I had a Frightmare - the Forbidden Reviews

c. 2001 

I had a Frightmare - the Forbidden Reviews

Amazon.com lets you write review of books.... well "lets you" should read "takes free copy from you". You think they'd at least send you a coffee mug... they don't edit for content or even appear to read them before they are posted to Amazon's website..... about two years ago people started posting rather creative reviews of Bil Keane's (Family Circus) book "I had a Frightmare". Shortly after the joke came to the attention of Tourbus (dead site) someone squealed to the principal and Amazon took down the reviews... I've got one here that I got the permission of the writer, Jason Zeaman, to publish... I just quoted the rest...... (from an old website - all links are dead)

Should be made into a movie, November 11, 1999

Reviewer: Steve Bruman from New York

The ghosts of Grandpa, Not Me, and Ida Know torment the dreams of poor Jeffy... until ....strange things start happening around the house.

A chilling look at the world of the demonic, July 20, 2000

Reviewer: A reader from St. Louis, MO

A true horror classic! Keane fictionalized the true story of a child's demonic possession in the 1940s

Wonderful read, July 26, 2000

Reviewer: Joshua Lobo (see more about me) from New Haven, Ct

"When Young Jeffy woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin."

Roll over Edgar Allen and tell Stephen King the news., August 3, 2000

Reviewer: Len Luxor from A safer place

The child's slow descent into madness results in a tasty hodgepodge of existential torment and rage. (Think "Hamlet" as told by Stephen Dadelus on his way to William Burrough's pad to score some bad crystal meth, before taking Carrie to the ice cream social.)

I had to change my underwear, August 3, 2000

Reviewer: William Bennett from Joe, Montana

The catharsis of Bil Keane's decades-long fight with drugs

The publisher, Eugene Kim , August 9, 2000

from 'Nam, to his battle against heroin addiction, even to his occasional acid flashbacks, Keane exorcises all the demons of his life and, as a consequence, of America's life since the 60's. Move over Hunter S. Thompson,

The author, Embittered Old Cyril , August 17, 2000 I Don't Know What I Was Thinking

It just kind of vomited itself out of my brain.

Who cares if Shultz is dead...we've got Keane, August 25, 2000

Reviewer: Rek of X (see more about me) from the Mall of America

Before "Frightmare" I was a nobody, a loser, a lonely, pathetic man with no one to hold me. Now, by simply repeating "Frightmare's" puns at strategic moments in bars or at bus stops, I have become every woman's treasure.

Strong Anti-Drug Message, January 11, 2001

Reviewer: Albert Lee Esse from Andissa, Greece

.......while Daddy is always brutally raped, all of the assailants always wear a condom. I have about 16 000 pornographic comic books, and this one is easily within the top twenty per cent.

I have to disagree, April 15, 2001

Reviewer: Jason Zeaman (see more about me) from Valley Forge, WA

While I enjoyed it as much as the rest of those who reviewed it I have to think that we were reading different books.

Jeffy doesn't slowly descend "into madness" and there isn't anything existential about this book. This is simply a fine, though definitely allegorical, retelling of the great American coming of age story. When one steps back a bit and focuses through the story, very much like a 3-D stereoscopic painting, the symbols and allusions become much clearer.

Lil' Jeffy's killing spree suddenly becomes not "random acts of violence...gruesome and inexplicable" but a brave and inevitable part of his maturation process from boy to man.

Take the disembowlment of Not Me. Think about it for a moment. No I mean it, really think. Who is Not Me? The question alone echoes the first lines of Hamlet, "Who's there?" as the castle guard addresses what he thinks is the ghost of Hamlet's father and more directly is asking the very question of identity itself.

Not...me. All that is outside of myself or not myself. To kill, to completely and very viscerally destroy, all that is Not Me is to assert that which is Me in the clearest way possible. What Keane is doing here, as do most great authors, is bringing the intangible into tangible. By allowing Jeffy to destroy, murder and bludgeon his family, his playmates and his God he is simply illustrating the very real, but intangible process of destruction and creation that we must all go through as we create a self.

While on a business trip to SF last year associates of mine visited the wonderful Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco (don't miss it!) where they had an outstanding collection of Keane's early works, possibly the finest state-side collection ever put together. Interestingly enough the one panel that really stuck with them for long after they had left the exhibition was a rare unpublished strip. It featured a nude Bill Keane turning toward the reader from his drawing table, a quick glance down and the caption, "And they call me little Jeffy...". Perhaps with this look into Keane's soul "I Had a Frightmare" more easily comes into focus.

Clearly this is a man grappling with his own rocky, but ultimately triumphant, passage through puberty. I'm just so profoundly glad that he chose to take us all along for the ride.

you should all be ashamed of yourselves!, September 28, 2001

Reviewer: Zingty Farven (see more about me) from Copenhagen

IT IS CLEAR THAT THE OTHER REVIEWERS HAVE NEVER LIVED IN AMERICA - THEY ARE PROBABLY ALL FROM JAPAN.....Just because of all the graphic bestality you label him a pornographer; just because of all the demonic ramblings and pictorialized ritual murder you label him a horror writer. Get a life!

Suburban Psycho, October 3, 2001

Reviewer: Stanley Duke

Bill Keane is back again to show the literary punks how it's done.... whether it's Dolly sealing up PJ's rear with a hot glue-gun to hide the evidence or Mommy forcing raw hunks of still-squirming Barfy down Jeffy's throat as the rest of the coven watches....the blowtorch ferocity of Bill Keane, daring to live as he writes despite the possibility of execution or at least chemical castration, leaves weak-willed pansies in the dust.

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