DOPE RIDER A FISTFUL OF DELIRIUM: A Fistful of Delirium (English Edition)

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Kirchner himself has a blog up in which the entire run of “Dope Rider” is available as large jpegs—that’s right, every page.

Dope Rider. A fistful of delirium · paul-kirchner | fatbottom

Je suis pas sûr que la weed ait des propriétés aussi hallucinatoires mais on se fiche pas mal de la réalité tout au long des pages alors ne nous arrêtons pas à ce détail.The first, Forgotten Fads and Fabulous Flops, inspired an episode of The History Channel's Modern Marvels, "Failed Inventions", in which Kirchner is featured. As they deliver new work over time, their development seems so subtle and incremental that it is barely discernible to the uninitiated. In one cover, indicative of Kirchner's taste for drawing ultra-dominant women, men line up like slaves before an enormous nude woman who looms over the landscape like a sacred temple.

Dope Rider: A Fistful of Delirium (© Paul Kirchner - SEA Dope Rider: A Fistful of Delirium (© Paul Kirchner - SEA

It also collects the covers that Kirchner did for Screw magazine, as well as dozens of other one-offs and vignettes, comix in different modes, moods, and manners. After a 30-year hiatus, Paul Kirchner brought back to life the iconic bony stoner whose first adventures were a staple of the psychedelic counter-culture magazine High Times in the 1970s.The band was inspired by the original and unique approach of Kirchner’s art and writing and wanted to create a sound experience that could capture that essence. Native American culture and mythology, only hinted at in the classic adventures, is also much more present in the form of Chief, one of Dope Rider’s new sidekicks. However, in Kirchner's world transformations are never permanent--the real could slide back into the surreal at any moment.

Paul Kirchner - Wikipedia

The original Dope Rider strips ran in the 1970s/’80s in the pages of counter-culture magazine High Times. Kirchner serves this visual feast with a side of cultural junk food, much of which is past the expiration date. High Times founder and editor Tom] Forçade let me know he would just as soon not have that happen again. His latest for French publisher Tanibis Editions, Dope Rider: A Fistful of Delirium, is an easygoing, casual collection of the Dope Rider strips published in High Times magazine after 2015. These strips find Kirchner breathing new life into the motifs and conventions for which he and his strip are known.The comic occasionally featured a locomotive engineer with a third eye in his forehead who would supply cockeyed dictionary definitions such as: “Pyramid, n. In "Highwire", the opening entry in Paul Kirchner's new collection Awaiting the Collapse, a tightrope walker navigates the skyway of a busy metropolis. But hey, as we all know, it’s what’s on the inside that counts, and on that score, despite tonal and thematic incongruities that pop up from time to time, it’s rather hard not to admire what Kirchner’s achieved with this one, even if you’re well past the point of partaking in the “demon weed” yourself. Each one-page strip is intricately rendered as we follow Dope Rider and company’s misadventures through their surreal terrain. When the collapse becomes too real, Kirchner gives us a hero who survives it by performing a mundane chore.