Review: Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #6 (FINAL ISSUE)

by Tony Farina
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[Editor’s Note: This review may contain spoilers]

Writer: Mark Russell

Artist: Mike Feehan

 

Summary

It has been almost six years since our hero has been blackballed (and since the last issue).  He is divorced, his boyfriend is gone to Cuba,  his best friend killed himself and strangers want to take pictures with him for being on that “Communist show.” His former protege’ Augie Doggie has written a tell-all memoir.

We finally learn the identity of the cranky old man in the home for the old and friendless. No spoilers here. Read.

Quick Draw shows back up and then things become meta. Seriously, I can not give anything away.

Positives

In the final issue of this book, Mark Russell must have realized that he had to use up all the incredibly brilliant dialogue he had scribbled down in his brilliant dialogue notebook. I am not sure he has one, but I assume he must.

Check out this zinger from Nikita Khrushchev in a conversation with one Richard M. Nixon. “You worship the music of the people who can not even drink at the same drinking fountain as you. You celebrate achievements of writers even as you blacklist them. Capitalism doesn’t make you greater. It just makes you better at commodifying your victims.”

Then there is this gem from Augie Doggie. “Is that all our stories are? Lies we tell ourselves so we can believe everything will turn out alright in the end? Because we are too scared to live in a universe that doesn’t care about us?”

Man, talk about a couple of gut punches. This book has pulled zero punches the whole way so it is not surprising that it ends this way. Russell’s skill at satire is just about perfect. If he were not such a gifted comic writer, one would expect him writing for The Daily Show.

Luckily for us he spent the past six months writing this book. Thanks Mark. Thanks to Mike Feehan too for making these old characters new and original too. You created a world that makes perfect sense even though humanoid animals walk and talk and sometimes wear pants. This book is just about perfect.

Negatives

Did I mention this book is just about perfect? it is. The problem? There just was not enough.

 

Verdict

I am going to buy the collected work as soon as it comes out. It will rest on a bookshelf next to other great works of literature. You should too. When you get to the ending and that post-script, if you are a Gen-Xer like me, I dare you not to get goosebumps.

 

 

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