Late last year, a brand-new Seattle comics publisher called Poochie Press published a new edition of Real Stuff, titled Dennis Eichhorn's Real Good Stuff, after running a successful Kickstarter for the book. The art is excellent; speaking as an ardent fan of her work, the fact that Mary Fleener contributed a cover for the project alone is worth the price of admission. Stories are illustrated by great comics talent like Pat Moriarty, Jim Blanchard, Noah Van Sciver, and Fleener, making this a gorgeous anthology of new and old talent. If you're an Eichhorn fan, you'll find a lot to love, and the book also serves as an introduction for the uninitiated.
I cannot emphasize enough that this comic book is not for the easily offended. There is, in fact, what Kurt Vonnegut used to call a wide-open beaver shot in "Topsy Turvy," a story drawn by Aaron Lange about Eichhorn's obsession with having sex with a woman as she's performing a handstand. If you're the kind of person who shies away from that, though, you're probably not this book's target audience, anyway. It's full of the kind of stories that people tell at bars just before closing time—over-the-top gossip about terrible actions and their wonderful consequences. For ten bucks, you'll find stories about Eric Clapton's guitar pick, Eichhorn's short-lived career as a social worker in Spokane, a Viagra overdose, a hate-cult, and a lot of pot. Eichhorn's literary bravado can occasionally be off-putting—he does, at times, come across as a macho Beat-type—but he doesn't exude the smarminess of, say, a Bukowski. If stories of sex and drugs and rock and roll make you want to run away, you probably ought to forget Eichhorn's name right now. But for everyone else, Eichhorn's knack for writing comics that are short, interesting, and paced like a good pop song is truly a wonder to behold.
