Where Demented Wented is a collection of works by the 60s/ 70s underground cartoonist Rory Hayes, plus a biography of sorts written by some of the people who knew him. Rory and his brother Geoffrey grew up making comics and story books about their teddy bears, but whereas Geoffrey Hayes went on to become a much celebrated children’s author and illustrator, Rory took their characters down a much more dark and disturbing route.

There seem to be three distinct phases to Hayes’ work. His early strips are crude and gruesome yet rather (in my opinion) innocent and charming teddy bear horror adventures, full of dark corridors, rotting flesh and bear-munching monsters. These are the comics I absolutely love, they really are unique. One of my favourite cartoonists of all time, Mark Beyer, was clearly very influenced by this style.

Then we arrive at ‘Cunt Comics’. As far as I can gather from the book, Hayes was basically told by Robert Crumb and co that if he wanted to be in their gang, he’d have to start doing sex comics. Having no sexual experience of his own at this point, Hayes looked at his peers’ work and interpreted it in his own way. This resulted in some pretty vile, ultra-violent and deranged material. But whilst many find this work shocking and repulsive, I’m not personally offended by it. Yes it is disgusting, but it speaks to me of someone with very serious psychological issues. For all their sexual explicitness, these comics are very naive. To me they are far less offensive than the usual objectifying ‘can’t-stop-drawing-tits’ portrayal of women still dominant in underground comics today.

Finally there’s his return to teddy bear horror, but this time with more than a hint of speed. Before he died of an overdose in 1983, Hayes’ work became more stylised but at the same time more psychedelic and, well, boring if you ask me. However, despite his flaws I have a lot of admiration for Rory Hayes, and I think his influence on underground ‘naive art’ comics is sadly understated.

As an end note to this unusually long post, reading Where Demented Wented in public is a good way to get strange looks from middle aged women. And that’s just the stories about teddy bears.