The Tortoise and The Hare by Glen Hallgren was a trip from start to finish. Alright for this week I read as many underground comics as I could while listening to the full playlist of songs that was given to us. I read a lot of underground comics in that playlist worth of minutes. This story however was the one that stuck with me the most. Simply because the actual tortoise and the hare story is a fable cartoon that most of my generation grew up with. This comic however is NOT that story, or better yet it's the story after the original story. It just paints the wholesome morally charged story with the deviousness of actual human living. There is sex, crazy trips, drugging, and deceit. Honestly I really enjoyed it probably more so because this comic wasn't just a smut comic like some of the other underground comics. I took this story as a behind the scenes look at athletes and their secret lives. As a kid you see these crazy fit athletes that run incredible races and win a bunch of medals. But as a kid you aren't aware of the backstage depravities. Now a days all adults know that when an athlete isn't running or whatever they're probably getting neck deep in drugs and plowing through more snatch than Denzel Washington; and that's why adults love athletes. So I feel like this special relationship of knowing the fable story and its message as a kid and then growing up and reading this underground version mirrors what growing up in society is like now. You idolize athletes or heroes or whatever and then when you get to be older and more experienced and you see your idols for who they really are. Or someone just got super blasted and decided to make these characters fuck slutty rabbits and smoke a lot of hash for fun. Either way I thoroughly laughed and enjoyed it.
Also I love the old slang, I will now refer to sex as "balling" and drugs as "shazam".
I like the point of seeing your idols through a different lense. The connection between the use of characters from fables and athletes is right on seeing that for kids growing up, these characters in fables might be even more popular than sports athletes. Maybe this book was just a stoned mode attempt at getting laughs, but the foundational idea of seeing the behind the scenes of life of some of the most recognizable characters around is pretty damn clever. Also, the use of "Shazam" and "Balling" is brilliant.
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