BELOW AMBITION SC

Gosh! Best Of 2022

If you’ve ever been in a band, promoted a show or worked for a record label, this book will either bring back misty-eyed and pleasing remembrances of scene related debauchery or make you want to vomit as your music industry induced PTSD takes hold. Hanselman's semi-autobiographical comic focuses on Megg and Werewolf Jones (now stars of their own animated short on Hulu!) as they play gigs as Horse Mania, the self proclaimed worst band in town. Excruciating live sets, drug fueled tour disasters, suicide attempts, putting scene posers in their place, that’s all on Side A for Horse Mania. Hanselmann is a top flight cartoonist with an eye for yuks but his real strength lies in his characters, extracted from his own experiences and agonizingly real; his cast of reprobates are your most emotionally excessive moments, your friends foibles and your enemies sneers. He’s a generational cartooning talent and Below Ambition is just another example of that fact. HORSE MANIA!

Megg and Werewolf Jones are Horse Mania. Horse Mania is a test of the audience's patience, proudly the 'worst band in town,' without any ambition to make it. Join the musicians as they battle through shoddy, distracted practice sessions, a squalid house show, and a doomed interstate tour. Watch as they drunkenly flail through their sets amidst toothaches, nervous breakdowns, suicide attempts, mounting hatred, and a galaxy of benzos. This is music and performance in its most primal, multifaceted, and pure form. Feel the tension. See the dirty looks. Taste the pain. Smell the depravity. Hear the veiled beauty. Horse Mania wants you to lose your mind. Below Ambition is a meditation on youth, performance, and memory as only Simon Hanselmann, the best comedic writer in comics, is capable of. The book will also include a flexidisc single by Horse Mania, 'Stick It In for the Ambient', which will be bound into the book with a perforated edge for easy removal and play.