Vile and Miserable
Creator: Samuel Cantin
Publisher: Pow Pow Press
Ahead of a film adaptation due out in 2025, Vile and Miserable is getting a new edition this fall via publisher Pow Pow Press…and as such, it feels like a great book to revisit as Halloween season begins in earnest. Now, there are a few caveats with this one. This is definitely a book for mature readers, with sex jokes and language that may be offensive to some. That said, it’s also a clever and absurdist dark comedy, if you’re looking for that sort of thing, as I generally always am.
The book is the work of cartoonist Samuel Cantin, who is based in Montreal. Following a strong Kickstarter, the book was first published in 2015, but it hasn’t to date been released through the American direct market. Sensabilities and humor-wise, it’s roughly in the same neighborhood as Simon Hanselmann’s work. That said, it’s still very much its own thing.
There isn’t much plot to speak of in Vile and Miserable, which is fine. What’s happening is not really the point. A car dealership owner is trying to move into the used bookstore market, seeing it as the future; or a demon is trying to hook up during the one day a year (groundhog’s day) that his penis is free from the prison of his polyester skin. Those are just preposterous setups to enable what the book is really interested in — mining the ways that terrible people talk to each other for humor.
It’s a book that’s loaded with unpredictable banner — keep an eye out for phrases like “the unknown soldier… of cats” or “I’m not prejudiced…I listen to, like, a ton of satanic music!” And it’s a book where basically all throughout, none of the characters want to be talking to one another, not really…which creates hilarious tension. It plays with ideas around mundane work relationships, literary aspiration, and total delusion.
It doesn’t really have a coherent structure, but it also doesn’t really need one. I’d primarily describe this book as a conversational car wreck that made me laugh my ass off several times.
Ultimately, if you haven’t read this book yet and you enjoy stories that work blue, as they say, Vile and Miserable is a great way to start this year’s Halloween reading season.
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