Megahex

by Simon Hanselmann

Overview

This is a stoner-comedy webcomic collection; it’s about a witch, her cat and an owl.
Megg is a depressed, drug-addicted witch. Mogg is her black cat. Their friend, Owl, is an anthropomorphized owl. They hang out a lot with Werewolf Jones. This may sound like a pure stoner comedy, but it transcends the genre: these characters struggle unsuccessfully to come to grips with their depression, drug use, sexuality, poverty, lack of work, lack of ambition, and their complex feelings about each other in ways that have made Megg and Mogg sensations on Hanselmann’s GirlMountain tumblr. This is the first collection of Hanselmann’s work, freed from its cumbersome Internet prison, and sure to be one of the most talked about graphic novels of 2014, featuring all of the “classic” Megg and Mogg episodes from the past five years as well as over 70 pages of all-new material.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781606997437
Publisher:	Fantagraphics Books
Publication date:	09/21/2014
Pages:	200
Sales rank:	125,405
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Simon Hanselmann is a New York Times best-selling author who was born in Tasmania in 1981. He has contributed comics and illustrations to the Believer and Pitchfork, among other publications. He lives in Australia and on girlmountain.tumblr.com.

Editorial Reviews

★ 08/25/2014
The cast of this webcomic, now lovingly anthologized, is made up of those acquaintances from high school who never moved away—the ones you hope you don’t run into at the 7-Eleven when you go home for Thanksgiving. Or the freshman year college roommate for whom the phrase “wake and bake” is more than a silly rhyme, it’s a lifestyle choice. There are a few differences, of course—namely, the fact that the trio at the heart of these episodes are a witch, a black cat, and an anthropomorphic owl. They get high, sleep in, fool around with one another, and generally do terrible things to themselves and others. As the stories unfold like a stoner fantasy version of a sitcom, the trio flail and struggle with depression and begin to grow all too human. In his debut graphic novel, Tasmanian Hanselmann draws gridlike pages filled with simple flat shapes, given emphasis by a dulled palette of watercolors. The story is depressing as often as it is funny, a cautionary tale that’s at its best when Hanselmann spreads his writing wings, extending beyond a gag strip into an honest exploration of his deeply flawed leads. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Megg and Mogg are unforgettable leads, and Owl and Jones are the perfect foils, and Hanselmann’s art pops off the page thanks to his gorgeous use of colour. Hanselmann is a consummate artist and writer.

Lee Henderson (The Road Narrows as You Go) - The Globe and Mail

Every page is beautiful. Every joke is funny. Every character is a complete asshole.

Nick Gazin - Vice

...[T]he overall experience of Megahex is a complex one, far more complex than I first thought. There’s a real power in Hanselmann’s book…”

Richard Bruton - Forbidden Planet International

Megahex… is an existential stoner tale that is part Furry Freak Brothers, part Beavis and Butt-Head, and part Jean Paul Sartre (with some Jackass thrown in for good measure)…. It would be easy to dismiss Megahex as another stoner comic. But there’s so much lurking beneath the seemingly superficial surfaces -- questions about friendship, loyalty, love, drug addiction, sexual identity, and hopelessness. There are plenty of hysterical Darwin Award-worthy situations in Megahex, but that’s not likely to be your takeaway. And what you’ll leave with is far scarier than any spook house frights; the fear of looking deeply at yourself in the mirror and finding a monster (or nothing) in your place.”

Gareth Branwyn - Boing Boing

Featuring old-school underground comix, but with the style and serial nature of even older-school Sunday newspaper comics strips, Megahex is the sort of comic that could only gestate on the Internet, and only find final, full expression in book form from a publisher like Fantagraphics. [Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]”

J. Caleb Mozzocco - Las Vegas Weekly

What Simon Hanselmann does with his comics is what any artist and/or writer worth his or her salt does: take you somewhere, make you feel something. The most disturbing, and most exhilarating, moment for me in comics this year, or any year, must be Werewolf Jones taking a cheese grater to his testicles. Pure genius.

Henry Chamberlain - Comics Grinder

[Hanselmann] doesn't just draw the funny or sexy moments -- he lets the characters and the readers enjoy and laugh, but then he shows the fallout from some of the characters' actions, depicting them as them scared and desperate, pathetic and troubled. Hanselmann's skill at depicting this range of emotions and exploring those consequences is what makes his work so fascinating and so worth rereading.

Alex Dueben - Comic Book Resources

...Megg’s depression isn’t your garden-variety Prozac episode. She’s so invariably and subtly disconsolate and experiences such disturbing mood swings that it’s impossible not to feel at least a tinge of that heavy sadness. And because the book is funny, too — they smoke lots of pot — her depression seems that much more real.

Nicole Rudick - The Paris Review

The best way to describe these comics to anyone who hasn’t read them is simply to say they feel complete, with everything precisely in its right place, as if Hanselmann’s tiny panels really were just little windows into a strange universe of post-college weirdos, slackers, and psychotics who just happen to be talking animals. ... Buy this because it deserves to sell a million copies.

Tim O'Neil - The A.V. Club

Profane though it is, the narrative of three 20-something roommates casually tormenting each other mixes an intelligent understanding of depression and anhedonia with its crudeness.

Hillary Brown - Paste

Every time Megahex seems so self-aware and so cool, to exhale so loudly and profoundly at the banality of it all, it will inhale so deeply and fully that you can’t help but fill your own lungs along with it. ... What is the genius of Simon Hanselmann? His precise and natural sense of comedic timing? The food colouring he paints with? His turns of affection and sadism for his characters? What is the magic that he weaves?”

Leonie Brialey - The Lifted Brow

[Megahex] is the cruelest kind of laugh-out-loud funny. … There’s a sadness that pervades the whole book… but it builds a world of hilarious, odd, and sometimes downright mean moments that makes these characters feel real enough to be wholly entertaining.”

Gene Ambaum - Unshelved

[Megahex] adds up to a definitely non-heteronormative and often hilarious, and sometimes touching, reading experience.”

Robert Kirby - The Comics Journal

Simon Hanselmann is the real deal, for sure. He captures that stoner stay-at-home life so accurately that I actually find his comics really depressing and thank god I don't ever have to hang out with anybody like that ever again.

Daniel Clowes