Prison Pit: Book Three (Prison Pit)
“This thing is great and an essential read. It is important. Buy buy buy.” (Nick Gazin - Vice)“The Good:Prison Pitreminded me a lot of Gwar, professional wrestling and the comic strips my friends and I used to draw in junior high. ... It was gross as hell and filled with blood and gore and just straight-up repulsive juvenile humor. It was a lot of fun. The Bad: It’s probably too awesome for a lot of people to handle. ... The Bottom Line: Dude, it’s great. Just shut up and buy it. ...I’m givingPrison Pitan A and as soon as I’m done writing this review, I’m going to sit down and re-read it.” (Chad Derdowski - Mania)“This week I started readingPrison Pitand... I... it... um... the thing is... it’s... wow.” (Chris Mautner - Robot 6)“Johnny Ryan’sPrison Pitis something I keep coming back to — and not just because it’s the only comic book I’ve ever seen that can actively liven up a party. It’s a hilarious, visceral and quick read… for really dumb fun, this is pretty much unbeatable.” (David Uzumeri - Robot 6)“…[W]e see the inclusion of a new character, who, while just as violent and vicious as CF, is completely different in attitude and demeanor. Plus, he has one of the most amazing (and utterly grotesque) resurrection scenes I’ve ever seen…. All in all, it’s another excellent volume.” (Chris Mautner - Robot 6)“For splatter-movie fans and anyone trying to grok the splatter-movie ethos, not to be missed.” (Booklist)“Prison Pit 2was TACO’s book of the year in 2010, andPrison Pit 3is the early frontrunner for 2011. Featuring the series’ characteristic extreme ultra-violence, gore, scatophilia, and brutality, it’s another hit from artist Johnny Ryan.” (L.A. TACO)“Prison Pit: Book 3is a comic unlike anything you’ve ever read before — the plot is outlandish, and the artwork is violent, bloody, gory, and completely unapologetic in its brutality.... Rating: 10 out of 10.” (Edward Kaye - Newsarama)“Prison PitblendsAngry Youth Comixcreator Johnny Ryan's fascination with WWE wrestling, grindhouse cinema, Gary Panter'sJimbocomics, and Kentaro Miura'sBerserkManga into a brutal and often hilarious showcase of violence like no other comic book ever created.” (Tucker Stone - comiXology)“Next to Jughead, Johnny’s about the best thing going on in comic books these days, so don’t be a chump and wait until they make some perverted documentary about him and he’s some hipster darling! ACT NOW!” (retroCRUSH)“Johnny Ryan draws the bad pictures. Unapologetically and lots of ‘em and I hope to god he never stops. …Prison Pit… kinda’ sorta’ kicks serious ass. ... The story definitely puts the GORE in phantasmagorical… you can smell it from miles away.” (Jared Gniewek - Graphic NYC)“Book of ‘09... If the point of comics is f---ed up s--- happening, this is the best f---ing comic ever made.” (Sean Witzke - supervillain)“Perhaps the best and also craziest comic Johnny Ryan has made yet. I hope  he does 1,000 pages of this.” (Jeffrey Brown)“Next toScott Pilgrimthis felt to me like the western comic that’s got closest to properly understanding the energy of manga, rather than simply aping the surface elements. ... It’s the best art I’ve seen Ryan do in his career.” (Brian Smith - Awesome Engine)“Prison Pitis the best comic Johnny Ryan has ever drawn. It’s rich, clever, energetic, funny — I don’t think I’ve purely in-my-guts enjoyed another comic so much.... You’ve gotta see it to believe it.” (Joe McCulloch - Jog - The Blog)“Refreshingly devoid of any literary or artistic pretensions, this first of what I hope will be many, many volumes nevertheless comes across as somehow one of the smartest and well crafted books of the year. No, really.” (Patrick Markfort - Articulate Nerd)“If you're onboard for the third installment of something so purposefully vile asPrison Pit, you know what you're getting into. You're not going to be shocked by violence and gore, but you're still going to have a great time...” (Geoffrey Lapid - Death-Ray Ozone)“[An] over-the-top, ultra-violent, gross-out juvenile, yet fun and hilarious book... The dialogue that does exist retains his comic sense of disjunction and fights are as demented as you’d expect. This is not a jokey book, but his humor is retained in subtle ways—if you can envision subtle Johnny Ryan humor. ... This is just a balls-out, funny, sicko, good time. My only complaint withPrison Pitis how quickly the story ends, but hopefully the subtitle (Book One) is a promise and not a joke.” (Lincoln Michel - The Faster Times)“Amazingly, I was sucked in by the whole enterprise, laughing and groaning and shaking my head. ... These are ugly characters in a gross situation, andPrison Pittreats them with all the indulgence and nastiness needed.” (Mark Hale - The Bureau Chiefs)“[T]he single-minded commitment to vileness is so perversely pure that it goes right past lowest-common-denominator entertainment and on into snooty, fancy-pants art. ... Ryan’s world is essentiallyWaiting for Godot, from the bleak landscape to the slapstick violence.” (Noah Berlatsky - The Comics Journal)“There’s humor (both grim and sophomoric), ridiculously over-the-top violence, humanoids metamorphosing into monsteroids, and a serial storytelling instinct that has been honed through almost two decades of practice.” (Jesse Pearson - The Comics Journal)“I literally dropped everything to read this thing.... Volume three in Ryan’s madcap ultra-violent combat comic is firmly in the vein, so to speak, of the first installment: No-holds-barred body-horror battle between monster-men who look like refugees from an alternate-universe He-Man whose house artist was Pushead instead of Earl Norem.” (Sean T. Collins - The Comics Journal)“...[Johnny Ryan] is easily one of the four or five most vital and important cartoonists working today…. ImagineMortal Kombatwith any semblance or shadow of good taste thoroughly and messily extracted, paced like pro wrestling and dialogued by Sam Fuller and/or the Ramones.” (Patrick Tobin - Multiversity Comics)“If it doesn't make you sick, you shouldn't be allowed to walk among the public in the first place. If it doesn't make you giddy for the next one, you don't deserve comics.” (David Harper - Multiversity Comics)“It's the kind of work that makes you think that its creator is thinking of the long-term as opposed to focusing solely on the short.Prison Pithad some of that particular swagger from the very beginning; this book seems even more settled and confident.... As was the case with the first two books, Johnny Ryan makes his case for mastery at a second, very specific genre, connected to the first through the extremes of expression involved.” (Tom Spurgeon - The Comics Reporter)“It’s another hundred pages or so of mayhem and violence and crude humor and excellent storytelling and gross drawings.Prison Pitis everything sick and twisted that I love, but am often afraid to admit I love in the form of a comic.” (Chad Nevett - Comic Book Resources)“Ryan’s line work is at its best in some parts of this volume, showing the ability to continually come up with inventive weird visuals.... The only bad thing aboutPrison Pit Book 3coming out is that it will be another year until Book 4 is released...” (Chad Nevett - Comic Book Resources)“WhilePrison Pitdoes, in fact, have a definable story throughout, it’s one that feels as though it were crafted in the margins of a spiral-bound notebooks stowed safely away in some backpack littered with the Sharpie penned names of metal bands. And though Ryan didn’t go so far as to in append a listening soundtrack to the back of this volume, one can almost certainly be assured that it contains its share of Cannibal Corpse and Slayer tracks.” (Brian Heater - The Daily Cross-Hatch)“Johnny Ryan takes ideas and styles that have been knocking around the art comics scene for the last few years, and injects them with gallons of fun, attitude and humour. My favourite new comic of the year!” (Richard Cowdry - The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log)“Prison Pit 3rules. Like Yokoyama's manga, it's all surface cause & effect & somehow full of weird associations & meanings. It resonates deep.” (Sammy Harkham (Crickets, Kramer's Ergot))