For the most part, Tasty Comix #2 fulfills its duty as a follow-up to the debut of an underground comics anthology. It brings back several of the same artists, continues some of the serialized stories, and introduces a new element or two to keep things interesting. Overall, the second issue is about as strong as the first and manages to do that without hitting as many low points.

This issue opens with another installment of Patrick Burk's saga of "Freon P. Sandoz." In this chapter Freon gets an official notice to take a draft physical for the Army and must find a way to avoid passing it and getting drafted. His strategy is to ingest massive amounts of dope to screw up the blood tests and act like a deranged hippie throughout his psychological testing. The scripting is pretty tight and Burk demonstrates his more-than-passable cartooning skills, which remind me of Joel Beck's (seems a likely inspiration for the college-aged Burk). It's no tragedy that Tasty Comix didn't survive past its second issue, but Freon P. Sandoz is one reason to wish that it had.

Like the first issue, there are nine one- or two-pagers in this issue, but unlike the first several of these are one-page illustrations that don't present comic stories. Some are just trippy, nonsensical drawings by Tom Arctus that remind me of Buckwheat Florida, Jr. in Suds, and one is a surrealistic painting by Rich Mofayn. Nothing that really stands out, however.

Sherry Ives also returns to contribute another "Tripsters" story. This four-pager is subtitled "Toadstool Tales" and doesn't feature either of the two characters in her previous story. It's about two children who live in a slum and have nothing to eat because "rats and roaches had devoured the last remaining crumbs of food." After the kids are visited by a talking bird, they experience a joyous fantasy in a land of sunshine and sand castles. They're drawn back to reality by their mother's voice, but the final panel hints that their fantasy life has only just begun.

Ives' illustration here is much more dense and detailed than in her first story, though there was a simple charm in the first "Tripsters" tale that this one lacks. But they're both pretty good and make me wonder whatever happened to her. In 1972 she contributed a page to Bob Lewis and Joel Pollack's Colour Your Dreams, a fantasy coloring book (which also featured Jeff Jones, Berni Wrightson, Howard Chaykin, and Barry Smith, among many others), but I haven't seen anything else.

Tasty Comix is no lost classic by any stretch, but it's worth picking up to read Patrick Burk and Sherry Ives, who elevated the total score for both issues. It's also worth getting just to see what happened when a group of community artists banded together to publish a counterculture comic book.



HISTORICAL FOOTNOTES:
It is currently unknown how many copies of this comic book were printed. It has not been reprinted.

COMIC CREATORS:
Unknown artist - 1
Steve Hickman - 2
Patrick Burk - 3-10, 15 (art), 28
Benton Quin - 11-14 (collaboration)
Howard Friedman - 11-14 (collaboration)
L. Platt - 15 (script)
Thomas Howell - 16-17
Tom Arctus - 18-20, 31
Sherry Ives - 21-24
Woody Farlee - 25-27, 30
Rich Mofayn - 29
Gregory Kwater - 32-34
Robert Williams - 35
Gina Farina - 36