With themes of self-loathing, loneliness, and longing, the music of Manchester's gloomiest, The Smiths, is already comic (in an absurdist, depressing way), but it took the good folks at SpazDog Press to gather up a slew of indie comics' finest, like Foo!, Sam Laggren, Kayla Cagan, Tara Abbamondi, and New Times' own Brad Dwyer, to put pen to page and illustrate the melodrama for two volumes of Unite and Take Over: Stories Inspired by the Songs of The Smiths. The morose croon of Morrissey inspires everything from psycho-sexual slapstick to violent, vintage Image-style splatter-fests. Recognizing a readily apparent connection between the post-punk mythos of The Smiths and the intimacy of the black-and-white page, Unite speaks to the alt-pop nerds as easily as the comic book guys — turns out, they're the same kids anyway.