Saturday, March 24, 2007

While I’m on the subject of comics...

… I’d also like to point y’all to Clowntime Comics, the work of a twisted, brilliant mind belonging to Shawn Belschwender… perhaps the most talented guy about whom nothing, absolutely nothing, has been posted on Wikipedia. (Even though he has a few admirers in the blogosphere.)

I’ve been a Shawn Belschwender fan since the 1980s, when he did a weekly comic for the Washington City Paper. (Hitpoints Charlie, we hardly knew ye.)

Unlike Natalie Dee’s utterly random one-panels, Clowntime Comics is a narrative strip with a cast of recurring characters. The main one is Refrigerator Johnny. Others have names like Calamity Bangs, 100% Anton and Schwee Porpoi. The main themes are sex, relationships, drinking and art.

Here’s a litmus test for whether or not you’ll dig Shawn’s ribald sense of humor… a 2004 strip in which Johnny has a conversation with his sleeping girlfriend’s anus. If that sounds like something Seth MacFarlane wishes he could get away with on “Family Guy,” believe you me… Shawn Belschwender has more genuine wit in his pubic hair than Seth MacFarlane has in his whole body!
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5 comments:

  1. AnonymousMarch 27, 2007 at 1:32 PM

    I bet Seth gets all his jokes from Travesty's ass. Or his own. When he's not indulging in plagiarismo di plagiarismo, hee hee!

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  2. Undercover Black ManMarch 27, 2007 at 11:11 PM

    Bonus points for the obscure "Simpsons" reference, Dez. I'm all about that.

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  3. AnonymousMarch 28, 2007 at 8:36 AM

    Thanks, UBM. Wait until I pull out the Monty Python... ;-)

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  4. AnonymousMarch 18, 2008 at 7:53 PM

    I was a big fan of Freebase LaBeef back in the day. Suddenly Belschwender (whose head was a blender) fled D.C. I was just hip enough to run into a City Paper employee while in rehab, but only learned that he would occasionally do caricatures for staffer's birthdays / parties. Last I heard, he was in NY, but I never learned why he left. I figured it was an addiction or some sort of informant entanglement - that was my guess - I have no idea why he left...

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  5. AnonymousApril 10, 2009 at 10:19 AM

    Shawn is alive and well and living in Chicago, a city he finds more livable (i.e. affordable) than D.C., New York, or Hoboken. He suspended Clowntime temporarily to work on other projects,

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