By RICH JENSEN, RENE JENSEN (Last Gasp; 1975)
I’m not sure what to make of this, one of the absolute nuttiest underground comics in existence. It was published by Last Gasp, which also put out the revered SKULL, ARMAGEDDON and ANARCHY comics. The 35 page AMPUTEE LOVE isn’t up to the same standards, although it handily beats them all in sheer wrong-headed lunacy.
The title is somewhat misleading, as there’s little in the way of love here (a more accurate title would be AMPUTEE LUST). The title’s first word, though, is integral to the comic, which was scripted by Rene Jensen, a double amputee who imparts of great deal of insider knowledge (including an appendix with instructions on how to alter trousers and pantyhose to better fit an amputee stump). For that reason I feel a little guilty in admitting that the comic is, frankly, horrendous—albeit in a uniquely demented manner. Another misleading element is the Brent Boates drawn cover, which is well drafted and professional—two things the interior story and artwork definitely aren’t!
It’s about a young woman named Lyn, who after quitting her secretary job—and speeding toward an orgy—loses a leg in a car accident. Some effort is made to depict the day-to-day life of an amputee, as in an early sequence in which Lyn learns how to use crutches and peg legs, but the comic is mostly concerned with sex. The heroine, you see, fortuitously meets up with Sheri, a fellow “mono-pede” who’s just as horny as Lyn, and promises to show her how “to be a foxy amp chick ‘n get your full share of the good ballin’ that’s to be had for the picking.” Luckily there’s a vast community of amputee fetishists waiting in the wings who get off on “stump play,” i.e. licking and caressing their lovers’ stumps. It all culminates in a “Ball-in,” during which Lyn and Sheri are joined by a bunch more mono-pedes who are forbidden the use of crutches or peg legs, as “Y’gotta hop, crawl, wiggle or let your guy tote ya…” The final pages, incidentally, promise a follow-up issue, entitled “The Story of Orgy Isle,” that never appeared.
Regarding the climactic orgy, it’s not as effective as it might have been simply because all the female characters look the same—which is to say that all are mis-proportioned (in a way that has nothing to do with the fact that they lack arms and/or legs) and sport poofy Ann Landers hairdos. The best I can say for the artwork by Rene Jensen’s husband Rich is that it matches the scripting perfectly.
To continue with the negatives: the dialogue balloons are incredibly voluminous, often taking up over half the page and possibly setting some kind of record for comic book wordiness. The characters all speak in lengthy monologues, peppered with slang that was already out of date in 1975 (“Gee—he’s groovy lookin’,” “Like wow, that was the livin’, lovin’ end”), and are furthermore never developed much beyond their surface horniness.
What’s most interesting about the book is its author’s point of view toward non-amputees, all of whom are apparently either hot for or jealous of the mono-pedes among them. As Sheri informs Lyn early on, “most men will positively leer at you and ogle you ‘til they near drool all over themselves,” while women are suffused with “envy and dislike” because “we have something they don’t have, and it’s hidden.” The attitude borders on reverse discrimination, and is, I believe, something that would have been clarified in subsequent issues of AMPUTEE LOVE—but alas, that just wasn’t to be.