Miguel Angel Martin
Snuff 2000

Miguel Angel Martin, Spanish, author of this comic, is a psychotic madman. He is not recommended for the faint-hearted. He has written exclusively works aimed at deliberately trying to shake the reader from the sleep of reason (which breeds monsters), using shocking images that cannot leave the viewer indifferent. His more famous works, aimed at a wider audience, like the acclaimed "Brian the Brain", although not featuring strong visual scenes, persuade the reader with uncomfortable and often disturbing situations. His lesser-known works, aimed at a more niche audience, like the mentioned "Psychopatia Sexualis", mislead the reader with images and scenes so intense as to often physically prevent continuation: "Snuff 2000" is part of this latter category.

The cover seems innocent, so minimal, composed with beautifully coordinated primary colors: but this is not the case with the inside. Fifty pages are described with the bizarre adventures of two distinguished gentlemen (hooded in gas masks) who make films for a living. Ultraviolent. Terrifying. Amoral. Disgusting. And the drawing style is so simple, clean, even elegant, that the stories (very short self-contained chapters) appear even more raw and monstrous. Martin leaves nothing to be desired and throughout the short book, one encounters torture of children, sexual violence of various forms and types, bodily mutilations, uro & coprophagia and more, all filmed with cameras to produce snuff movies to be sold through an underground market, which the comic lets us imagine is very large and widespread.

A comment published on the back cover notes that the comic is a great metaphor for the media: they are right, it is. It is a truly shocking way to criticize contemporary society, but if the author hadn’t taken it to the extreme, the work would probably have lost its impact and meaning. The horrendous human market of the comic is the same market of feelings on TV, in newspapers, on the Internet, and the Artist performs the intellectual operation of researching and disseminating the rot. Martin, cartoonist by profession, interior surgeon by vocation, has decided to throw in our faces the horror of the world we live in using a very harsh, but extraordinarily effective metaphor. The sensation of nausea provoked by the comic is the disgust that TV programs should provoke, in which feelings are commercialized, where children are exploited, where we are shown things we absolutely did not need. Gratuitous voyeurism, sensationalism lipstick, and tacky glamour. The psychotic madman is a genius Artist, desperately anarchic and intelligent.