Horace
by Ben Jones

Do all roads lead to Horace,
or is the book following the red carpet out of his mouth?

Hippies are to the left what religious fundamentalists are to the right. The sensible among us are offended by their very existence and their ability to co-op reasonable positions for their own deranged belief systems. They are loud, obnoxious, self-righteous, prone to feelings of imagined victimization, smell weird and their mothers dress them funny. It also seems strange that they often attract smart, attractive people into their lifestyles.

One thing that hippies have going for them that religious fanatics lack is that, amongst their number, one sometimes finds top-notch artists?and every once in a while they congregate together. Such was the case with the Fort Thunder Group, an artists collective gone collective and squatting in an old, abandoned loft. What they lacked in AM radio call-in shows, they more than made up for in artistic adventurism rarely attempted.

An Austin cousin of those Providence Rhode Island artists is the one and only Ben Jones (not to be confused with the other cartoonist, Ben Jones) a frequent collaborator with that gang in their comics newspaper, Paper Rodeo (not to be confused with his own Paper Radio-cum-paperrad.org).
Tom Spurgeon described Jones as sporting a mullet and handlebar mustache, much as the titular character "Horace" does in the 8.5x7 book I picked up at APE. The cover, reproduced in color, appears to have been drawn in marker and crayon and the interiors done with what looks to be ballpoint pen. If there's an underground hiphop movement in comics, the leaders of the new school aren't the guy's with the "Bootylicious" table (or whatever that loathesome book they were shilling was called), but these goddamn hippies and their primitivist art.

There's no laws that say you can't make comics with scented markers, crayons and ballpoint pens; but people like Ben jones still come across as breakin' [all the rules]. It's making comics from materials not normally associated with 'professionalism'. The crayon may be the cartoonist's hype man, the ballpoint pen his two turntables and the microphone.

The 'story' is about a dirty Buddhist-leaning hippie and his pshycadelic monster friends living a communal family life and playing in a band. There's no real conflict involved (although Jone's fear/respect of cats is hinted at?see his technicolor piece in Kramer's Ergo #5 for more on that), just good things delayed until they become better things. The characters are a little too prone to saying stupid hippie things like "happy eat" and talking nonsense about spirituality and the like, but somehow remain lovable and engaging nonetheless.

No? NO?! I say, "Yeeeesssss."

As for the cartooning, there are a few moments that just about take your breathe away. The Gumby spirit brothers in the cable dream (I know, it looks like I just threw random words together there), the cardboard mansion, the sacred shower positions chart and the tongue-spliff panel that follows and the final family portrait just have to be seen to be appreciated. Part of what makes all the weirdness palatable are Jones' wonderful character designs, particulary of the 'anti-monsters' and their strange, innate expressivenss.

"Horace" is good comics done by someone who makes it all look deceptively easy, and it's hard not to imagine that it was drawn while all the information Jones wanted to communicate was still fresh and vibrant in his mind, with noe of the obstacles one usually encounters when trying to get that information down through the hand and onto the paper.

Go to www.paperrad.org from a computer with a broadband connection and wear sunglasses. There'll be no map provided, but the destination is all in the journey?at least that's what the hippie squating in my brain tells me.

—Justin J. Fox