Rob Clough | April 30, 2025
Welcome back to High-Low, a column that originated at TCJ.com in December of 2009. It was originally about mini-comics and small-press comics publishers, but since RJ Casey has the mini-comics part of things covered with his monthly column, I thought I'd focus on the output of specific small presses.
When you think of a small-press comics publisher with punk sensibilities, a strong connection to queer and trans artists, and in-your-face work that leans heavily toward a furry aesthetic, you might immediately think of Silver Sprocket. In this case, however, I'm referring to the now-defunct publisher Toxic Metal Press, out of Michigan. Publisher Ari S. Mulch switched their model from publishing to Risograph printing as of August 2024, and a number of TMP's comics now reside at the Silver Sprocket shop.
What set Toxic Metal Press apart from similar publishers (Diskette Press seemed to be an inspiration as well) was Mulch's willingness to dip into darker and more extreme places than the comparatively cheery Silver Sprocket. The most tender comic in the batch I read, Statues by Nonbinary Mike, is still a set of reflections on the death of the artist's brother. Some of them are in the form of earnest but forgettable poems, but most are naturalistic drawings of assorted classical statues. Mike wanted to dig into nostalgia and their brother's love of these statues, but the back half of the zine is much more interesting. The mix of looser drawings, pop culture anachronisms rendered in classical Greek forms, and more clipped commentary provides an interesting outlet for grief and personal expression.
Melty World Matrix #1, by Lane Lincecum, is a catgirl slice-of-life comic about two "roommates/girlfriends" named Katze and Koshka. It is typical of the genre and heavily influenced by manga, but it's ever so slightly edgier than other examples of this kind of fare. For example, the two leads go to a house party and Katze winds up ingesting a fistful of psychedelic mushrooms. While she has a good time dancing, she also winds up puking. There's no judgment or consequences for any of this; it's all just pleasantly episodic in the way entertaining slice-of-life comics can be. The drawings are fun, if somewhat generic, but the cartooning keeps things moving on the page.
Things got much weirder from there. The first two comics I discussed are heartfelt and sincere, and their aesthetic is smooth and palatable. Then there's J.B. Overbeek's Glory, a distorted and convoluted story that is built on Project MKUltra, the CIA's notorious LSD-driven mind-control program. The story begins with a reference to its inception and the deaths it might have caused. It then segues into a story about football players at "MKU." When one of the players takes a job as a night watchman at the human research lab, he accidentally doses himself and gets precognitive powers as a result. Further investigation reveals the lab's subjects are being used to manipulate killer drones by way of football prompts. As with most of the other TMP comics, Glory is ambitious but slightly ragged, and the drawing is inconsistent. Overbeek's composition is certainly dramatic, but much of the storytelling is muddled.
Mulch published several of their own comics underneath the TMP banner, and they are all unhinged. Catgirl Hospital takes that aforementioned quasi-furry aesthetic and immediately ramps it up to the sleaziest level possible. The catgirl doctors are fooling around with the catgirl nurses, who are eating each other out underneath desks, all while ignoring (or outright euthanizing!) the poor patients. This is less a narrative than a series of vignettes that establish a mood, and Mulch goes all-in on the absurdity of the idea with cheesecake art and lurid poses. So You Want To Get Trepanated? purports to be a publication from the "Women's New Spirit Center." It is partly a straight-faced history of trepanation (i.e. having a hole drilled in your head, while alive and conscious, for alleged healing purposes) and partly a recruiting pamphlet for an all-woman (or all catgirl, I should say) cult. The combination of gore dripping off power drills and the ecstatic spiritual drawings, all completely deadpan, is hilariously bewildering.
Much darker, weirder, and longer is Oh Deanna! Mulch abandons the catgirl style in favor of a more textured and naturalistic approach. The story follows a spelunking enthusiast named Deanna and an unnamed woman who has an unrequited crush on her. Mulch immerses the reader in the cave environment with an immediate splash page depicting a claustrophobic cave that's foregrounded with threatening-looking stalagmites and stalactites. The two women are drawn in a more cartoony style that emphasizes gesture and emotion above everything else. There's a sense of the absurd pervading the whole comic, as the unnamed protagonist is jealous of Deanna's polycule, whose every partner starts with "D" for some reason. Deanna is alternately supportive and coercive in helping her lovesick friend through the first part of the cave, but the story takes a sudden turn just eight pages in.
There's an accident in what Deanna calls "the Pit of Despair" that leaves the protagonist in an existential crisis. Mulch twists this into an excruciating series of self-flagellating monologues from the protagonist that turn into horrific hallucinations. Mulch's master stroke in this story was bringing in reality (in the form of rescue by other spelunkers and park officials) to disrupt the hallucinations. However, the protagonist barely registers the seriousness of her new predicament. The final page is especially effective, as the protagonist raises her handcuffed wrists to the welcoming sun, then closes her eyes with a beatific expression of gratitude.
Finally, there's Eddy Atoms' Lamb Chop. While their Pinky & Pepper Forever was certainly one of the craziest things Silver Sprocket ever published, Lamb Chop goes a lot further in terms of its weird obsessiveness and kink in the furry realm, which certainly felt on-brand for Toxic Metal Press. Atoms doesn't pull punches or care about needless exposition, as the protagonist Jam, a queer (and genderqueer?) artist awakens from a dream where they are being violently and sexually violated by an ex. When on page three we see Jam masturbating with a wolf doll, it's clear that Atoms is taking this particular dynamic as far as it will go. Jam cuts out carpet to simulate a lamb's fleece, invites a fling over to both fuck them and sew them into the fleece, and then asks to be mailed to their ex in a box. From there, it gets even weirder, as Atoms explores the edges of obsession, power dynamics, and other aspects of kink that float near the idea of "consensual non-consent," all done in their typical scrawled and near-manic line.
Make no mistake — Atoms is clearly in total control of their page composition and cartooning; their goal is simply to overwhelm the reader with the density of images and the absurdity of the sex and violence on display. The ending flips the power exchange on its head in a stunning manner, as both the reader and Jam's ex-boyfriend are left to wonder what just happened. This comic is an example of what it really means to be transgressive as an artist, as Atoms' story both celebrates and interrogates the deeper meanings of BDSM relationships. I imagine both Mulch and Atoms will find other publishing venues, but Mulch's particular point of view of what is possible as a publisher will be missed.
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