Sewer Mutant Podcast Episode 1: Sortie Sack
It had to happen! Sewer Mutant now has a podcast! You can listen to it on YouTube above, or subscribe to the feed. You can also find it on…
It had to happen! Sewer Mutant now has a podcast! You can listen to it on YouTube above, or subscribe to the feed. You can also find it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, and a bunch of other places.
For our inaugural trash barrel fireside chat, I talk with Barbatus and Meanboss, the artists behind Sad Sack and Sortie, two of the most shocking comics available today, as well as pooppix@yahoo.com, a shockingly heart warming comic about human connection on the internet (with no actual pictures of poop).
I forgot to ask Barbatus about his short webcomic Rotten, but it explains a lot about his background and thinking about gore/torture-porn. It’s free, and very much worth reading. It has lots of gore and mutilation in it, but it’s not nearly as extreme as Sad Sack.
I like Sad Sack and Sortie a lot but before you shell out $15 a chapter for it, be sure to look at the content warnings and think hard about whether it’s something you want in your life. It’s not the sort of thing I can recommend to many people.
That said: I can wholeheartedly recommend poopix@yahoo.com. It’s fun, positive, and not at all violent or pornographic. It bears repeating: there aren’t actually any poop pictures in it.
Linkorama
Meanboss: Twitter, Commissions
Sewer Mutant article on Sad Sack.
Show Notes
Meanboss early influence: Hellsing
Barbatus: First real comic heread was the Battle Royal manga. “Just as nasty as anything you’ll see in Sad Sack, maybe a little bit more so.”
They met via the Outlast video game community. Meanboss: “Outlast is really meant to make your stomach turn.”
Barbatus: “We were some of the only people doing fucked up art about this [game].”
Sad Sack started as a response to the Charlottesville rally.
Fred Vogel’s August Underground films were an influence on Barbatus’s approach to writing Sad Sack.
When Barbatus was drawing the series, the characters didn’t have names until someone says their name.
Meanboss brought out more personality in the individual characters.
Print-on-demand version got kicked off Lulu.
They got kicked off a Japanese platform that publishes a lot of stuff that’s way worse than Sad Sack, but they got kicked off because Sad Sack is “gay shit.”
“You can make genuine human connections over the internet.”
Meanboss explains that pooppix is in part a response to Sad Sack, where Sad Sack features people who can’t deal with their problems, the guys in pooppix aren’t hurting anyone.
There’s a sequel to poopix coming.
You probably do need to read Sad Sack first to understand Sortie, but it might be possible to read Sortie first then get the context for Sortie by reading Sad Sack second.
Barbatus: Sad Sack is sort of their Blue Velvet, Sortie is their Lost Highway.
Barbutus has a cyberpunk comic coming as well.
Meanboss is available for commissions, but there’s a long wait.
Meanboss has been inspired lately by Jason Shawn Alexander, the creator of Empty Zone, and artist of Killadelphia, and various Spawn and Batman comics, as well as Sean Murphy, creator of Punk Rock Jesus. Also the Homunculus manga.
Barbatus: Re-reads the Ichi the Killer manga every couple of months.
Meanboss: our working process is more like film than comics.
