Well as the cover says; this is the scraping of the barrel. A collection of illustrations, mottos, anecdotes, fantasies and jokes by Neale Blanden. Although the various cartoons and strips are all dated roughly from 2002 they seem to have been produced for a variety of different zines and comics with very little consistency in theme or topic.

It's hard to do a sensible review of such a collection, there are naturally some bits that are good and some bits that are not very good. The impression of barrel scraping comes from the lack of consistency between any of the strips. It creates a, perhaps unfair, impression of just throwing stuff out almost randomly. Even the artwork seems inconsistent with the more extended strips looking ropey and the one pagers and more heavily stylised cartoons looking far better. Blanden can certainly do a mean line in grotesques.

Selecting highlights is obviously a very subjective thing but I felt the worst pieces were the autobiographical or self-referential. What really shone for me were the cartoons that mixed Ambrose Bierce's words with Neal's art. The difference was very noticeable with the art seeming far more focused and the caricatures adding an whole new level of expression to the vignettes. Personal favourites out of the original material, then: A Hasty Settlement on the Bierce illustrations and the Grunt parody of Mickey Mouse.

Last words go to the cover, which was handmade and therefore always worthy of comment. The basic cover is blue paper with a Spanish Superman strip pasted onto it. Pasted on top of that on the front cover is a small black and white logo and illustration that has been hand-coloured with pencils. Overall very nice indeed but the glue has puckered the front cover a bit which is a shame after the effort invested.
Robert Rees