Below Ambition

Megg, Mogg & Owl #7

by Simon Hanselmann

Megg and Werewolf Jones are Horse Mania. Horse Mania is a test of the audience’s patience, proudly the “worst band in town,” without any ambition to make it. Join the musicians as they battle through shoddy, distracted practice sessions, a squalid house show, and a doomed interstate tour. Watch as they drunkenly flail through their sets amidst toothaches, nervous breakdowns, suicide attempts, mounting hatred, and a galaxy of benzos. This is music and performance in its most primal, multifaceted, and pure form. Feel the tension. See the dirty looks. Taste the pain. Smell the depravity. Hear the veiled beauty. Horse Mania wants you to lose your mind.
Below Ambition is a meditation on youth, performance, and memory as only Simon Hanselmann, the best comedic writer in comics, is capable of. The book will also include a flexidisc single by Horse Mania, "Stick It In for the Ambient", which is tipped into the front cover for easy removal and play.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Humor, Music, Comedy

176 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 8, 2022

About the author

Simon Hanselmann is an Australian-born cartoonist best known for his Megg, Mogg, and Owl series. Hanselmann has been nominated four times for an Ignatz Award, four times for an Eisner Award, once for the Harvey Award and won Best Series at Angouleme 2018.

Reviews

[Sam Quixote · Rating 4 out of 5]

Megg and Werewolf Jones are - Horse Mania! The worst band in the world! Follow their incompetent shows that test the audience’s patience as they perform in back gardens and dive bars and take on the local music scene, heckling other bands’ performances and sabotaging their merch tables! Will they ever make it - find fame and fortune through their art? Of course not. They’re garbage. Horse Mania! Aoow!

Simon Hanselmann’s back with another great comic, Below Ambition. I was gonna say “another great Megg and Mogg comic” but Mogg’s outta town in this one and only appears briefly in a flashback story near the end, so this is the first Megg and Mogg book sans Mogg, but it’s fine - the star of the show, as ever, is the delightful derelict Werewolf “I’m not raping her. We’re a band” Jones.

Hanselmann’s made funnier comics but this book still has some laffs. I loved Mike the Wizard’s enthusiasm - he’s the band’s biggest/only fan - and the stuff Jones writes on the co-headlining band Urban Plannerz’s records is so silly but undeniably funny. I enjoyed how shitty they are to other bands trying to make it. Rather than form a community, they do their best to ruin it for them, which is definitely the more entertaining route.

I also like how Hanselmann sometimes doesn’t bother writing real dialogue and just has them saying “Blah blah blah” as they move from one scene to the next (or maybe they really are saying that?), and the slurs are represented as images to get around the “hate speech” it’d be perceived as if they were articulated through letters. It’s very creative and clever.

If there’s one criticism it’s that the stories are pretty much (appropriately?) one note - Horse Mania go to a gig, get wasted, play their horrible music, get booed off the stage, repeat. There’s more to the stories to add variety to them but that’s broadly the predictable trajectory of the book.

There are a couple short stories included at the end not set in the present. One is a flashback from 12 years ago called Homo Train, and 7”, which is a flashforward story, that I won’t spoil here with details - both stories are a hoot.

I’ve always said one of the limitations of comics is that they don’t really convey music well. I should caveat that by saying comics don’t convey good music well - because I didn’t need to hear Horse Mania to know how bad they must stink live. And also this book comes with a flexidisc single featuring a song by Horse Mania called Stick It In For the Ambient, so you can actually listen to their sound if you have a record player (I don’t so I didn’t). It’s Hanselmann and an old (now deceased - heroin’s a helluva drug) friend playing their music back in the day.

If you’ve never read Simon Hanselmann’s comics before, I can’t recommend them enough but go back to the beginning and start with Megahex rather than jump in here - they’re all (more or less) standalone reads but the first book is also one of the best. For everyone else, if you’ve read one of these before, you know where you stand by now - you either love these comics (smart… smart) or you don’t (boo) as, while the quality varies from decent to amazing from book to book, the humour or tone doesn’t change and that might bother some people who aren’t into it for whatever reason. Below Ambition is one of the better books in the series and I really enjoyed it.

Simon Hanselmann! Aoow!

[Dave Schaafsma · Rating 2 out of 5]

Continuing in the alt comix tradition of crossing any and all lines--what lines?! Do you see any lines here?!-- Simon Hanselmann produces probably the most offensive volume yet of his drunken stoner Megg & Mogg series. Mogg is out of town, though, so we are left with the character who represents the absolute bottom of the barrel, Werewolf Jones. Megg and Werewolf Jones are a noise band, Horse Mania, the worst band in the world! The very point here is to make you cringe as the lyrics are horrible, the way they treat fellow bands if horrible. They are terrible.

I suppose you might say this is in the tradition of the wannabe-a-writer Fante Bukowski, by Noah Van Sciver? a kind of satire? Or Spinal Tap? Oh, who am I kidding trying to dignify this with artistic comparisons; even Hanselmann admits he is off his game here and just trying to offend. Below Ambition, indeed, ha ha.

As Hanselmann says in his afterword, "The End. Super classy. This book is surely going to be super appealing to newcomers and library personnel. Honestly, this book was intended to be a horrible test of the audience's patience. Whittling the fan base down. Proper comics to come."

Do NOT read this volume if you have never heard of Megg & Mogg! Read Megahex first. Over time, you had begun to see Hanselmann has some compassion for (especially) the lost and addicted Megg; this one, on the other hand, is just a stoner comic. NOT for kids.

[M. J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A true test of the reader's patience (as stated in the final notes by Simon himself), sometimes good, sometimes bad, always outrageous. And that was probably the whole point. Below Ambition collects seven stories focused on the misadventures of Horse Mania, the avant-garde noise band of Megg and Werewolf Jones, previously seen on the (superb) short-story Drone. I had a few good laughs reading this, Heckling and 7" were my favorite stories of the bunch. While this book might not be a good entry point for newcomers, it's essential stuff for fans.

[🐴 🍖]

according to the mini essay at the back, this is bad on purpose; so if i say the book's bad, there's hanselmann steepling his fingers & saying, "yes, haha, all goes according to plan." my problem is that it's not AUDACIOUSLY bad. if the goal really was to winnow down the fanbase to the trve cvlt moggheads, there's so much more that could have been done to offend, to disgust, to appall. this is not metal machine music; it's weezer's "beverly hills." unfortunate

[Erin Cataldi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eeessh - I mean I know this series is irreverent and weird and over the top and not exactly "literary reading" but this latest installment just seemed like a shitty rambling thrown together mess. Horse Mani is a shitty band consisting of Megg and Werewolf Jones. They go on "tour" and "play" at shitty dive bars - but really they are just ripping on other bands, getting fucked, and generally just fucking around. Not very exciting.

[Przemysław Skoczyński · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ech... I co począć z tymi misiami-pysiami, gdy ukazuje się taki album? Poprzednie zbiory były rozbudowanymi historiami z mocnym drugim dnem, a ta funkcjonuje właściwie tylko w ich otoczeniu. Jako samodzielna pozycja, jest jedynie obrzydliwością na poziomie nagryzmolonych rozmazaną kupą obrazków w szkolnej toalecie. Hanselmann nie ukrywa, że redukuje bazę fanów, dostarczając tworzone na marginesie zinowe opowieści i nie spodziewa się ani jednej pozytywnej recenzji. Wielki fuck w kierunku tych, którzy doszukiwali się głębi i przyznawali nagrody. Wszyscy jesteście do dupy...

No tak, ale właśnie w tej swojej przewrotności nadal jest wiarygodny jak cholera i to chyba cały sens wydania tego komiksu. Tradycyjnie nie polecam, ale jeśli już chcecie to najpierw cztery wcześniejsze tomy. Kategora 40+.

[Christian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reminds me of my dirtbag goblin days. Especially love the homo train; reminds me of the time I walked to the back smoking patio of my favorite bar and some dude was laying some other dude out something proper while everyone just king of carried on their conversations.

[Jake · Rating 5 out of 5]

HORSE MANIA! AWO!

[Jodee · Rating 2 out of 5]

I felt a bit like a heckler at a Horse Mania show, wondering how much more there was to go and flipping ahead to see when it would stop.

[Rose Jeanou]

I wouldn't give an edgy indie graphic novels a low rating, but this book is so bad it's genuinely trolling its reader ("testing the fans," according to Hanselmann's end note). what (shockingly) little content there is, though, is adequately repulsive and depraved. one could make an argument that putting low effort into this book is brilliant metacommentary, but i'm too mad about having wasted upwards of $30 CAD to do that.

redeeming quality: the copy I got comes with a little 45s record from "horse mania," the author's friend karl von bamberger, to whom hanselman dedicates the book: "karl died doing what he loved... heroin."

side note--I read this on a greyhound bus. I would not recommend opening this in public.

[kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

jesus... okay um.. this was definitely not something i should've read on my computer at work!!!! still the same funny stuff but really surface level with this one. its pretty much entirely missing mogg and owl (whom i love) and really just focusing on the horrible characters and them being in a horrible band. first they "practice" (no they dont) then they "play a gig" (freaked up and booed off stage) and then another "gig" (same thing happens) then they go out of the area to play an obnoxiously long gig and get booed off stage, drunkenly taking pills and passing out and spouting nonsense. this one truly didn't have much story, but i dont feel that it was a waste of my time.

[Joseph · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very filler edition of Megg and Mogg, this time focusing on Megg and Werewolf Jones' band, Horse Mania. Without the full cast it feels very imbalanced, like watching Seinfeld but only Kramer's there.

Mostly exhausting but the flashback house party and the flash forward bit were both enjoyable.

[Vicente Ribes · Rating 2 out of 5]

El más flojito de los albumes de Simon Hanselmann y el propio autor reconoce estar poniendo a prueba a sus seguidores con este álbum. Megg y Werewolf Jones crean una banda musical que es pura mierda y tocan totalmente pasados de rosca haya donde van. Tiene momentos graciosos pero no los locurones que tienen el resto de albumes de estos personajes que son desternillantes. Para muy fans.

[Eric · Rating 1 out of 5]

Godawful. And godawful on purpose. That’s what the author says in his stupid little afterword, anyway - that the whole point of this book was to try the reader’s patience. So, recommended for knuckleheads who “enjoy” reading French critical theory?

[Ivy Rodgers · Rating 4 out of 5]

Slimy, offensive, and all-around horrible, Simon Hanselmann has done it again. The pure ridiculous nature of these troubled and scarred characters will truly separate the fans from the haters- and I’m always down for more insanity from Megg, Mogg, Owl, Werewolf Jones, and friends.

[Morphée · Rating 3 out of 5]

Horse mania!
C'est trash et comme dit dans la postface "une sorte de test horrible pour la patience du lecteur"
🤷

[Jameson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cue fanfare and ticket parade—an Owl float! A marching band of Werewolf Joneses! A really pretty lady dressed up like Megg singing showtunes from the back of a convertible! After suffering from a bad case of that delayiititis going around these days, the new MM&O is finally here!

Well? It’s a bit of a letdown after Crisis Zone, but maybe that was an inevitability. The storytelling is too decompressed. It’s not horrendous, like Spider-Woman and Power Man bendis-bantering about how much air is in a bag of Hot Cheetos or something equally inane and crowd-pleasing as that, but it’s definitely decompressed. I believe social media is a detrimental force in the world so I don’t follow MM&O online—this is my first peek into this world for over a year—I can’t help but feel a little disappointed.

Don’t get me wrong, this is still charming, uproarious, and gleefully deranged. Maybe this is what the artist needed after the incredible, unforgettable shitshow that was Crisis Zone. Maybe that’s what he thought we need. And maybe you do. I don’t. I’m still down for the next incredible, unforgettable shitshow. For now, Below Ambition is pretty good. Highly recommended.

(This is one of the few series I actually prefer reading on my tablet because the art looks washed out on paper for some reason. However, caveat emptor: if, like me, you were looking forward to downloading a DRM-free copy from Comixology, good luck with that. If that’s still a feature in the new world order then it’s a very well disguised one. Maybe I shouldn’t be saying this. Amazon may have “acquired” me, too.)

[Tobias · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lou Reed released Metal Machine Music in 1975. It was jarring. Weird. Alienating.
Hanselmann has achieved the same feat with Below Ambition.

Hanselmann being the mastercraftsman of reactions and quick shots reverses this approach in Below Ambition. There are scenes stretching on forever, meandering and being an outright annoyance - but that is the genius of it. A fan of Megg, Mogg and Owl will know that the characters are purposely repulsive and annoying. Imagine those characters performing live. It's annoying. It's great. It's like watching an noise artist warming up for a big band while giggling to yourself because the audience is bothered.

Hanselmann is not a one-trick Australian pony though. The comic also plays on gross-out humour, heart-wrenching scenes and a bit of hope for the future of our leading characters. I highly recommend it.

A last note: This is a great book but you might want to start out with Megahex (2014) or Crisis Zone (2021) if this is your first venture into this universe.

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s not rape if you’re in the band….

….


There’s those moments of reading, content that one should be used to by now - if you begin here, rather than Megahex, well…heheheheh, step right up, up, no, fingers like this - it’s the clever cut scenes to an eyebrow raised audience member that would really rocketed me off into rolls of laughter, and as the book progressed the intensity of the laughter hurtled toward tears, and the ebb and flow of the pathos within the humor and the experimental mixing of it…if Simon Hanselmann were to toss literal shit on paper, I would be disgusted and displeased, and yet wonder well, what’s the scene, and…can one sniff it?


I’m not sure if this would really be the tipping point of “whittling down the fanbase” with everything that came before, but maybe it depends on the times and the minds.

4 star rating for the product (boosted immeasurably by the included flexi disc recording!!!) (2.7-3, due to noted and understandable scamming) with a 5 star in appreciation and enjoyment…if that makes any sense.

There’s those moments of uncontrollable laughter while reading these comics were one might very well wonder….and then there’s the author note that sucker punches the oh no I get it, I don’t want to, but I get it moment, that brings back the intensity of an image change of Jones in a moment near the end of One More Year when reality hits.

Forever grateful for the material.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Someone introduced me to the universe of Megg and Mogg and I was instantly sold. The low-life, scabby American (or Aussie?) underbelly culture scratches my itch just perfectly. Ranging from Michael Cusack to Gus van Sant, I just love these stories of society's so-called "scum".

So when we went to the comics store, they had Crisis Zone (which I'm saving for a rainy day) and Below Ambition. I chose to read this one first because of the vinyl included (and because it's about a dopey cunt band). The small episodes are just amazing (and raunchy). Laughing with pretentious artists was already one of my favorite pastimes. (Reading about) anal sex has been added due to Below Ambition.

The emotional ending was smth I didn't expect from this series. In its own way, it touched my heart and gave me motivation to start drawing again.

[Will · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not the best of the MMO series, as Hanselmann himself concedes (from the Afterword (?): "[T]his book was intended to be a horrible test of the audience's patience. Whittling the fan base down. Proper comics to come."). The book isn't as unreadable as he would have you believe--it's fairly short (I read it in a little over an hour), WJ and Megg are always good for a few laughs, and the premise--their shitty (noise rock?) band sort of playing gigs, but mostly just getting drunk and bothering people--is decent. Still, I didn't really find most of its seven stories funny (and even the best of the bunch, "Local Bar," wherein WJ and Megg play endless terrible songs at a local bar and vamp, gets too weird at the end) and, most importantly, Mogg and Owl are completely absent. Without them, this book is all id--i.e., all WJ. Mogg stinks (emotionally insecure and needy) and Owl is a nerd; but, at their best, they can help balance the chaotic hedonism of WJ.

[Aaron Miller · Rating 4 out of 5]

even though hanselmann says at the end of the book that he made it with the intention of “whittling down the fanbase” i enjoyed it quite a bit. i've said this before, but hanselmann's comics act as a sort of salve for my psyche. so much work goes into these to make them appear effortless--the writing, the pacing, the linework...he's firing on all cylinders even when he claims he's not trying and that this is just an exercise on the way to get back to proper form. any of hanselmann's books is a much better immersive experience than avatar 2 but definitely don't pick it up if you don't like gross stuff.

[MacKenzie Carlock · Rating 3 out of 5]

At this point I’ve completed four of Simon Hanselmann’s books. I think this might be the most nasty one yet. Hanselmann’s style, writing, and characters are impressively consistent in their ability to disgust and humor. While often vulgar and repulsive, I still can’t help but admire the style. One of the most visually striking cartoons around, even with all things considered. I really hate scat humor and that can make reading Megg, Mogg, and Owl stuff difficult, but these cartoons keep bringing me back because they’re just so outrageous. I appreciate the flexi-disc with a Horse Mania song from 2005! That was really fun to listen to at the end.

[Tatertot · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is definitely one of the more flat-out offensive installations of Hanselmann’s work but I don’t think that reading it as plainly that really does it justice and honestly feels like a willfully two dimensional reading. Megg and Werewolf jones share a real understanding of one another’s pain and depression while also fueling each other’s addiction. As the volume goes on you get to see more and more of that complexity until the final chapter which is a melancholic beautiful conclusion to the text. In the afterword, Hanselmann talks about becoming a father and you can see a lot of the empathy and genuineness of his love for his kid reflected toward the end.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Comic scraps that I still ate up off of the vomit stained floor. A selection of old MM&O comics plus some new stories interwoven amongst the old to give a more digestible narrative. One for the die hard fans.

To quote Simon "... this book was kind of intended to be a horrible test of the audience's patience... I'm "whittling down the fanbase"... I have scumily broken down this work to 6 panels a page and used a thicker stock of paper to artificially inflate the sense of worth of the book. You've been totally fucking scammed. Fully scammed. Horse Mania!"

[Rick Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hanselmann's cartooning is always a treat, but I do think the humor can sometimes run stale. There's perhaps the biggest variablity in quality in this collection of stories, but I can't say that I didn't enjoy myself along the way. Hanselmann admits that this is meant to be bad in the afterword, but I mostly felt that it was just partially phoned in rather than it being intentionally bad. Fortunately, even a weaker collection of stories from Hanselmann is still a pretty good collection of stories.

[Marek · Rating 2 out of 5]

5.2
Ayay. Najgorszy zbiór Hanselmanna, który cofa nas do początków przygód w tym zwariowanym cyklu. O ile przez kadry przebija się znana nam dobrze chaotyczność i widać niesamowitą zręczność autora do tworzenia absurdalnych sytuacji, to jednocześnie czuć, że Megg i WWJ (jak i pomniejsze postaci) nie osiągnęły jeszcze swojej najciekawszej - i najbardziej patologicznej - formy. Jest tu kilka momentów i zabiegów, które na późniejszym etapie kariery Hanselmanna będą jego znakiem rozpoznawczym jako twórcy, ale ostatecznie "Below Ambition" staje się tym, co prezentuje tytuł.

[Seaton Kay-Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started reading Simon Hanselmann’s work in lockdown when they were doing the “Crisis Zone” on Instagram. A friend at the time thought I would like it and boy were they right.

I’ve since read all of their books and while this one isn’t my favourite, there are still plenty of great moments in it.

“Below Ambition“ features Megg and Werewolf Jones predominantly, with characters such as Owl and Mogg and making brief appearances, If you're a fan of Hanselmann’s work, I’m sure you’ll dig it.

[francesco · Rating 1 out of 5]

This shit was terrible in my opinion and I don’t really get how the writer could use that as like a “main point of the book”. I just thought it was incredibly boring and not funny. I like stoner shit - Dazed and confused is one of my favourite movies ever. This maybe got 3 chuckles out of me. Could be reader error by picking this one up first out of the authors works. Art was nice that’s about it.

The description of the book is cracking me up thooo lool meditation on youth and performance??? For like two pages maybe

[Lucas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kind of bad, but deliberately so; which ties in perfectly with the hypocrisy of Horsemania.
If you proclaim your lack of quality you are protected from any criticism. If your lack of quality is entertaining, you rebound into quality again.

[...] To me, it's the most embarrassing thing in the world - a man who presents himself at his worst to get laughs, in order to free himself from his hang-ups. Every thing he does on the screen is therapeutic.
Orson Welles (about Woody Allen)