Kid Mafia #1

By Michael DeForge

Publisher: Self-published

This is a very substantial 32-page mini comic by Michael Deforge, a super productive modern comics master. It’s unbelievable how many ideas this guy has and how quickly he can just pump out a million great-looking comics with outlandish story ideas that are somehow made relatable by the familiar ways that the characters will interact. This one is about the titulous “Kid Mafia,” run by a high school dropout skater named Frank DeMeo. For most of the comic we see Frank and various underlings of his doing normal hopeless teenage actives like loitering outside a store, egging a house, skating a pool with limited success, and playing video games. As they’re doing these typical teen loser activities they’re also discussing their crime organizations plans. If you didn’t read English you would just assume they were talking about girls and drugs or something. Then at the end they kill a guy and scatter his body parts, which is kinda nuts. Like all of DeForge’s work it’s both bizarre and mundane at the same time and makes a lot of sense. Everything he does is worth a looking at and an owning.
-Nick Gazin, Vice Magazine

Michael DeForge is a Toronto-based cartoonist and the winner of two Doug Wright Awards for Canadian comics. “If the Doug Wright Awards were the Oscars,” wrote journalist Jeet Heer earlier this year, “DeForge is fast emerging as our equivalent of Jack Nicholson or Meryl Streep: an artist whose work has to be constantly up for consideration.”

DeForge’s signature characters are creatures slightly too adorable to be frightening, but still dark enough to be disturbing. He is a master of warping traditional characters, situations and genres. His plots often revolve around transformation. DeForge’s work is also very funny, but always weirdly or wistfully so.

$3.00