Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Cup Runneth Over
Aug 8, 2009

She said life's
Too short to worry
Life's too long to wait
It's too short
Not to love everybody
Life's too long to hate


Donna Barr is an American comic book author and cartoonist. She is best known for two books; Stinz, about a society of centaur-like people in a setting reminiscent of pre-industrial Germany, and The Desert Peach, a comic about Erwin "The Desert Fox" Rommel's fictional younger gay brother. Nazis feature prominently in her work, as well as people with horse heads, and centaurs, but she is not a Nazi herself and her work is generally said to be unequivocally anti-Nazi.



She has also done several other comics, like Hader and the Colonel, The Barr Girls, and Bosom Enemies, and Afterdead, which no one can seem to comprehend, and some novels like Permanent Party, An Insupportable Light, Ringcat, and Bread and Swans. She's done several illustrations for GURPS and Traveller books. She seems to have a fascination with imperial Germany, men in uniform, horses, and homosexuals. She served in the Women's Army Corps from 1970 to 1973, which may be responsible for some of that. She was hit in the head with an axe when she was seven, which may be responsible for the rest.



So... uhh... hmmmm....

Discuss!

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
Stinz is probably the right place to start, and possibly the right place to stop depending on your sensibilities. Hader and the Colonel is adorable if you can get over the harpy inexplicably being dressed as a Nazi. I mean, "inexplicable" beyond that it's Barr and she loves to draw Nazis.

painted bird
Oct 18, 2013

by Lowtax

Pick posted:

Stinz is probably the right place to start, and possibly the right place to stop depending on your sensibilities. Hader and the Colonel is adorable if you can get over the harpy inexplicably being dressed as a Nazi. I mean, "inexplicable" beyond that it's Barr and she loves to draw Nazis.

Yeah, if you don't think you can handle comics about Germans during WW2, where everyone is in uniform, Stinz is what you should limit yourself to.

If you're like me and a glutton for punishment, The Desert Peach is surprisingly good, once you get over the fact it's MASH but with gay Nazis.

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
Oh, it's not mentioned in the OP, but the core Stinz and Desert Peach (and Hader) are from the late 80s, they just happen to be available online now as well. They were originally published through Fantagraphics.

Cup Runneth Over
Aug 8, 2009

She said life's
Too short to worry
Life's too long to wait
It's too short
Not to love everybody
Life's too long to hate


But only read Stinz if you can handle centaurs climbing ladders, it gets pretty bad

corn in the bible
Jun 5, 2004

Oh no oh god it's all true!
This is a hell of a thing to have a thread about.

painted bird
Oct 18, 2013

by Lowtax
They really wanted us out of the bad webcomics thread, I guess.

Cup Runneth Over
Aug 8, 2009

She said life's
Too short to worry
Life's too long to wait
It's too short
Not to love everybody
Life's too long to hate


It had no place there, being neither bad (ostensibly) nor a webcomic (technically) :colbert:

PleasingFungus
Oct 10, 2012
idiot asshole bitch who should fuck off
You guys posted for page at a time about this woman.

You were detracting from the core focus of that thread, i.e., gay furry rape.

Anyway:


corn in the bible posted:



stinz, the mennonite centaur, died. and now he's in the nazi afterlife with rommel's secret gay brother. what hijinks will ensue?

Quoting top-quality Barr samplers.

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost

corn in the bible posted:

This is a hell of a thing to have a thread about.

You are the one who brought it to everyone's attention. You should be grateful! This is your legacy.

Soulcleaver
Sep 25, 2007

Murderer
Donna Barr is pretty decent outsider art. I love weird poo poo by crazy people.

corn in the bible
Jun 5, 2004

Oh no oh god it's all true!

Soulcleaver posted:

Donna Barr is pretty decent outsider art. I love weird poo poo by crazy people.

It gave me an avatar, though I must admit that was before we found out quite how crazy she is. She can draw pretty drat well, though.

Fuckin' terrible at lettering.

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
In case this thread needs talking points:

- Why are hats animate post time-travel?
- Rosen is worse than Kjars
- Where the hell does the mute dude's dinosaur come from?
- I don't understand the deer skull hallucination chapter or why there is a vampire
- Why is Afterdead so god damned weird

Captain Candyblood
Aug 19, 2013

*The worse insults for the likpas and phallos as well.
Is there a timeline her comics should be read in (besides Stinz being first)? I want to read this stuff--everything that's been posted is so fascinatingly bizarre--but I want to make sure I do it in the right order, it seems confusing enough as it is.

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost

Captain Candyblood posted:

Is there a timeline her comics should be read in (besides Stinz being first)? I want to read this stuff--everything that's been posted is so fascinatingly bizarre--but I want to make sure I do it in the right order, it seems confusing enough as it is.

Yes, sort of. My recommended order would be:

Hader & the Colonel
Stinz (switch with Hader if you have a zero tolerance policy for Nazi uniforms)
The Desert Peach

Then potentially,

Bosom Enemies

Wow, you're still here?

Afterdead


Afterdead absolutely requires Desert Peach and Stinz, and draws from the others to a lesser extent--mostly aspects of the setting. "Barr Girls" is in there with Bosom Enemies apparently but my copy hasn't come so I can't speak for its contents. (I personally might recommend skipping Bosom Enemies though, since it's sort of a transitional state of strangeness that doesn't quite gel.)

Pick fucked around with this message at 06:00 on Mar 5, 2014

CROWS EVERYWHERE
Dec 17, 2012

CAW CAW CAW

Dinosaur Gum
I must admit, I think the gunbirdfishes are cute.

Also, I have never engaged in any kind of sex act that involves a penis. Can someone more versed than I in penisology tell me: I was pretty sure the #1 rule of penising is don't use the teeth, is this still the case? Because that weirded me out. I was pretty sure in a theoretical sense that blowjobs didn't involve biting.

My other questions re Barrology are mostly a single, repeated "WHY?" First and foremost, why would you ever consider it a good idea to write your seminal text, Why Nazis Are Bad People, in the margins of your copy of Pinup Boys of the Wehrmacht 1940 Edition?

e2: Also, why won't you get a haircut? :mad:

CROWS EVERYWHERE fucked around with this message at 07:46 on Mar 5, 2014

LazyMaybe
Aug 18, 2013

oouagh
No, getting your dick bit is not... really an ideal part of a blowjob. Kind of like how anal sex without lube+just jamming it in and ignoring when your partner tells you you're being too rough isn't exactly good, but don't let that stop Donna.

CROWS EVERYWHERE
Dec 17, 2012

CAW CAW CAW

Dinosaur Gum
I do not think there has been a single straight woman in the history of straight women who has written a gay sex scene convincingly. Nor a straight man a lesbian scene. Why are heterosexuals the worst at everything? e: No offence intended, I am sure there are many heterosexuals who have achieved great things in their fields of study, and there may even be some in this thread.

Also what kind of posthumous indignities does anyone think are slated for Udo? With his reintroduction in Afterdead I cannot see this as going anywhere but Depressionville, Siberia.

CROWS EVERYWHERE fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Mar 5, 2014

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
I'm not sure, but I've wondered if Barr doesn't like the idea of him and Pfirsch together better than Pfirsch and Rosen. The horse chapter is literally analogues for all of them and it's all about Udo trying to pair up the "right" horses (the small gray one instead of the big black one).

corn in the bible
Jun 5, 2004

Oh no oh god it's all true!
Also, Pfirsch and Rosen are no longer together for no apparent reason other than the author changed her mind

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost

corn in the bible posted:

Also, Pfirsch and Rosen are no longer together for no apparent reason other than the author changed her mind

At first it was because of that rule where you least remember the people you were closest to, and Rosen genuinely didn't seem to remember, but then later he does somehow, as indicated by his black fingernails. Pfirsch also has black fingernails, but it had been implied he was able to remember because he was a cyborg. The reason they're not together is that Rosen doesn't care any more because Rosen just can't stop being terrible. Or stop being Hell Pope.

CROWS EVERYWHERE
Dec 17, 2012

CAW CAW CAW

Dinosaur Gum

Pick posted:

At first it was because of that rule where you least remember the people you were closest to, and Rosen genuinely didn't seem to remember, but then later he does somehow, as indicated by his black fingernails. Pfirsch also has black fingernails, but it had been implied he was able to remember because he was a cyborg. The reason they're not together is that Rosen doesn't care any more because Rosen just can't stop being terrible. Or stop being Hell Pope.

I was so confused by all this. At first Rosen didn't remember things but then he did, because fingernails, and I was sure this would mean things go back to normal, right? But then Peach gets sad over cannibalism and Rosen is like "Well I just thought you'd like to know I am incapable of giving a gently caress about your bullshit, nor will I ever give any fucks" but he seems able to give fucks over everything else that doesn't involve Peach. I would accept their going in different directions (if only because Rosen is an rear end and Peach deserves better :qq:) but it just seems so disjointed and out-of-nowhere.

Which is to say it's like most of Afterdead.

The general thing about DP and, increasingly, Afterdead is that Barr seems to set out with an idea to write a scene, then decides to flip a coin: if it's heads, the scene is wacky, if tails, it's tragic. Some writers can do this (the tragic consequences of wacky hijinks) but I just do not think Barr can pull it off.

e2: And why was Peach's skinhead grandson a centaur

I feel as if there are whole chapters missing from Afterdead, or that exist only in Donna Barr's crazed mind.

CROWS EVERYWHERE fucked around with this message at 08:50 on Mar 5, 2014

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
It literally only makes sense if the intervening chapter didn't happen (the one where he remembers who Pfirsch is). Then again, Barr has mentioned she has memory trouble so she might actually have forgotten she did that. But he still has black fingernails, so he must remember, and she must remember he remembers? Also, they still hang out at roller derby, and Rosen is drooling over the girls (and mentions he's had relationships in the afterlife previously) so the excuse he gives Pfirsch--that he doesn't have any such drive any more--clearly isn't true?

CROWS EVERYWHERE
Dec 17, 2012

CAW CAW CAW

Dinosaur Gum
Another Afterdead thing that is bothering me: was that facehorse with the girl Rommel and Kjars met meant to be Hitler?

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost

CROWS EVERYWHERE posted:

Another Afterdead thing that is bothering me: was that facehorse with the girl Rommel and Kjars met meant to be Hitler?

Yeah, the horse was definitely Hitler.

CROWS EVERYWHERE
Dec 17, 2012

CAW CAW CAW

Dinosaur Gum

Pick posted:

Yeah, the horse was definitely Hitler.

Good, I am glad to see I didn't entirely imagine all of that. The thing with Kjars's sister kind of interested me. Part of it was not going through with having Kjars meet her, which I felt actually worked with the overarching theme of guilt/self-forgiveness, but also that she clearly saw, physically, the Aftereich (:rolleye:) as very, very different to what Pfirsich, at least, was seeing. Implying that it's different for each person based on their own mental hangups and so it might just appear full of Nazi horses to Pfirsich because obviously one would expect him to have a bit of a thing with Nazis.

Ignoring, of course, the fact that the afterlife is full of Nazi horses because Donna Barr wants to gently caress a Nazi horse.

e: Speaking of which, would anyone who has read Stinz mind filling me in a bit more on the different levels of horsiness? Like I know there are centaurs, like Stinz, and facehorses (who are in that form as punishment in Afterdead but not in Stinz?). Then, from Afterdead, we've also got the tiny guy with the horse head, and people who have the back half of a horse and the front half of a person (like a satyr I guess) and so on. Is this in Stinz too? Do the different groups of horses signify anything in particular or do their different levels of horsiness inform their actions with each other and regular humans in any way?

CROWS EVERYWHERE fucked around with this message at 09:13 on Mar 5, 2014

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
These are the Barr horse levels:

1. Horse: normal horse, we see them in Desert Peach and Stinz, and maybe Afterdead, I forget if we've seen regular horses there. There's one at the very, very end of Bosom Enemies too.
2: Face horse: It's a horse with a person's face. Seen in Afterdead (people who protested without a license, and Hitler)
3: Turb: A person who was made into a horse where the front half is a person (still four-limbed) and the back half is a horse, though some are born that way and simply referred to as "horses". From Bosom Enemies and show up in Afterdead.
4. Horse-headed guys: I forget what they're called exactly, but they're from Bosom Enemies and show up in Afterdead.
5: Centaur: like Stinz, pretty self-explanatory. From Stinz and show up in Afterdead.
6: Not a horse: There are some of these.

LazyMaybe
Aug 18, 2013

oouagh

Pick posted:

Yeah, the horse was definitely Hitler.
Donna Barr Megathread-The horse was definitely Hitler

Heresiarch
Oct 6, 2005

Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

CROWS EVERYWHERE posted:

I do not think there has been a single straight woman in the history of straight women who has written a gay sex scene convincingly. Nor a straight man a lesbian scene. Why are heterosexuals the worst at everything? e: No offence intended, I am sure there are many heterosexuals who have achieved great things in their fields of study, and there may even be some in this thread.

You need to go read The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal, which is written and drawn by a woman (who is also a goon who posts in BSS occasionally but I have forgotten her username) and is pretty drat spot-on. I'm not sure how she managed this but she did.



Also, a warning for Pick: "Barr Girls" is pretty much straight-up porn. Very, very weird porn which I don't think anybody but Barr could possibly find exciting. I'm not going to explain the book's gimmick because it will be much more amusing to watch your reaction if you don't know ahead of time, but I suspect that it was spoiled for you by whatever site you ordered it from.



Oh, and I've just been reorganizing my bookshelves and I found my stack of Barr trades that I bought back in the 90's, which includes the early Peach stories that aren't on the website. I can't scan them in without destroying the bindings but I can take photos or something so people can see exactly how different her art was back at the beginning.

I'm also in the process of doing another painful cull of my book collection because my wife and I are likely to move to a smaller apartment this year, so if anybody's interested in the books as a set we might be able to work something out. It's the first six AEON edition TPBs (which go up to issue #19), "Peach Slices", "The Ersatz Peach" (which is basically fanart by other creators), "Hader and the Colonel", and the Stinz "Warhorse" collection.

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost

Heresiarch posted:

Also, a warning for Pick: "Barr Girls" is pretty much straight-up porn. Very, very weird porn which I don't think anybody but Barr could possibly find exciting. I'm not going to explain the book's gimmick because it will be much more amusing to watch your reaction if you don't know ahead of time, but I suspect that it was spoiled for you by whatever site you ordered it from.
I am steel.

LazyMaybe
Aug 18, 2013

oouagh

Heresiarch posted:

You need to go read The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal, which is written and drawn by a woman (who is also a goon who posts in BSS occasionally but I have forgotten her username) and is pretty drat spot-on. I'm not sure how she managed this but she did.
I'll second this, it's super good and actually, I dunno, more or less feels real. I think she might have mastered the secret ancient art of learning about/listening to the kind of people her work is based around. Definitely not primarily erotic but it contains fairly convincing sex and is a good story, with like, characters that seem like actual humans.

CROWS EVERYWHERE
Dec 17, 2012

CAW CAW CAW

Dinosaur Gum

Heresiarch posted:

You need to go read The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal, which is written and drawn by a woman (who is also a goon who posts in BSS occasionally but I have forgotten her username) and is pretty drat spot-on. I'm not sure how she managed this but she did.



Also, a warning for Pick: "Barr Girls" is pretty much straight-up porn. Very, very weird porn which I don't think anybody but Barr could possibly find exciting. I'm not going to explain the book's gimmick because it will be much more amusing to watch your reaction if you don't know ahead of time, but I suspect that it was spoiled for you by whatever site you ordered it from.


Thank you, I probably should read some actual good webcomics.

I am now very curious as to the gimmick of "Barr Girls" now and await Pick's exposure to its wonders with bated breath.

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost

CROWS EVERYWHERE posted:

Thank you, I probably should read some actual good webcomics.

I am now very curious as to the gimmick of "Barr Girls" now and await Pick's exposure to its wonders with bated breath.

I am warning you, if it is horse cock, I may actually laugh myself to death. This is not the death I intended for myself but we do not always control such things.

e: But if I do, Heresiarch, please amend my Barr horse scale post-mortem.

LazyMaybe
Aug 18, 2013

oouagh
Just looking at some of the images that come up when I google search that, I think I can guess.
Same search eventually led me to this wonderful cover:

LazyMaybe fucked around with this message at 10:00 on Mar 5, 2014

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
Haha that farmer's tan makes Rosen look like a douche.

CROWS EVERYWHERE
Dec 17, 2012

CAW CAW CAW

Dinosaur Gum
Speaking of Donna Barr's weird sexual hangups



Donna Barr's DA posted:

Believe me, this was a commission. I have other tastes.

What about this has she not explored fully in her other works that isn't part of her "tastes"? :psyduck: I could easily accept this as regular Afterdead art. What is she trying to defend against? What sex things are so weird that even Donna Barr doesn't want to be associated with them? (And why can't I see it?)

The half-horse things really creep me out. Centaurs at least seem to be fairly dignified and get offended if people try to ride around on them (Pfirsich naturally excepted) but the ones with human hands and a horse butt just seem to get used as beasts of burden and trot around with bridles and reins? I don't think I read anything about them being Hitlers or anything but it just seems really weird. I mean, even aside from being a pretty obvious fetish thing.

Pick
Jul 19, 2009
Nap Ghost
I... I have no idea. There's nothing in that picture that is one-tenth as skeevy as Bosom Enemies and there is content in it that is almost identical. "A human riding a centaur with light bondage? Why I never!"

I mean, the main thrust of Bosom Enemies is the turbs are humans that are converted into slave mounts, is this really worse?

e: Oh yeah, the horsehead guys are "Tudan".

Pick fucked around with this message at 10:10 on Mar 5, 2014

Heresiarch
Oct 6, 2005

Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that no single book is. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships.

Pick posted:

I am warning you, if it is horse cock, I may actually laugh myself to death. This is not the death I intended for myself but we do not always control such things.

e: But if I do, Heresiarch, please amend my Barr horse scale post-mortem.

It is not horse cock.

CROWS EVERYWHERE
Dec 17, 2012

CAW CAW CAW

Dinosaur Gum

Heresiarch posted:

It is not horse cock.

Well, I'm out of ideas.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

CROWS EVERYWHERE
Dec 17, 2012

CAW CAW CAW

Dinosaur Gum
What bothers me most about Donna Barr is she can be so normal, even passably sane, so long as you don't let her anywhere near loving Nazis. She has one of her many blogs on which she posts her political poo poo but seems to have taken it as a personal challenge to never ever ever mention A) Nazis or B) any horse-man combination, and it's largely quite pleasant reading. She's still a little white-foreigner-on-holiday-cooing-at-the-adorable-natives with some of her gay rights activism (Honorary Queer :rolleye:), but she's surprisingly... Lucid. She really likes writing scathing rebuttals to MRAs and internet libertarians and is deeply feminist and overall seems like someone you could almost talk to.

But allow her the slightest bit of Nazi porn and blammo, all undone. It just seems to consume all the critical thinking parts of her brain. There is no way you could write something with the premise of Desert Peach and not do significant white-washing, ending up with something at best nonsensical and at worst downright offensive, and I'd like to think that there's no way you couldn't pick up on that and pull yourself up before making this your life's work. She can write a compelling story and can certainly draw better than I could, but she just can't not put Nazis into it, and can't see why that looks really bad.

She makes me sad :smith: She has a lot of talent and seems like she could be a decent person, if she just kept her creepy fetishes out of it. But she can't. And when your fetish is Nazi poo poo that's kind of impossible to overlook.

e: what I'm saying is "I'm sad"

CROWS EVERYWHERE fucked around with this message at 14:04 on Mar 5, 2014

  • Locked thread