Text - Rhodes University

In Klapmuts Polisie Slaan Toe, Botes tries his hand at Dog's more literary approach,
turning a newsreport into a visual essay [fig 35]. He draws on many sources to convey his
messsage, including Surrealism, adapting a de Chirico painting [fig 36] for one of the
frames.
We are forced to read between the lines of newsprint and accept them as a mad rant, as
Botes turns this dry account into a metaphor for a surreal world loaded with sex and
death and perversion and absurd fragments of humour [fig 37].
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Figure 37 Botes Klapmuts Polisie Slaan Toe p4 (reduced)
Klapmuts takes to an extreme conceits used in other stories. By exaggeration and
extrapolation, Botes exposes the lack of sense of this rational report of an irrational
world. In other comics, literary fragments and visual references add texture and depth to
a plot; here they are the sole means of communication. An elliptical page layout and a
dizzying combination of elements create an atmosphere of confusion and disorientation,
more emotional, violent, and bitter than the similar disorientaion Dog describes in A Boy
Called Julia.
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