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The Bizarro Starter
Kit by D. Harlan Wilson
A Review by Jesse Gordon
You knew it had to happen.
Years of using horror as a band-aid for any and all subgenres touting blood,
shocking absurdities, or just plain oddness has resulted in a malignant growth
in the literary world: Bizarro.
What is Bizarro?
From page 5 of The Bizarro
Starter Kit: “Bizarro, simply put, is the
genre of the weird.” And The Bizarro Starter Kit (Bizarro
Books, 2006), simply put, is the weirdest of the weird.
Segmented by a congregation
of ten talented (and quite possibly tainted) authors, The Bizarro Starter Kit
contains 20 hand-picked works of Bizarro fiction from
the genre's most brilliant lights, including (but not limited to) D. Harlan Wilson,
Carlton Mellick III, Kevin L. Donihe,
John Edward Lawson, and Bruce Taylor.
It’s uncannily appropriate
that D. Harlan Wilson be up first, as he was my first
experience with the irreal. Fans of Wilson’s work will recognize two stories
(“Hairware, Inc.” and “Classroom Dynamics”) from his
2005 anthology, Pseudo-City. While Wilson's use of the irreal
might lead you to jump to conclusions concerning the rest of The Bizarro Starter Kit’s
content, the truth is you simply won’t know what to expect from page to page,
author to author. Stories like “Suicide Girls in the Afterlife” (Gina Ranalli) and “Don’t F(Beep)k with
the Coloureds” (Andre Duza)
will hit you in the face without warning. After making it to the halfway point,
though, it should be no surprise that the work featured in The Bizarro Starter Kit
falls in the vaguely-sensible-to-clearly-psychotic spectrum; while you might
think Jeremy Robert Johnson's “Extinction Journals” is a more standard-form
piece, it does center around a man who survives a
nuclear holocaust by wearing a suit of, yes, roaches. (The narrative styles
vary, but D. Harlan Wilson, Carlton Mellick III, and
Steve Beard are arguably among the most psychotic in their deliveries of Bizarro goodness.)
It can be said that Bizarro has only come about because of authors who refuse
to play nice on the horror shelf, but a handful of pages into The Bizarro Starter Kit
and you'll quickly realize this is not the case. More than merely “weird” or “uber-gross,” it’s the blatant surrealities
and unorthodox deliveries that are the hallmarks of Bizarro’s
appeal. Quite simply, there’s something for everyone here, whether you’re a
curious newbie or a seasoned veteran. If you like zombies, clones, and demonic
baby jesus butt plugs, “The
Baby Jesus Butt Plug” (Carlton Mellick III) will
tickle your fanny. For darker territory, check out Steve Beard’s use of phallic
wands in “Survivor’s Dream.” And if you stick around till the end, you’ll be
treated to Bruce Taylor’s distinctively whimsical style— particularly in “The
Breath Amidst the Stones,” where, on a distant planet, inanimate objects have a
life all their own.
The Bizarro
Starter Kit: File
under “B” for Bizarro.
—Jesse Gordon
Previously published in Vertigo Alley
TITLE: The
Bizarro Starter Kit
PUBLISHER: Eraserhead
Press
PUBLICATION DATE: 2006
PAGES: 236
PRICE (PAPERBACK): $10.00
ISBN#: 1933929006
BOOK DESCRIPTION: There's a new
genre rising from the underground. Its name: BIZARRO. For years, readers have
been asking for a category of fiction dedicated to the weird, crazy, cult side
of storytelling that has become a staple in the film industry (with directors
such as David Lynch, Takashi Miike, Tim Burton, and
even Lloyd Kaufman) but has been largely ignored in the literary world — until
now. The Bizarro Starter Kit features short novels
and story collections by ten of the leading authors in the bizarro
genre: D. Harlan Wilson, Carlton Mellick III, Jeremy
Robert Johnson, Kevin L Donihe, Gina Ranalli, Andre Duza, VIncent W. Sakowski, Steve Beard,
John Edward Lawson, and Bruce Taylor.
D. Harlan Wilson, Ph.D.
Stick Figure Incorporated
www.dharlanwilson.com
www.dreampeople.org
E-mail D. Harlan Wilson
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