Maybe it's my general sourpuss nature, but it takes a lot to get me to laugh out loud these days... yet this book did the trick. A collection of (I think) every story that writer/artist Evan Dorkin concocted starring the Eltingville crew, if you have even a passing familiarity with comics fandom or simply obsessed individuals in general, this will strike a chord.
So who are these Eltingville fellows? Essentially a composite of every overblown fannish stereotype, taken to 11 and then some. These guys make Sheldon on Big Bang Theory look like the soul of normalcy. In the most insane (and funniest) story, one of the four members is put in charge of the Club's comic-shop haven while the grotesque owner is off scoring (stealing) toys from the back room of a local Toys-R-Us. Power goes to the lad's head, and soon the members are beating one another senseless with expensive custom toys ("Thorr's" Hammer with special misspelling versus what looks like a real pair of Hulk hands). It's the gas station scene from Mad Mad Mad Mad World (see that too!) taken to a comic shop extreme, though unlike the bloodless Mad World sequence, Dorkin lovingly depicts his fan archetypes literally getting their teeth knocked out.
Dorkin's decided to end this series one and for all, so this collection is "it" and well worth the $$.
For a better explanation of the genesis of the Club, here's a 2015 interview with writer/artist Evan Dorkin...
http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/08/it-was-an-ugly-birth-of-an-ugly-book-evan-dorkin-o.html
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