure provocative pulp for juvenile boys who would titter at images of demonic pricks and fanged vulva. (If even that description offends you, then do shield your eyes from this book). I prefer to think of it as an experiment in expression through the grotesque, with the artist pushing himself to see how far he can go with the art when there is so little else to motivate things narratively.
I ultimately enjoyed it for the art and the numerous surprise “escapes from the jaws of death” it depicted along the way. Ryan gets very clever with scenes that have his protagonist, Cannibal F*ckface, literally chew his way out of predicaments, but in the end, the storylines got far too rapey for my taste. Nevertheless, I really liked the general "underground comic" vibe of the book and it’s flouting of taste for the sake of artistic freedom -- it nostalgically took me back to a mental place I haven't visited for quite awhile, and it even inspired me to put more oomph into a story I'm working on myself. The excess and exuberant extremes in this story are a fun wave to ride...even if it's a tide of blood and scat and alien android excrement. The provocative all-out bizarro approach of Ryan's comic book story is a thing to behold. It reads like a thousand page fist fight with intense narrative punch here and there (things "click" into place a lot as you discover more and more about this alien world as you go), a few moments of artistic brilliance (scenes of “transformation” beg you to savor the line art, which transcends the "meaning" of the story), a number of laugh out loud moments (sometimes at the genuinely funny "joke"; but more often at Ryan's incessant audacity of going over the top with a bit), and a superior sense of story structure (abstract shapes open and close many chapters, and though scenes kind of happen accidentally as the character stumbles around an alien planet, the art structurally holds it all together in a coherent way). It's impressive that Ryan can take something audacious and push it to an extreme you won't always predict. I admire his talent for going for the gross-out, and depicting it all-so-well, in bare-boned black-and-white.
It’s a NC-17 book that no trigger warning could ever contain. It takes glee in gore; and it’s quite funny, albeit juvenile in the constant return to d*ck jokes that become a crutch even if -- in a bizarre way -- they are crucial to the “plot.” And in a book like this, maybe readers wouldn’t care about the plot. But it does work well. The story is bare boned and intensely focused on survival and escape, infusing the familiar prison breakout scenario with an alien planet to allow Ryan’s imagination to run wild. The protagonist is a prisoner attempting to survive on an alien planet rife with bad boy monstrosities who keep getting in his way. He uses brutality and might (and occasionally his wit, which is probably more accurately defined as his RAGE) in ways that adapt to ever-evolving situations which mount weirdly (especially as his body adapts to the environment, embracing change as strength) until he finally faces a phalanx of imaginary monsters before confronting the ultimate prison boss in an all-out climax of volcanic violence. If movies like Kill Bill and stories like Battle Royale were put into an underground comic, set in space, and directed under the influence of a dangerous eightball laced with experimental synthetics and cut with Viagra, you’d get Prison Pit. It’s a gloriously deranged, perverse run.
And run it is, for it is a fast read, despite the lengthy page count in the wonderfully bound hardcover edition. It’s fun to race through the chapters without having to wait for individual issues to come out, and to think about the story arc as a whole. The book is such a raw and violent affair that it seems silly to even try to make meaning out of it beyond just the emotional experience of rage-against-the-proverbial-machine that it dramatizes. It could be a Freudian masterpiece, or a clever gender parody of masculine excess and desire via body horror... or maybe it’s just pure provocative pulp for juvenile boys who would titter at images of demonic pricks and fanged vulva. (If even that description offends you, then do shield your eyes from this book). I prefer to think of it as an experiment in expression through the grotesque, with the artist pushing himself to see how far he can go with the art when there is so little else to motivate things narratively.
I ultimately enjoyed it for the art and the numerous surprise “escapes from the jaws of death” it depicted along the way. Ryan gets very clever with scenes that have his protagonist, Cannibal F*ckface, literally chew his way out of predicaments, but in the end, the storylines got far too rapey for my taste. Nevertheless, I really liked the general "underground comic" vibe of the book and it’s flouting of taste for the sake of artistic freedom -- it nostalgically took me back to a mental place I haven't visited for quite awhile, and it even inspired me to put more oomph into a story I'm working on myself. The excess and exuberant extremes in this story are a fun wave to ride...even if it's a tide of blood and scat and alien android excrement. The provocative all-out bizarro approach of Ryan's comic book story is a thing to behold. It reads like a thousand page fist fight with intense narrative punch here and there (things "click" into place a lot as you discover more and more about this alien world as you go), a few moments of artistic brilliance (scenes of “transformation” beg you to savor the line art, which transcends the "meaning" of the story), a number of laugh out loud moments (sometimes at the genuinely funny "joke"; but more often at Ryan's incessant audacity of going over the top with a bit), and a superior sense of story structure (abstract shapes open and close many chapters, and though scenes kind of happen accidentally as the character stumbles around an alien planet, the art structurally holds it all together in a coherent way). It's impressive that Ryan can take something audacious and push it to an extreme you won't always predict. I admire his talent for going for the gross-out, and depicting it all-so-well, in bare-boned black-and-white.
January 20, 2021
no bros. no mercy. complete and total slaughter
April 23, 2023
«Безумный Макс» на стероидах. Сомневался, ставить ли пять звезд, так как местами было слишком омерзительно. Но потом прочитал унылого «Ронина»— и понял насколько Райан крутой.
August 30, 2020
A three pound black and white brick of pure nihilistic violence. An overwhelming, near indescribable work of never ending destruction, nightmarish alien sexual mutations, oceans of bodily fluids, severed limbs and tentacles, and crystalline, giant-cocked space monsters.
The Metal Machine Music of comics.
The Metal Machine Music of comics.
August 8, 2020
It's hard to rate something this intentionally brutal, but I love Prison Pit, so why not?
I'm still not a huge Johnny Ryan fan (working on it), but Larry Reid at the Fantagraphics Store in Seattle recommended Prison Pit to me, knowing my love of Gary Panter and Rory Hayes, and as usual, Larry was right. Prison Pit reads like a bastard child of Panter's Jimbo comics, the Adult Swim cartoon Superjail, and the Sisyphean hyper-violent comics of the 1990s that seem to invariably be coated in gore at geometrically increasing levels every issue. I adore every glorious panel, laugh throughout at our delicately named protagonist Cannibal Fuckface, and thought the ending (which I'd never read before this edition) was tonally and conceptually perfect in every possible way. The fat hardcover isn't as annoying as many fat comics hardcover due to its slightly smaller than normal size, which was a nice plus as well, though unlike most Fantagraphics hardcovers it's glued, not stitched. Though I hope it's clear this isn't for the delicate or the easily offended, it is a very good comic.
I'm still not a huge Johnny Ryan fan (working on it), but Larry Reid at the Fantagraphics Store in Seattle recommended Prison Pit to me, knowing my love of Gary Panter and Rory Hayes, and as usual, Larry was right. Prison Pit reads like a bastard child of Panter's Jimbo comics, the Adult Swim cartoon Superjail, and the Sisyphean hyper-violent comics of the 1990s that seem to invariably be coated in gore at geometrically increasing levels every issue. I adore every glorious panel, laugh throughout at our delicately named protagonist Cannibal Fuckface, and thought the ending (which I'd never read before this edition) was tonally and conceptually perfect in every possible way. The fat hardcover isn't as annoying as many fat comics hardcover due to its slightly smaller than normal size, which was a nice plus as well, though unlike most Fantagraphics hardcovers it's glued, not stitched. Though I hope it's clear this isn't for the delicate or the easily offended, it is a very good comic.
November 16, 2023
Yeah just not my kind of thing. Enjoyable artwork, had a very doodle like style that you could see your friend back in middle school drawing with. But most of its disturbing imagery just went a bit too far for me, and there were a few other things that just turned me off.
On one hand, I don't know what else I was expecting from a comic called Prison Pit, and perhaps I'm just not the right audience for it. I don't think this is something that should be censored or anything like that, I think works like this are important to be explored and expressed.
But I also don't think that means that this deserves a higher rating. An interesting deep dive in some crazy imagery nevertheless.
On one hand, I don't know what else I was expecting from a comic called Prison Pit, and perhaps I'm just not the right audience for it. I don't think this is something that should be censored or anything like that, I think works like this are important to be explored and expressed.
But I also don't think that means that this deserves a higher rating. An interesting deep dive in some crazy imagery nevertheless.
March 6, 2022
☠️💫💥☄️🔥🌪🔪🧨🔫🌀
August 9, 2021
Prison Pit is professor challenger drilling into the earth just to make it scream. This is a world where the only foreseeable future is total annihilation all of the time, forever.
June 1, 2022
This utterly profane, depraved sci-fi graphic novel revels in bodily fluids, violence, violent bodily fluids, cannibalism, cannibalism victims bursting out of their attackers’ bodies, more violence, violent sex, dismemberment, and more bodily fluids. The plot, such as it is, concerns Cannibal Fuckface’s attempt to escape the titular prison pit and get revenge on his jailer. Along the way he fights every monster Johnny Ryan can conjure from his imagination, getting chewed up, spit out and… well other things I won’t describe here. This book is a lot of fun; Ryan’s loose drawing style is charming and keeps the narrative moving from gore puddle to gore puddle with minimal exposition. It’s recommended for fans of sleaze, gore, sleazy gore, and sleazy, gory sci-fi revenge stories.
February 28, 2022
I’m handing out Trigger Warnings like candy, along with a fairly high rating for this steaming pile of puke-fest pages. If you are at all the least bit insulted by anything gross…this putrid pulsing purple piss-pizza of a graphic novel is not for you. But if you care to leave any concerns about taste or decency at the door, and you don’t expect what’s beyond the door to have any meaning at all, then come on in and see everything disgusting you could possibly imagine, because you don’t have to imagine it any more.
What is this graphic novel. I dunno. What do I say? It’s like the author/artist dropped Planet Hulk in a meat grinder, and got his hand caught in there too. And his testicles. I don’t know. What do you want me to say. I can’t believe I’m giving this 4 stars, as vomitorium reading.
Not recommended for kids, or anyone going to church this week. And if you ever see this book for sale at a church book sale, then hurry up and get the police to investigate, if you want to bother with that before the impending apocalypse.
What is this graphic novel. I dunno. What do I say? It’s like the author/artist dropped Planet Hulk in a meat grinder, and got his hand caught in there too. And his testicles. I don’t know. What do you want me to say. I can’t believe I’m giving this 4 stars, as vomitorium reading.
Not recommended for kids, or anyone going to church this week. And if you ever see this book for sale at a church book sale, then hurry up and get the police to investigate, if you want to bother with that before the impending apocalypse.
November 12, 2023
prison pit is relentless in its near plotless violence and dedication to savagery. it's nihilistic and brutal, with a focus on violence as sexuality, the weaponizing of the phallus, body fluids, guts, and teeth. it's a deeply freudian look at masculinity and at the death urge, dressed up in a mad max cum brawl in cell block 99 costume with crude pen and ink art that only reflects the thematic crudity. it can be summed up by a line of dialogue from protagonist Cannibal Fuckface in the final chapter: "NO BROS. NO MERCY. TOTAL SLAUGHTER."
reread: yeah. still awesome. a reflection of the brutality of a carceral state that moves in the direction of total violence. when justice looks like crime how can you tell the difference between the two? you cannot. there is only kill kill kill.
reread: yeah. still awesome. a reflection of the brutality of a carceral state that moves in the direction of total violence. when justice looks like crime how can you tell the difference between the two? you cannot. there is only kill kill kill.
August 22, 2020
One of the best books I've read this year. It's very short on plot, but that isn't the point of this book. It's about the journey of violence and all the crazy idea's Johnny can come up with along the way. Every time you think it's gone as far as it can, it goes either further. If you're looking for just a gross out orgy of blood and piss, this is the book for you.
September 11, 2020
Yeah dude
September 18, 2020
Brutish, juvenile, ugly... and also great! A gory sci-fi schlock delight, it’s quite nasty
March 29, 2021
It's like someone took a scan of my 13 year-old brain and materialized all its darkest fascinations into a single comic book. Admittedly, it's far from being great, but I'm sure glad it exists.
May 14, 2021
I'm not on remotely enough drugs to appreciate what Johnny Ryan was trying to accomplish here. But if I was, I imagine I'd only give this two stars instead of one.
September 15, 2021
How could anyone come up with anything like this ?
January 3, 2024
At first, it thought Prison Pit: The Complete Collection was supposed to be disruptive and provocative, trying to challenge excessive and unnecessary social norms, but it skewed more towards being grotesque in a Rabelaisian manner than being anything particularly rebellious.
Visually, it was certainly compelling; scatological, and distinctly erotic/corporeal. But the content, and display of these visuals, might leave a distasteful impression in your mouth (semi-pun intended).
Cannibal Fuckface’s unwavering determine, sometimes astonishingly, is nonetheless impressive.
Visually, it was certainly compelling; scatological, and distinctly erotic/corporeal. But the content, and display of these visuals, might leave a distasteful impression in your mouth (semi-pun intended).
Cannibal Fuckface’s unwavering determine, sometimes astonishingly, is nonetheless impressive.
Read
August 12, 2024Gloriously stupid. The adventures of Fuckface, who is part-Wolverine, part-Achilles, but mostly he's just the dumb asshole you try really hard to stay away from at the other end of the bar. To call this work hyper-violent is really not quite getting the point home. Lots of chuckles and at least everyone whose guts are churned by so many medieval and alien instruments are also stupid assholes on a nameless prison planet. It ends the only the way it could end... not with a whimper, but with a bang.
November 30, 2023
3.5 stars.
Gets a bit repetitive at around the 500 page mark but, DAMN! This shit is as punk rock as comics get!
Gets a bit repetitive at around the 500 page mark but, DAMN! This shit is as punk rock as comics get!
May 1, 2019
Потрясающе! Лучший масс-маркет нобрейн 18+ проект, переведённый на русский. Насилие, секс, убийства, убийства через насилие! Ааааааа
Аааааааввввв
Аааааааввввв
August 19, 2020
Prison Pit is the Pink Flamingos of comic books. John Waters would be so proud.
December 23, 2020
When I started reading this I wondered if it was good for my soul.
Then I realised it was exactly what my soul needed.
Just great. Disgusting. Perverted. But great.
Then I realised it was exactly what my soul needed.
Just great. Disgusting. Perverted. But great.
January 3, 2021
This is Art. Filled with violence and gore, plus some really messed up stuff. It was a quick read for several hundred pages in less than an hour.
March 10, 2021
Gross and juvenile. Strong recommend.
Read
August 9, 2021The hell just happened
Read
July 30, 2023Wholesome ☺️
September 28, 2021
"Ahhh! Your cum... It's killing me... Ahhh!!" is what the villain of Prison Pit screams as his body is disintegrated by our hero's toxic orgasm. I think Johnny Ryan expected that to be gross, or problematic, or funny. Instead, like the rest of Prison Pit, it is just really dull.
Our protagonist, an Orc-like brute called Cannibal Fuckface, brutally mauls and rapes his enemies, then mauls and rapes them again after dark, cosmic magic mutates their corpses into more garish and deadly forms. This happens over and over again, for more than 700 pages, then the book ends.
Johnny Ryan has scrounged the dark recesses of his mind for anything controversial and gross that he can throw at the reader. Unfortunately, he ran out of new concepts at about page 6. Shit, piss, jizz, rape, cocks, vaginas, swastikas, and racial and homophobic slurs are smeared across every page, like faeces on the wall of a public toilet. It's juvenile, and whoever did it obviously thought it was very funny, even though it's not.
It's that very 2000s brand of wilfully ignorant, fuck-you-Mum, controversial humour loved by crusty, fourteen-year-olds. Think of a particularly vile episode of South Park, except without the humour or the clever satire. I wish I could say that it offended me, at least then I would have felt something. Instead I was just bored. On page 100, a gremlin creature was jerking itself off so that it could make a war-golem out of it's own splooge. Reading it, I felt only apathy. Trust me, it sounds more interesting than it actually is. Prison Pit is like watching a child mash action figures against each other, except they're all covered in poo, which I guess is meant to make it funny.
Is Prison Pit weird? Yeah. Is it something my Granny wouldn't like? It would make her scream. Was it substantial enough to sustain my interest across 700 pages? Nah.
The artwork consists of crass, black and white drawings that recall the strange monsters a weird kid scrawls in the margins of their math's textbook. And as a former weird kid myself, that is something I could appreciate. I really liked some of Ryan's characters and panels. There was some striking visuals and creative design work. It is what originally attracted me to the series. The quality of these drawings, however, was by no means consistent. At times, the art is quite lazy, with some panels being cramped and unintelligible, whilst others feel sparse and unfinished. Some of the characters' movements feel flat and unconvincing. If you are interested in this book for the art, check out the twisted works of Tetsunori Tawaraya. His work is similar but better.
Even the best of the art was not enough to compensate for the eye-rolling writing, nor the repetitive story. Writing the word "faggot" is not really subversive, punk, or interesting, despite what Johnny Ryan may have thought.
This book should have been a fun read, but it wasn't. Save yourself the money and watch your dog take a shit - you'll get as much out of it as you will reading this book.
Our protagonist, an Orc-like brute called Cannibal Fuckface, brutally mauls and rapes his enemies, then mauls and rapes them again after dark, cosmic magic mutates their corpses into more garish and deadly forms. This happens over and over again, for more than 700 pages, then the book ends.
Johnny Ryan has scrounged the dark recesses of his mind for anything controversial and gross that he can throw at the reader. Unfortunately, he ran out of new concepts at about page 6. Shit, piss, jizz, rape, cocks, vaginas, swastikas, and racial and homophobic slurs are smeared across every page, like faeces on the wall of a public toilet. It's juvenile, and whoever did it obviously thought it was very funny, even though it's not.
It's that very 2000s brand of wilfully ignorant, fuck-you-Mum, controversial humour loved by crusty, fourteen-year-olds. Think of a particularly vile episode of South Park, except without the humour or the clever satire. I wish I could say that it offended me, at least then I would have felt something. Instead I was just bored. On page 100, a gremlin creature was jerking itself off so that it could make a war-golem out of it's own splooge. Reading it, I felt only apathy. Trust me, it sounds more interesting than it actually is. Prison Pit is like watching a child mash action figures against each other, except they're all covered in poo, which I guess is meant to make it funny.
Is Prison Pit weird? Yeah. Is it something my Granny wouldn't like? It would make her scream. Was it substantial enough to sustain my interest across 700 pages? Nah.
The artwork consists of crass, black and white drawings that recall the strange monsters a weird kid scrawls in the margins of their math's textbook. And as a former weird kid myself, that is something I could appreciate. I really liked some of Ryan's characters and panels. There was some striking visuals and creative design work. It is what originally attracted me to the series. The quality of these drawings, however, was by no means consistent. At times, the art is quite lazy, with some panels being cramped and unintelligible, whilst others feel sparse and unfinished. Some of the characters' movements feel flat and unconvincing. If you are interested in this book for the art, check out the twisted works of Tetsunori Tawaraya. His work is similar but better.
Even the best of the art was not enough to compensate for the eye-rolling writing, nor the repetitive story. Writing the word "faggot" is not really subversive, punk, or interesting, despite what Johnny Ryan may have thought.
This book should have been a fun read, but it wasn't. Save yourself the money and watch your dog take a shit - you'll get as much out of it as you will reading this book.
April 5, 2024
Aboard a prison spaceship, a prisoner is thrown into a pit (that’s basically a portal to another world) and must survive in a harsh landscape filled with killers. Insane amounts of gore and violence ensue!
Johnny Ryan’s comics are very, very crass - gloriously so! - with Prison Pit being perhaps the epitome of his style. It’s extremely gross in content and childish in tone but also undeniably imaginative, often compelling and totally unique.
I’ll give you an idea of what to expect: the chapters have titles like Fucked, Mega-Fucked and The Unfuckening; the storylines involve such noble quests as raping a monster and getting drugs; the characters have names like Fuckface, Undigestible Scrotum and The Holocaust Brothers; and the dialogue has Shakespearean-esque nuggets like “I’m gonna split you in half and wear your lungs as underpants” and “If you want it, you’ll have to rip it out of my cold, dead crotch slime.”
Delightful, no?
The storyline is basically the protagonist Fuckface horrifically killing one group of scumbags after another, which sounds mind-numbingly stupid and boring - but it’s not. Ryan draws it all in such creative ways that the repetitiveness remains surprisingly fresh throughout. One character masturbates until he has enough jizz to surround himself with it and it becomes a sentient monster-armour; one of the ships is powered by having sex with it; one character relaxes by having catjaculate pumped straight to his veins. It’s sheer lunacy but you can’t call it derivative!
Ryan put out this series in six volumes from 2009 to 2018 and I remember reading the first three books years ago and really enjoying them. No idea why I stopped but when I saw this book, which collects all six volumes, I had to check it out and I was pleasantly surprised to see it still holds up.
It does go on a bit too long, which is really noticeable in this collected edition, but even at 736 pages, it’s a fast read - Ryan does not do lengthy dialogue and much of the book is a constant stream of wordless, demented fighting. It is also a bit one-note after a spell, regardless of the clever ways Ryan has Fuckface kill his foes, and the story is about as deep as a puddle so I was ready for the book to end long before it did. It has a great ending though - very fitting for such a psychotic narrative!
Johnny Ryan’s schoolboy-ish humour isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but I think the guy is brilliant and makes some fantastic comics - he’s a true original. The series might’ve gone on for too long but there’s plenty of great stuff in here to make reading the whole wonderful mess an entertaining experience - so long as you’re not squeamish and don’t mind the silliness of it all. If you ever wanted to read a Jim Woodring comic written by Beavis and Butt-Head, check out Prison Pit!
Johnny Ryan’s comics are very, very crass - gloriously so! - with Prison Pit being perhaps the epitome of his style. It’s extremely gross in content and childish in tone but also undeniably imaginative, often compelling and totally unique.
I’ll give you an idea of what to expect: the chapters have titles like Fucked, Mega-Fucked and The Unfuckening; the storylines involve such noble quests as raping a monster and getting drugs; the characters have names like Fuckface, Undigestible Scrotum and The Holocaust Brothers; and the dialogue has Shakespearean-esque nuggets like “I’m gonna split you in half and wear your lungs as underpants” and “If you want it, you’ll have to rip it out of my cold, dead crotch slime.”
Delightful, no?
The storyline is basically the protagonist Fuckface horrifically killing one group of scumbags after another, which sounds mind-numbingly stupid and boring - but it’s not. Ryan draws it all in such creative ways that the repetitiveness remains surprisingly fresh throughout. One character masturbates until he has enough jizz to surround himself with it and it becomes a sentient monster-armour; one of the ships is powered by having sex with it; one character relaxes by having catjaculate pumped straight to his veins. It’s sheer lunacy but you can’t call it derivative!
Ryan put out this series in six volumes from 2009 to 2018 and I remember reading the first three books years ago and really enjoying them. No idea why I stopped but when I saw this book, which collects all six volumes, I had to check it out and I was pleasantly surprised to see it still holds up.
It does go on a bit too long, which is really noticeable in this collected edition, but even at 736 pages, it’s a fast read - Ryan does not do lengthy dialogue and much of the book is a constant stream of wordless, demented fighting. It is also a bit one-note after a spell, regardless of the clever ways Ryan has Fuckface kill his foes, and the story is about as deep as a puddle so I was ready for the book to end long before it did. It has a great ending though - very fitting for such a psychotic narrative!
Johnny Ryan’s schoolboy-ish humour isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but I think the guy is brilliant and makes some fantastic comics - he’s a true original. The series might’ve gone on for too long but there’s plenty of great stuff in here to make reading the whole wonderful mess an entertaining experience - so long as you’re not squeamish and don’t mind the silliness of it all. If you ever wanted to read a Jim Woodring comic written by Beavis and Butt-Head, check out Prison Pit!
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