Martin's long awaited debut is disappointing, to put it charitably. The story's setting and introduction is boring. The main body is formulatic but sometimes funny. The conclusion is blunt and unfunny. Despite some good writings for Rolling Jone magazine and being a good practical joker in the classic sense, Chris Martin's first stab at Keasman Literature is very mediocre.

With these three works Chris Martin establishes himself as an artist to be reckoned with.

"My Modest Life" simply stated he was a demented artist, following the path of Chris Jones and David Taylor as the third artist in the Demented Era.

"Leon" and "Big Man" are the most distinctive and satisfying demented works since Jones'. They remain the best absorption of Jones' concept to date.

Chris Martin writes clean and sharp literature, not comics, drawings or species reports. He is a writer, and with "Big Man" proved to be a very good one. He almost surely will be an important figure in the history and future of Keasman Literature.

"Fungus" comes as an almost disappointment after "Ballad", but that is not taking anything at all away from this piece. The story is much more smooth and confident than its predecessor, but it is not consumed with the power and sense of breakthrough like "Ballad of a Big Man".

"Tunnel" is the weakest of all of these. It is full of a lot of great lines, but it utilizes the liner notes of Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited a little too much. The ending is also uncharacteristically weak. Nonetheless, it is quite funny.

"Captain Milk" is the best work Martin has done since "Big Man". It is both zany and personal, in fact, it is one of the most personal works that I can think of though it might not seem so on the surface. The best work of the first half of '86.

CJ