Writer/Artist: Evan Dorkin
Publisher: Slave Labor Graphics
Collecting MILK AND CHEESE #1-4
Price: $11.95
ISBN: 0-9431541-07-4

MILK AND CHEESE first appeared on a bar napkin. In the afterword to FUN WITH MILK AND CHEESE, their creator, Evan Dorkin, remembers it as follows: "I was in a Manhattan bistro at 3am in a drunken post-CBGB's ska show haze sometime in 1987. That's when I first doodled the milk carton and the piece of cheese on a cocktail napkin. One held a broken bottle, the other was threatening the reader, and both were really, really pissed off." One thing that's remained constant since the first doodle - Milk and Cheese have always been very pissed off. At what? Well, at just about everything.

Milk and Cheese hate jury duty, the war on drugs, animal testing, crying babies in movie theatres, street performers, hippies, drug users, comic books, stand up comedians, and a host of other people, places, concepts and things. They've played 'No Talent Celebrity Tag' in Trump Plaza, run through New York City screaming "Merv Griffin", hawked a Milk and Cheese breakfast cereal ("The eye opening delightful taste of expired cheese bits in sour milk! And some corn."), faked their deaths, filled their apartment with vomit, rampaged through a flea market, performed heart transplants, force-fed lamb and pork to vegetarians, tried to smoke dope (but were too hopped up on amphetamines to "light the darn thing") and quit their jobs as comic book characters. And that's only in this first collection.

There's two ways to break down the charm of MILK AND CHEESE. First you could say that they respond to whatever is stirring about in the zeitgeist with caustic rampages. The "Dairy Products Gone Bad" are social commentators reacting to their baser instincts. But they may not appreciate you saying it, because, as the back copy of FUN WITH MILK CHEESE says: "MILK AND CHEESE is not a post-modern statement about our culture of violence... it's a comic book, stupid."

So that's the first way to take MILK AND CHEESE. The second is to observe that it's an absolute gas. MILK AND CHEESE revels in sick humour, and gleefully acknowledges its own absurdity. In one strip, Milk and Cheese demonstrate the use of visual humour through extreme brutality by sticking forks in a man's eyes. Milk then explains the concept thus; "You see, this is a sight gag because we struck him in the eyes!" Dorkin knows that MILK AND CHEESE is an inherently stupid comic strip, but acknowledging that is part of its appeal. The reader can leave his critical instincts at the door and allow himself to react to each strip with loud guffaws.

Not that you really have to make any allowance for your reaction - it just happens. FUN WITH MILK AND CHEESE collects the first four issues of MILK AND CHEESE, cheekily titled along the lines of MILK AND CHEESE'S OTHER NUMBER ONE and MILK AND CHEESE'S THIRD NUMBER ONE in a jab at the speculator boom of the mid-nineties. While the first few strips are primitive at best, it took Dorkin about three strips before setting on the iconic dark eyebrows and menacing grins of his lead characters.

Of course, their obsession with kitsch TV culture was there right from the very beginning, starting with the 'No Talent Celebrity Tag', in which Milk and Cheese dashed through Donald Trump's glorified shopping mall, Trump Plaza, tagging each other and shouting: "You're Orson Bean!" and "You're Nipsy Russell!" By the classic 'Merv Griffin' strip and the subsequent 'Noise' strip, Dorkin had hit his stride. The violence was more extreme, yet tempered with a wilful ridiculousness.

The gags work best in single page strips, as the concepts rarely lend themselves to extended adventures. Milk and Cheese make it a point to let the reader know that they can't be contained on the comic page, but the verve and vigour tends to peter out if extended too far. That said, Dorkin knows his characters' limitations and works very hard not to burden the strip with high concepts or narrative tricks. The strips tend to follow the same formula; Milk and Cheese announcing themselves to the reader, a topic is introduced and hilarity ensues.

In the strip "Milk and Cheese Are Dead" the two fake their own deaths in order to increase their sales. When this idea fails and no one mourns them, they claw their way out of their grave and begin beating on humanity for ignoring their passing. In one panel, Milk cracks a shovel against an unsuspecting person's head and screams: "Mourn me!"

Even a fake death couldn't stop them, and it's to be hoped that nothing ever will. That said, it's been far too long since an issue of MILK AND CHEESE has hit the stands, and their antics are missed by long-time readers. Wherever they are, it's a safe bet that they're still pissed off. In the meantime, if you've never encountered Dorkin's most distinctive creations, FUN WITH MILK AND CHEESE is the perfect introduction to their antics.

Frank Smith is a freelance writer living in Brooklyn, New York.

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