20 cool psychedelic comics to read after seeing Thor: Ragnarok

Cover of The Cartoon Utopia (Image via Fantagraphics)

18. The Cartoon Utopia

With The Cartoon Utopia, Ron Regé, Jr. has established himself as a very distinctive and peculiar kind of comics artist. This magnum opus combines a wide variety of mystic traditions in a highly stylized comics package. After reading it, you may want to quietly lie down on the floor and contemplate the meaning of your own existence and of the universe itself. You know, like normal.

I’m not kidding when it comes to the mystical references in this book. In fact, The Cartoon Utopia begins with an introduction by Maja D’Aoust, the self-proclaimed “White Witch of L.A.”, who taught Regé in one of her “Magic School” lectures. The story brings together concepts from the occult, alchemy, poetry, science fiction, philosophy, and more.

The plot of the work is predictably hard to describe. Generally, The Cartoon Utopia shows a race of gentle, reflective humanoid people. They are spiritually and philosophically advanced, which typically means that they spend much of their time making spiritual breakthroughs and pondering the strange “time before people believed in peace”.

The plot

As such, there isn’t much of a standard plot. Instead, the Utopia moves towards more and more complex ideas. Occasionally, Regé brings in historical figures to illustrate the dense, dizzying topics. Take now-famous inventor Nikola Tesla, who had deep connections to his work and is now recognized as a formidable intellectual and creator. He also had strong connections with a pigeon, which Regé finds as meaningful as others might find it ludicrous.

How to sum up The Cartoon Utopia? Honestly, you can’t. It’s profound and confusing, beautiful and disorienting, all at once. Yes, you should certainly pick it up and experience it for yourself. Just don’t try to read it all in one go, unless you’ve got a taste for prophetic, mind-bending psychedelia.