Horror Hospital Unplugged

Keith Mayerson lends his vast artistic talent to Dennis Cooper's short story about a fledgling L.A. band and its confused singer, Trevor Machine. Mayerson's art swipes from a range of art and illustration, from symbolism to manga to advertising. The style changes as the story develops and Mayerson nimbly leaps from panel-based narratives to splash pages full of meandering, stream-of-conscious maps and montages. Some drawings are neat and tight, while others are scrawled, streaked, and scratched to abstraction - especially in the sex scenes, where bodies coupling (or tripling) become a manic mishmash of skulls, grotesque penises, and scattered ink blots. As seen in Spiegelman's Maus, Mayerson is clever in depicting some characters as animals or shapeshifting freaks. Dennis Cooper's story is a hilarious satire with some touching scenes and a sad ending, the tragedy of which is no match for the irony sculpted by Cooper. Trevor Machine goes into cult history as the sexually confused, angst-ridden teen of popular lore, in line with Holden Caulfield and Tommy Gnosis - and he has such a perfect ass.