from Ratigher foreword:
“I’d have to write noises or made-up words. Maybe I could stick some mushrooms into the blown cone of a buzzing speaker and take a picture. Even better, I could have a boulder roll into a lake and on the visible part set a sword and some eggs. I’m trying to explain what Teratoid Heights is but it’s like writing the formula for iron instead of forging armor. What is certain is that it’s a comic, created with a masterful combination of magic ingredients, an assortment of green and purple potions whose efficacy is demonstrated by the scores of wizards tied to the cult of Mat Brinkman. Its essential elements are a dark world, lots of caverns, a thousand silent creatures and a few talking beings, a couple gallons of blood, part fresh, part coagulated and tainted, ten hypnotic stars, billions of bricks, a pile of hairs, and a quiver full of ghosts. The recipe for Mat’s magic potion is easy enough to identify, but the proper quantities, the perfect concoction of these spells seems truly impossible. Many have tried to replicate these elixirs, but no one has actually succeeded; Brinkman seems to have invented the catapult but be the only one who knows how to use it, and thus my initial uncertainty is dispelled: Teratoid Heights is a catapult. Projectiles rain down on throngs of people fleeing to avoid being crushed, in the frenzy of survival sometimes pausing to frolic in the abyss of threat and chaos. Just like in our dimension, our everyday life, our adventure.”

Teratoid Heights realistically depicts the lifecycles of various species found in the tide location’s cave-riddled terrain, down to the most painstakingly detailed behavioral patterns. It matters not that both Teratoid Heights and its inhabitants are entirely fictional. Brinkman taps into the zeitgeist of modern suburban America with what seems to be a mixture of J.R.R. Tolkein-style adventure, video-game inspired syncopation and an endless barrage of cable-television nature films all filtered through the reddened eyes of a marijuana-addled teenager. A book that reveals levels of humor and humanity no matter what age the reader.

Mat Brinkman lives and works in Colorado. In 1995 he co-founded Fort Thunder and the famed Paper Rodeo zine, that was active until 2001. Brinkman’s prolific output of posters, comics, music, and films continue to be highly influential. Many comic critics qualify him as the most influential underground comic artist of the past two decades.