Stray Toasters

AUTHOR: Sienkiewicz, Bill

ARTIST: Bill Sienkiewicz (illustrator); James Novak (letterer)

PUBLISHER: Marvel Comics

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 1988

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1991

Publication History

Bill Sienkiewicz’s Stray Toasters originally appeared in 1988 as a four-issue miniseries published monthly by Epic Comics, an imprint of Marvel Comics. Installments were numbered models 1 through 4, punning on the title of the series as well as the satirical advertisements for toasters manufactured by the fictional Bolle-Happel Appliances company that appeared on the back of each issue.

This title, like most in the Epic Comics catalog, treats a story line and characters independent from the Marvel Universe. Sienkiewicz’s longtime affiliation with the parent publisher and his distinctive visual style offer the only recognizable continuity between the content of Stray Toasters and his previous work for Marvel, most notably his penciling work for the New Mutants (1984-1985). Though readers and collectors had for years recognized Sienkiewicz’s status as an illustrator, Stray Toasters represented his first published venture as sole artist and author.

In 1991, Marvel published all four issues of Stray Toasters in one volume, entitled Stray Toasters: Designer Edition, which included concept sketches for the series from Sienkiewicz’s notebooks. Graphitti Designs, a company that specializes in licensing pop-culture and comics-related merchandise, released a one-volume edition of Stray Toasters in 2003. Image Comics republished the collection in 2007, again as a single volume.

Plot

Founded in 1982, creator-owned Epic Comics provided Marvel Comics with an outlet to market and publish content targeted to mature audiences while allowing creators to retain creative control and ownership of their work. Sienkiewicz’s highly stylized renderings of an ensemble of flawed characters connected by a series of bizarre murders make Stray Toasters ideally suited for readers who value darker themes, psychologically complex characters, and nontraditional comics art.

The story takes place in a violent and depressed version of New York City, an indeterminate future in which cars fly, dogs are extinct, cats proliferate, homelessness has escalated, and the mortality rate among newborn girls is 80 percent. Sienkiewicz projects several plots onto this dystopian backdrop, all of which are more or less resolved by the story’s conclusion.

As Phil the demon arrives in New York for an extended holiday, Egon Rustemagik investigates the brutal slaying of Deborah Dissler, whose body has been mutilated with power tools and wired like an electrical appliance. Rustemagik discovers that Dissler was a patient of his former lover, the psychiatrist Abby Nolan. He seeks her out for information about the victim, whose death may be connected to the recent mutilation and murder of eleven boys. Abby refuses to discuss her patient with Rustemagik, citing client confidentiality, though she does allude to Dissler’s son, Todd.

While reviewing forensic evidence of the murders, Rustemagik learns that the child victims have been drained of blood and viscera. Phil, in the form of an old woman, beats up Rustemagik for accidentally killing one of the cats that Phil intended to deliver to his sons as a vacation souvenir. Dr. Montana Violet reveals that he feeds on the liquefied remains of the murdered boys; these are supplied to him by Dahlia, who is killing them in a symbolic attempt to eradicate her own apparently deceased son.

Rustemagik links Dahlia to the child murders. Fearful of being implicated, Violet abducts Rustemagik and attempts to destroy his mind with hallucinogens. Meanwhile, Harvard Chalky devises a scheme to claim Abby’s affections by killing Rustemagik but shoots Phil instead. Phil identifies Chalky as the perfect souvenir lawyer to take back to Hell. Big Daddy attempts to murder Abby, who has uncovered the bizarre relationship between Todd and the construct.

Finally aware of Violet’s manipulations, Dahlia resolves to murder him. Rustemagik, however, having emerged from his drug-induced incapacitation, destroys Violet’s putrescent body with a pipe but spares his cybernetic head. Rustemagik attempts to apprehend Dahlia, but he is too late; Dahlia confronts Violet, and when he reveals that her son, Todd, not only is still alive but also has been technologically enhanced, she kills him. The mortal characters engage in a standoff at Abby’s house, in which Rustemagik destroys Big Daddy, Abby stabs Dahlia to save Todd, and Chalky shoots Rustemagik in the head without killing him. Stray Toasters closes with Big Daddy disassembled, Abby adopting Todd, and Rustemagik and Chalky institutionalized. Empty-handed, Phil returns to Hell.

Characters

•Egon Rustemagik is the main protagonist, a physically imposing figure with a white walrus moustache and an austere haircut. He is a criminal psychologist, author, and alcoholic who has recently been discharged from Bosley Mental Institution. Dahlia is his lover.

•Abigail Nolan, a.k.a. Abby, is Rustemagik’s former lover and the mother of their deceased child. Her allegations of abuse against Rustemagik formed the basis of the case that sent him to Bosley. She works as a psychiatrist.

•Dahlia is a wealthy, religious widow. Aside from her relations with Rustemagik, she primarily interacts with robot servants that wear formal attire and masks resembling human faces. She is a patient of Dr. Montana Violet.

•Dr. Montana Violet has blue skin as the result of self-induced cyanosis. He is immobilized by obesity and assisted by a flock of cybernetic crows. A freakish amalgam of flesh, appliances, and wires, he appears on television to dispense medical expertise.

•Todd is a boy of indeterminate age. He is towheaded and wears overalls, and his only words are “toast and jam.” Abby discovers him sitting on her doorstep after the murder of his mother.

•Harvard Chalky, an assistant district attorney, craves boundaries and values rules. A small, weedy man with large eyeglasses, he is a client of Abby Nolan.

•Phil is a demon. He shares his experiences in the mortal realm on postcards addressed to Hell. He is happily married with two sons and has healthy, functional relationships with his family and friends. He is red, horned, and enormous in stature, with hooves and a pointed tail.

•Big Daddy is a foul-mouthed, misogynistic construct that murders women. His head is a toaster and he wears a pin-striped suit. He shares a strong bond with Todd.

Artistic Style

Stray Toasters showcases the synthesis of fine-art techniques, multimedia, and traditional comics illustration that has since become Sienkiewicz’s hallmark. His formal artistic training is evident throughout, as is his appreciation for and mastery of anatomical painting. The illustrations in Stray Toasters are painted, enabling Sienkiewicz to utilize techniques uncommon in comics, apart from in cover art, as well as imitate some of his artistic influences. For example, his paintings of Dahlia often incorporate colors and imagery that call to mind Egon Schiele’s portraits of women, while Violet’s entries in his medical journal feature illustrations that evoke Pablo Picasso’s explorations of primitivism. Utilizing the distinctive palettes and imagery of other artists in reference to certain characters conveys both thematic consistency and visual variety.

Sienkiewicz’s use of multimedia in Stray Toasters embellishes the freedom from line and composition demonstrated by artists such as Ralph Steadman. In addition to the dribbles and splatters characteristic of Steadman’s work, Sienkiewicz’s artwork also incorporates hardware, textiles, ink-pad stamps, mimeographed images, and organic materials, all of which serve to introduce depth and texture to traditional comics design.

Despite these many innovations, Stray Toasters still offers readers a sequential narrative. Even though Sienkiewicz plays with conventional comics panels by varying their size and shape, interspersing full-page illustrations among them, and utilizing collage, the work remains recognizable as a comic book, especially in terms of its depiction of dialogue and narrative.

Sienkiewicz uses the usual bubbles to indicate characters in conversation, although most of the narration in Stray Toasters occurs in characters’ heads. He represents each character’s thoughts in colored boxes that correspond to each individual consciousness; Abby’s thoughts, for example, are pink, and Dahlia’s are violet. While lettering is consistent among most characters, notable exceptions include Sienkiewicz’s childlike printing of Todd’s impressions and Big Daddy’s evil ideas, which are presented in Courier typeface. These variations in internal speech underscore the deceptions and misunderstandings among characters while helping readers to navigate through these characters’ minds.

Themes

The narrative of Stray Toasters is bookended by Phil’s departure from and return to Hell, reinforcing the idea that the earthly mortal realm is even more hellish than his nightmarish supernatural home. His words “The family circle is a triangle” are the first and last in the series, and they emphasize the notion that family, and relationships in general, are central themes, if ironic ones. In contrast to Phil, none of the mortal characters exhibit the ability to have healthy or at least conventional relationships. Rustemagik, for example, tells Dahlia that “Domesticity makes me puke,” while Chalky’s relationships are strictly transactional.

By making each character loosely represent a social institution that traditionally supports human well-being?Violet corresponds to science and medicine, for example?Sienkiewicz suggests that these institutions are, at their worst, insidiously controlling, with individuals being complicit in their institutionalization. Todd’s perverse enslavement to Big Daddy exemplifies this complicity, while Rustemagik ultimately demonstrates the self-knowledge required to escape the control of these institutional powers when he overcomes Violet’s drug-induced manipulations.

Sienkiewicz complicates this theme, however, by further implying that the self can also be an institution that exerts a passive control over an individual. Again, it is Rustemagik who most obviously suggests this, with his persistent utterance of the name Mona; although to what or whom this name refers remains a mystery in Stray Toasters, it is evident that the word represents whatever traumas Rustemagik continues to repress. Phil contends that Rustemagik’s brain injury, which has erased his memories, has given him a second chance to be a child and live his life over again?in other words, he has come full circle to a state of innocence. The other mortal characters who exhibit unhealthy attachments to their pasts either die or are institutionalized by the end of the book. Abby and Todd are the notable exceptions to both Rustemagik’s ironic restoration to innocence and the others’ damnation.

Impact

Since its publication, Stray Toasters has been read and commented on as definitive of Sienkiewicz’s strengths as an artist. It demonstrates an elaboration of the experiments with design and layout that he introduced in Elektra: Assassin (1986-1987), notably in his use of multimedia. His uses of and tributes to other artists’ work, especially that of James McNeill Whistler, Schiele, Picasso, and LeRoy Neiman, have not been as widely addressed but remain significant, as Sienkiewicz blurred the distinctions between popular and fine art and arguably expanded the comics lexicon by incorporating both nontraditional illustration techniques and visual allusions into this work.

Stray Toasters references other cultural works as well, namely literary and cinematic works such Dante’s La divina commedia (c. 1320; The Divine Comedy, 1802), the Bible, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963), and Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941). In addition, Sienkiewicz’s satirical rendering of the “News with Punch” segment calls to mind Frank Miller’s scathing treatment of cable news cycles and personalities in Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (1986). These references to other works accomplish at least two aims: First, they reinforce the idea that the distinction between high and low culture is arbitrary; and second, they promote a more inclusive concept of cultural literacy that deems popular films, classic films, and canonical literary works to be equally deserving of critical attention.

Admittedly, Sienkiewicz’s kinetic juxtaposition of imagery and references has been distracting for some critics. Other readers have contended that the narrative in Stray Toasters cannot hold its own with the design, layout, and execution of Sienkiewicz’s illustrations. Still, this work’s imaginative allure persists, as its multiple republications suggest.

Further Reading

Díaz Canales, Juan, and Juanjo Guarnido. Blacksad (2010).

Gaiman, Neil, and Dave McKean. Signal to Noise (2008).

Mignola, Mike. The Amazing Screw-On Head and Other Curious Objects (2010).

Miller, Frank, and Bill Sienkiewicz. Elektra: Assassin (2000).

Bibliography

Berthold, Michael C. “Color Me Ishmael: Classics Illustrated Versions of Moby-Dick.” Word and Image 9, no. 1 (January-March, 1993): 1-8.

Johnston, W. Robert. “Splash Panel Adventures!” Smithsonian Studies in American Art 3, no. 3 (Summer, 1989): 38-53.

Robinson, Tasha. “Bill Sienkiewicz: Stray Toasters.” Review of Stray Toasters, by Bill Sienkiewicz. A.V. Club, October 14, 2003. http://www.avclub.com/articles/bill-sienkiewicz-stray-toasters,5404.

Szadkowski, Joseph. “For Illustrator, Brush Is Mightier Than Word.” Washington Times, September 29, 2007.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. “Master of Sequential Art Influences Generations.” Washington Times, September 22, 2007.