Mr. Colostomy

By Matthew Thurber. Published by Drawn & Quarterly. 

Softcover, 224 pages, Colour and B&W, 2022. 

Are we not all criminals—eating our take-out, foraging for mushrooms, lapping at puddles?

What happens when sleep becomes commodified? What if all the people at your local café were piloting drone strikes? What is the hidden cost and darkness of the society we must all engage with? Mr. Colostomy opens up cans of worms faster than they can restock the Goya on your bodega shelves. Who is Mr. Colostomy? Why, he’s a manifestation of a searching consciousness, a marginally employable horse detective who sleeps outside, standing up. As he attempts to unravel a ridiculous plot that follows the disappearance of a couple of brats who turn into atomic particles after sundown, Mr. Colostomy remains always alien, a mutant mustang, an eccentric equus who might just be trying to make a buck in Babytown, the Babylon built by babes—or, is a more sinister plot a-hoof?

The surreal comedy of Mr. Colostomy is enhanced by Thurber’s process of creating the comic through parapraxis, meaning with no forethought or pencilling. This comic honours the mistake as the desired or hidden expression of the unconscious. All that matters is that the comic is funny or real or neither! All comics were created in a public space in order to “swim in” or “feel” the audience.

“Thurber is at his hilariously surreal best in this collection of his loosely connected daily strips… [Mr. Colostomy is a] wickedly smart comedic assault.”—Publishers Weekly

"[Art Comic is a] raw, bizarre meditation on why we idiot humans bother to create anything."—Vulture

"A blistering take on the art world, rife with cameos from Robert Rauschenberg to Matthew Barney. Thurber's absurd narrative takes to task the often farcical nature of a notoriously self-aggrandizing industry."—Artsy