20 cool psychedelic comics to read after seeing Thor: Ragnarok

The Zaucer of Zilk (Cover image via IDW Comics)

7. The Zaucer of Zilk

Like some of the best comics-based psychedelia, The Zaucer of Zilk combines traditional hero narratives, bright and oftentimes confusing visuals, and sharp social commentary. It is also, like many, many psychedelic tales, frequently strange for the sake of glorying in its own indescribable weirdness.

The thing about many psychedelic, trippy stories is that it can only ever get as weird as you want it to be. Your mind can force practically anything into a cohesive story. Our brains are pattern-recognition machines after all.

If you really want to get the most out of these stories, you’ve got to simultaneously dig in and let go. So, for all that Brendan McCarthy’s art and the promotions for The Zaucer of Zilk prime you for the strangeness within, you have to mentally agree to ride along.

It begins with the Zaucer (a kind of wizard) of the Zilk family. But while this Zaucer is going on reality-hopping adventures, it’s also very meta. The story (by Al Ewing) looks back in on itself and the process of storytelling, even when it surprises the narrator. The concepts of time and aging, of fame and obscurity, battle it out on multiple levels. It’s enough to make you so dizzy that you start to think you’ve gone up to another level of consciousness.

On a more shallow note, McCarthy’s art really does draw on some of the best traditions of psychedelic pop art. All the colors are hyper-saturated and often just on the edge of too dark or too bright. Meanwhile, proportions are often stretched and twisted to their extremes. It’s a visual treat as much as it is an intellectual one.