Zine There, Done That #1: "Welcome to the Dahlhouse"

I think I'll start reviewing zines for the student paper. Maybe. And if I do I might throw some up here and call it "Zine There, Done That." I'm a sucker for a good pun; a bad pun, all the more. I just read Welcome to The Dahlhouse: Alienation, Incarceration & Inebriation in the New American Rome by Ken Dahl (Microcosm Publishing, 2008). For some reason, people find it easy to relate to characters who whine about everything (I'm thinking Holden Caulfield). It’s often easier to hate something than to love it, and –ironically- that’s probably what makes Welcome to the Dahlhouse so appealing.

This comic zine collects all of cartoonist Ken Dahl’s strips from 1997-2007, combining short, passionate stories about lost innocence, nostalgia, and overall disillusionment with American consumerist culture. He presents a scathing condemnation of post-9/11 American attitudes, religion, the self-perpetuating police system, the war-mongering military, and even critiques the phonies of the so-called “countercultural zine-culture.” Despite how much he seems to criticize such people, however, Dahl is subtle in his realization that he is as much a phony as they are. Each thing he scolds is explored with a nuance of hypocrisy, a character only hating love because he was broken-hearted; only hating the legal system because he got himself arrested; hating all the hipster girls because he can’t get one for himself; and hating try-hard zine culture because he can’t write “important” zines either. This is what takes a work about what you would otherwise expect an anarchist, countercultural author to talk about, and makes it something quite self-reflexive and profound.

Rest assured Dahl isn’t entirely bleak, derisive, and self-absorbed either. He is all these things, but he makes you laugh in spite of it. Strips which feature simple pleasures -- like the experience of a grown man swinging at night, or peeing in the shower -- are welcome refreshments from the doldrums of others. Dahl also showcases an artistic diversity as assorted as the zine’s mood. Whether or not you appreciate his over-the-top writing, everybody can enjoy his brilliant cartooning. Detailed and gritty or simplistic and fresh, Dahl tells his story with either subtlety or gross excess, whichever works best. It just so happens that embellishment suits moping the most.