You never know what you are going to find when you check out the comic books currently fundraising on Kickstarter. The books come in all kinds of flavors, from graphic novels to generic superheroes to…an homage to Reefer Madness.
For those too hip being square, Reefer Madness was a 1936 anti-marijuana propaganda film made to convince the public that smoking ‘reefer’ would inevitably lead to “manslaughter, suicide, attempted rape, hallucinations, and descent into madness due to marijuana addiction”. Oh my!
Thankfully someone, Jeremy Myers, has taken it upon himself to use this 80 year-old Public Service Announcement disguised as a film to make a comic book, and it looks fun.
“The Circus of Reefer Madness is a grungy stoner comic with elements of homage to the 1930’s propaganda film. A horror story about the dangers of the “gateway marihuana”. With scary clowns and all the madness one expects in dealing with prohibition.”
The comic seems to be a shot back at the insanity of the war on drugs, using it’s own outdated propaganda as a starting point to showcase the ‘horror’ of ‘reefer’. Ultimately the comic is a political statement for legalization, pure and simple.
From a press release for the comic, on thelaughinggrass.com:
The goal of our project is to provide a look at how crazy this really is. Humans locked in cages for a plant medicine that exists for us to use. The fight to legalize has been long and completely irrational…
Our hero in the story is Tyler. He walks into the wrong bar at the wrong time. Waiting is the alcoholic clown Sanity. His vibes are as bad as his stench, but he manages to tempt Tyler to his van anyway, using his personal home grown strain of ganja as bait. Insanity Gas! One puff and Tyler is taken to the circus, where he is terrorized and receives the brand of possession.”
For my two cents, I’ll just say that I can remember plenty of times comic books, like the movies, were used as propaganda and it’s kinda cool to see how someone is basically turning it around on ‘the man’. The fact that he is using Reefer Madness just makes it even better.
Reefer Madness is by far the most ‘Ed Wood’ of all the films made in the ‘war on drugs’, it’s like the Plan 9 From Outer Space of marijuana prohibition. So yeah…funny.
Also, I should note that I am not advocating drug usage, but I also don’t advocate prohibition (because it never works) or using a bad, bad film to lie to the general public and try and scare the pants off people.
That’s what comic books are for.
You can check out the project on
or visit
The Circus of Reefer Madness on Facebook
for more info.
