Monday, January 25, 2021

NERRRRRRRRRD! vol. 128 / #gorenoise vol. 56

 comics haven’t felt so dangerous over the past couple decades. There are probably a variety of reasons for that. For one, after decades of newspaper headlines proclaiming that “comics aren’t just for kids anymore,” the public might finally be starting to believe it. For another, not a whole lot feels particularly dangerous in a world where Quentin Tarantino’s pseudo-snuff torture films routinely garner Oscar nominations and you can watch Devilman: Crybaby on Netflix. What boundaries were there left for visual media to cross?

More than I’d thought, it turns out. Sad Sack is a digital comic series by artists Barbatus and Meanboss consisting of five issues, totaling more than 1,000 pages. Each issue includes a long list of content warnings. Issue three, for example, warns of:

  • Explicit sexual content

These warnings are no joke. The series includes a lot of explicit images of torture and rape. It’s heavy stuff. I won’t describe these scenes in detail in this piece, but I will continue to discuss the contents of the series in the abstract. You’ve been warned.


Sad Sack: The Comic Forcing Us to Think the Unthinkable

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