The first issue of Stink Like Dog is a series of black and white flyers collected together. There’s no discernable plot, but there is a definite theme connecting the images. Etienne Le Comte’s wears his influences on his sleeve- unashamedly- the Ghost in the Machine/Matrix, Japanese sci-fi, Oddworld. Style wise there’s traces of HR Giger and Big Daddy Roth in there too.
Stink Like Dog #2 and #3 continue in this vein, but the strands of his fascinations are brought together more cohesively – urban dystopias, psychedelic pipework, test tubes, lab animals. Stink Like Dog#2 is more text heavy with design blueprints, ‘Kid in a Can’ labels, adverts and flyers recommending voluntary lobotomy, and it’s not without humour, we’re told televisual enjoyment will not be impaired!
The booklets are beautifully constructed, each issue having a fold out centre, and the attention to detail is astonishing. Although Le Comte’s influences are zeitgeisty (hell, even Charlie’s Angels is influenced by the Matrix!), few artists would even begin to try and construct the highly detailed and exactly imagined world on paper depicted here.
Whilst being particularly successful when it gets sequential, there are a few weak spots; Le Comte doesn’t seem comfortable putting humans into his machine, the mix of overly cartoony people in this tightly drawn industrial landscape isn’t quite there yet.
That aside, I hope Le Comte keeps to the sequential. His mastery of brown-acid psychedelia has me poring over the details.
Priced £1.50 ppd from
Etienne le Comte,
The Globe, Trelavour,
St Dennis, Cornwall,
PL26 8AR, UK
Contact: e_le_comte@hotmail.com