The tale of “Asrin The Flagellator” proves that Nice Guy Eddie was right – “you beat on anyone long enough and they’ll tell you they started the god damn Chicago fire, but that don’t necessarily make it fuckin’ so!” Johnston seems to have a fascination with throbbing confessions here, amid a comic that has the same basic construction problems that the previous work I’ve sampled had. Artistically, he doesn’t seem to be as in control of the ink here, so there’s less technique to show off, and that moves the grade down a notch for me. I will say that I enjoy the more subversive and bold nature of the non-consensuality as turn-on riff, which moves the grade back up a notch, unfortunately settling right back around a C+. With the pointless back-up story and even more horribly cropped pages, I’ll go with a final Grade D+.