Posts Tagged “Fantagraphics”
John Seven • 13th Jun 2010 • Comics • Cathy Malkasian, Dash Shaw, Fantagraphics, Kim Deitch, Pantheon Books
Three new books pick up the mantle of trippy narratives so long ago dropped by film. Each takes the reader into weird psychological landscapes through stories unfolding via physical realities that swirl out of control, refusing to play nice for the characters trapped inside them.
Dash Shaw channels Phillip K. Dick — by way of the recent animated adaptation of his book, “A Scanner Darkly” — as well as a little Hunter S. Thompson and William Burroughs in “Bodyworld,” published by Pantheon Books.
It’s a work of science fiction that also treads on similar territory to Charles Burns’ indispensable graphic novel “Black Hole.” Both deal with that horrible transformative moment from the teenage years into adulthood and present the changes in hallucinatory and monstrous terms. Where “Bodyworld” departs is in its indictment of the corrupting influence of adults who perceive the teen’s one foot in their world without seeing the other foot that remains behind in the sphere of children, despite the appearance of maturity.
The story follows drug investigator Paulie Panther, who has arrived in the planned community of Boney Borough– a futuristic nature reserve with a suburban motif — to look into some odd plants growing in a forest there. Panther’s job is to travel around and find strange substances for testing as a narcotic. He is helped out by the high school science teacher who discovered the patch in the woods. A flirtatious relationship between them soon goes awry as the real effects of smoking the plants is discovered — one that blurs the borders of self between two people and might well be part of the process of evolution into something not human.
Trapped in the middle are Pearl Peach and Billy-Bob Borg, two seniors at the school who become wrapped up in the adults’ push-and-pull with each other over their own feelings and the secret of the plants. (more…)
John Seven • 7th May 2010 • Comics • Bosnian War, Fantagraphics, Joe Sacco, Sarajevo
Joe Sacco, one of the true craftsmen of the wave of literary graphic novels being published, and the best practitioner of the fledging form of cartoon journalist, returns with a new collection, “The Fixer and Other Stories” from Drawn and Quarterly.
It’s the sort of showpiece that cements his importance and promises to propel him further as a war journalist who covers the big picture by focusing on the little ones and patching them together.
In his first story, Sacco unveils the mysteries of Neven, the book’s titular fixer, who makes his money by guiding journalists through the hell hole of Sarajevo during the Bosnian War, hooking them up with interviews and helping them uncover the real story. Neven also talks — a lot — and Sacco utilizes this endless babble to weave the stories of out-of-control Bosnian warlords in with his own wanderings.
Neven, it turns out, has a past — not unexpected, given his current work and the number of questionable connections he sports — and Sacco finds himself chasing the ghost of Neven’s wartime experiences through a series of gruff get-togethers in smoky bars, squalid apartments and crowded streets.
Neven is just one of those characters you meet in life, and Sacco captures him perfectly — a moment spent with him in a page of cartooning feels like time spent in real life, soaking up his charm and danger.
Sacco follows this up with the tale of musician Soba, who bides his time during the conflict trying to cling to his gift and the lifestyle it allowed him before the war, and a story about a press road trip to interview war criminal Radovan Karadzic.
Sacco’s book is as much about the adjustment to peace as it is the adjustment to war. By telling the full stories of these people, he captures how their little worlds disintegrate in wartime, but he also shows how they manage the maintenance of their lives throughout, and how they recoup what they previously had to abandoned. It’s a picture of the whole person, with an acknowledgment of not only what war has changed about them, but also what parts of themselves they have managed to cling to.
Sacco’s characters return to life even as huge portions of it have been sliced away by war. It is basic survival to take back their souls and act upon that spiritual reunion with themselves. Not to do so is to allow your enemy to win — and victory in war is more about peace than it is battle.
John Seven • 23rd Apr 2010 • Art Articles, Book Articles, Comics • Fantagraphics, Jaime Hernandez, Locas, Love and Rockets, Maggie and Hopey
If there was one modern cartoonist whose importance — and potential appeal — really does spring beyond the world of comic books, it is Jaime Hernandez.
The California-born Latin American — along with his brother, Gilbert — was an early mover in the world of independent comics. The brothers were take-charge, DIY practitioners without whom this world we live in — the one in which major book publishers and The New York Times provide outlets for serious work, far removed from the biff, bang, pow cliché of the form — probably wouldn’t exist.
Hernandez’s achievements culminate from offering what comics never had prior to him, while diving head first into the traditional form as the means for providing these leaps. As time has worn on, there are plenty of innovators in the field of graphic novels whose work is barely reliable to the way comics have looked for the last 60 years, but Hernandez attached the styles he had come to love and master.
Self-taught from such disparate sources as Archie Comics, Jack Kirby superheroes and science fiction — and other talents within his own family — Hernandez mixed his influences into a serialized narrative that embraced people marginalized by those very places. His stories are ensconced in Latino culture — particularly the lower and working classes — as well as other nationalities of color, and such subcultures as the early American punk rockers, neighborhood gangs and low riders, homosexual communities, sex workers, the mentally ill and even the world of Latin American wrestlers.
Unlike the underground comics before him, Hernandez’s point was not to shock middle America but to offer analysis, understanding — to show three-dimensional, fully-realized characters using comic book narrative devices, to unfold epic tales of ordinary lives.
His Locas stories focus on Maggie and Hopey, originally teenagers and now women over 40 — they have continued in almost real time since the early 1980s and constitute one of the great literary achievements of the last quarter century, as well as being a marvel of visual storytelling that beats any movie or TV show in existence.
Hernandez has been given an important and lovely tribute with the new book from Abrams, “The Art of Jaime Hernandez: The Secrets of Life and Death,” which manages to serve both possible audiences well — the one that is already well-acquainted with Hernandez’s work and the one seeking real meat as the move to discover what they have been missing.
Author Todd Hignite succeeds where so many other art books focusing on comic creators never quite hit the mark, even the better ones, thanks to Hignite’s keen ability to deconstruct meaning behind Hernandez’s storytelling and techniques, as well as Hernandez’s participation in the analysis. Hignite does more than just relate Hernandez’s life story — he makes the connections between that story and what ends up on the printed page, aligning the artistic progression alongside the life experience as filtered through the narrative journey. Hernandez’s work over 25 years is a living and breathing pursuit that changes and matures in ways the work of so many other cartoonists do not — the work grows alongside its creator.
But Hignite is not content with just allowing Hernandez’s remembrances to dictate the analysis of the Locas series. He guides the reader through the nuances of the work, acting part art professor, part psychologist in nailing the power behind Hernandez’s work. Equally, the art choices for the book spring with the same revelations and really speak to why Hernandez was chosen for such an attractive tribute as this collection.
Through the interviews, Hernandez is revealed as both focused and down to earth, someone who eschews other mediums in favor of the way he naturally tells a story. His personality rings loudest through his work, though, and the book is filled with evidence of his charm and mastery of the form.
Hernandez is not often enough held up in his true status beyond the world of comics — even though publications like The New York Times and the New Yorker have made use of his talents — and that is set to change. He’s set the tone for so much that has come after him and done so through elevated storytelling that classifies him as an American original.
As the graphic novel form continues to become a more accepted form of literature, Hernandez is poised to take his place as the most accessible and brilliant of those working in that field. It will be an honor well-deserved — and “The Art of Jaime Hernandez” is a lovely document that brings us closer to that moment.
John Seven • 29th Dec 2009 • Comics • Adam Rapp, Antony Johnson, biography, Brian Azzarello, Charles Burns, Dan Clowes, Dan Zettwoch, Dark Horse, Fantagraphics, George O'Connor, history, Holly Black, Jeff Smith, Justin Madson, Kazu Kibuishi, Kevin Huizenga, M.K. Perker, Marisa Acocella Marchetto, Matt Kindt, Oni Press, Pantheon, Peter Bagge, Phil Noto, Rick Geary, Ross Campbell, Russia, Scholastic, science fiction, Toon Books
Amulet 2: The Stonekeeper’s Curse - Kazu Kibuishi (Scholastic)
Creator Kibuishi certainly borrows from modern archetypes — Star Wars and Lord of the Rings in particular, as well as the films of Miyazake — but he is not content to let his own creations wallow in a bath of influences. Instead, his 
science fiction/fantasy epic for young readers leaps off the pages thanks to the natural quality of his storytelling — and having the story center around a cool girl character like Emily certainly helps. Kibuishi has so far skipped the lame supernatural fetishism and overwrought romance that taints too many young adult efforts, preferring story, character, and imagination in an exciting dance.
Ball Peen Hammer - Adam Rapp and George O’Connor (First Second Books)
Ball Peen Hammer moves from the dark allure of post-apocalyptic science fiction into an unrelentingly grim realm populated by unexpectedly noble characters — all rendered with an animated beauty by O’Connor’s hand. The stereotypes are turned inside out, victims of their own personal failures, as humans face a monumental and deadly challenge — and at the center is the sad and too easy decision to exploit children and in the process not only kill hope but create heaps that stand as sad reminders of moral failure. As depressing as it sounds, that’s what makes it worth recommending.
Batman/Doc Savage Special (DC)
Brian Azzarello pens an alluring vignette like something out of the ’70s Brave and the Bold, with strong stylized artwork by Phil Noto. He captures Batman in his younger days and dealing with the authority figures of the time — hence pulp fiction legend Doc Savage slumming in Gotham City as a diversion. In all truth, nothing much happens here — the adventure is basically dropped by the heroes — but this story mostly serves as a prelude for the upcoming First Wave comic, which will feature great DC Implosion characters from Justice Inc. and Rima the Jungle Girl, among others. The tone here is just right — serious but not overwrought, dark but not posturing — and it bodes well for the upcoming series.
Best American Comics 2009 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
Charles Burns sets the tone for this year’s edition with a compelling essay that recounts his artistic and professional development as a journey through comic book collecting, where each tangent is a revelatory moment in his embrace of groundbreaking creativity. That he’s mirrored this volume’s selections in the same way is no accident. Easily one of the best in recent years, among the highlights are: Dan Zettwoch’s fictional history of a Church cartoonist’s newsletter; Peter Bagge’s comical slice of pre-Revolutionary America, and Dan Clowes’ attack on film critics and movie fetishists.
Breathers 0-4 (Just Mad Books)
If you want to read the best science fiction comic around, don’t look in any of the obvious places — Breathers is a self-published work by Wisconsin resident Justin Madson that concerns a gritty world of tomorrow that isn’t so far 
removed from today. In Madson’s scenario, the air we breathe has been infected with a virus for the last 40 years and people use stylish respiratory masks called “breathers” to stay alive. Madson weaves the tales of several people together in a series of shorter entries that create a wider tapestry of this future. Some are concerned with their own problems wrought from the situation, while others grapple with larger one — is the virus even real? Check it out at Madson’s website.
Cancer Vixen - Marisa Acocella Marchetto (Pantheon)
Suffering through breast cancer will get my sympathy — and my appreciation for bravery and chutzpah in the face of it — but it does not automatically mean I will think the graphic memoir of your experience is readable. In full disclosure, I couldn’t actually finish this book, so grating is the voice and narrative, and so amateurish and plain awful is the artwork. I read several reviews to make sure I wasn’t missing something, with the full intent of going back and reading the rest, but everything I encountered only cemented my reaction to this book. In contrast to what a good memoir should be, the narrative is manipulative rather than honest. Marchetto takes great pains to control our impression of her by compiling pages and pages of how successful and admired she is before we even get to the cancer. I understand that she does not want her readers to define her as the woman with cancer and have that image be our lasting impression, but then why bother to write a cancer memoir? The reader should be given a chance to discover her best qualities as she fights cancer, not have them dished out in an attempt to circumvent any impression we might have of her as a non-fabulous person with cancer. I bailed out at the diagnosis after having been pummeled by almost a hundred pages of constant bragging Also, I’m really tired of artists who who look as if they are relearning their entire craft starting with kindergarten level work when they go digital — it made an irritating story unbearable. This is a low point to the usually high standard of Pantheon’s output.
Ganges #3 (Fantagraphics)
Kevin Huizenga’s Every Man Glen Ganges faces a sleepless night and what unfolds is a mix of incoherent night rambling and time-passing mishap. Huizenga delivers a quiet tour de force that shows confident cartooning that thrills through its ease and craftsmanship, rather than stylizing the hell out of anything. His Ganges stories function as the American equivalent to Michel Rabagliati’s Paul stories, documenting a normal life with a sharp eye and a penchant for gentle revelation.
The Good Neighbors 2 - Holly Black and Ted Naifeh (Scholastic)
Spiderwyck co-creator Black continues her coming-of-age fairy-style saga as our heroine Rue starts to find her otherworldly family is beginning to take a toll on her friends, the resident Scooby Doo gang, and also that her mother isn’t as helpful as she’d hoped. Black’s first foray into the graphic novel format makes what is the now standard supernatural YA adventure more kinetic than most. and yet toned down in the histrionics and dramatics departments in such a way that grown-ups will have fun with it as well as teens. I confess that I’ll be glad when the supernatural wave in teen fiction dies down and a more open field of subject matter exists again — and also the standard plot of a kid hits a certain age and discovers he/she is secretly a wizard/vampire/fairy/spy/whatever becomes less overused — but Good Neighbors is at least agreeable in its use of these newly-minted chestnuts.
Insomnia Café - M.K. Perker (Dark Horse)
It isn’t a perfect work, but Turkish artist M.K. Perker’s stylized surrealist suspense tale — his American writing debut — 
has a lot to recommend it. Kolinsky is an expert on rare books whose shady past sends him on a downward plunge in the world, sleepless and at a job he hates. When he becomes involved with a coffee shop girl, he gets the opportunity to hide from his problems even as they snowball without his attendance. All is not as it necessarily seems, though, and Perker investigates the manifestations of that very concept from the eccentric to the unhinged. Perker is definitely one to watch.
Little Mouse Gets Ready - Jeff Smith (Toon Books)
If you’ve never considered that a children’s book about a mouse getting dressed would charm you into giddy happiness, you might want to pick this up. Combining the sweetness of old style Golden Books with a modern twist of a punchline, Smith has crafted a fun and funny little sequential picture book here — and Toon Books never disappoints, anyhow.
Skin Deep - Charles Burns (Fantagraphics)
Charles Burns offers a glimpse of what might happen if EC Comics existed today with three tales of intrigue and absurdity in this softcover reissue from the 2001 series collecting his early work. A master of the unearthly atmosphere — David Lynch has nothing on him — Burns unleashes tales of a man transplanted with a dog’s heart, a failing marriage with an alarming secret, and, best of all, an evangelist’s son’s encounter with God and his path to millions because of it. At once cautionary, creepy and curious, Burns is consistently one of comics’ deepest thinkers.
3 Story - Matt Kindt (Dark Horse)
In this somber and beautifully realized tale, Matt Kindt recounts the life of a real giant as seen through the eyes of the three women most important to him — his mother, his wife and his daughter. It’s Citizen Kane meets Gulliver’s Travels. As with Super Spy, Kindt’s styles are multiple and thoroughly accomplished, as is the depth of the biography that measures the perception of a man by the opposite sex. It is an area of mystery where expectations can outgrow and overtake the self that lurks within. In this book, Kindt comes up with a protagonist who is truly as big as the author’s ideas.
Trotsky: A Graphic Biography - Rick Geary (Hill and Wang)
Geary, one of the best practitioners of the non-fiction comics form, tackles the life of Communist thinker and leader by examining his ideas at a time when such radical naivete seemed like just the answer to oppression. Though it’s hard to say that Trotsky comes off as likable, Gear isn’t afraid to present the harsher side of the man in a fight for his own principles and some level of government fairness towards ordinary human beings, even when it involves executions of peasants who refused to fight in the revolution. A person like Trotsky is unlikely to exist again — we’re less tolerant of intellectuals and anyone with foibles — but Geary does a fantastic job at bringing the era to life.
Wasteland Vol 5 - Antony Johnson, Carla Speed McNeil, Joe Infurnari, Chuck BB, and Christopher Mitten (Oni Press)
The originally invigorating Wasteland series suffers another sidetracking setback — Vol. 4 with its foray into nomadic dog tribes was irritating enough. In that, the main characters and their stories were largely relegated to minor purposes, leaving them tied up for the duration of the story. In this volume, four flashback stories are presented, filling in details of the post apocalyptic word and leading up to the stories in the first volume. The problem is that no matter how well done these stories are — and they are extremely well realized, particularly with Mitten’s stunning color work on the final story — they are mostly superfluous. A nice time passer but I hope Johnson will get back to what made this series truly interesting. To that end, I highly recommend the first 3 volumes of the series if you haven’t read them already.
Wet Moon Vol. 5 by Ross Campbell (Oni Press)
Campbell’s ongoing series of graphic novels follows a loose group of industrial-goth art school students in a mysterious Southern swamp town. Based on his own experiences at the Savannah College of Art and Design, Campbell weaves a network of gossip, doubt, and confessions that creates a mystique of experience in those transition years between high school and adulthood. Campbell shows an uncanny respect and sympathy for every character who enters the story, which keeps it down to earth even as the strange feeling in the air begins to wrap mystery around the story in ways you can’t quite put your finger on, even as it careens into an wholly unexpected event.
Year of Loving Dangerously - Ted Rall (NBM)
Unapologetically frank memoir of the year Rall spent as — there is no delicate way to put this — a gigolo who traded his favors for a roof over his head and a bed. Not just one — multiple places of action and rest were his in 1980s New York City, and this maze of mattresses serves as a stellar travelogue to life at that place and time. If Rall comes off as a bit of a rogue, he’s a least one with an interesting tale to tell — a series of misfortunes that saw him kicked out of college and on the streets during one of the scariest times in NYC history to be a homeless person.
John Seven • 2nd Sep 2009 • Comics • Adam Strange, Billy Tucci, Dark Horse, Dave Malki, DC Comics, Drawn and Quarterly, Essex County, Fantagraphics, First Second, George Cochrane, Haunted Tank, James Sturm, Jason, Jeff Lemire, Joe Kubert, John Stanley, Kamandi, Mass MoCA, Mike Allred, Neil Gaiman, Niklas Asker, Paul Pope, Ray Fenwick, Sgt. Rock, The Flash, Top Shelf, Wednesday Comics, Wonder Woman, Wondermark
Adventures in Cartooning by James Sturm, Andrew Arnold, and Alexis Frederick-Frost (First Second)
Vermont’s Center for Cartoon Studies offers this super fun book introducing budding young cartoonists — that is, kids — to the language of sequential art. It’s not a boring how-to, though — they wrap the instruction around a knight’s quest to save a princess from a candy-hoarding dragon. Along for the ride is his teacher, a magic elf, who offers the knight cartooning instruction solutions to getting himself out of pickles. Hilarious and informative!
Clever Tricks to Stave Off Death by Dave Malki (Dark Horse)
Utilizing vintage clip art as his visual weapon, cartoonist Dave Malki zooms past so many other cartoonists for sheer smarts and sharp dialog in this new collection of his “Wondermark” web comic. It would be easy to coast on the juxtaposition — Dickensian oafs talking about blogs is possibly funny without much effort — but Malki keeps injecting piss and vinegar intellect and observation in there. Someday, “Wondermark” will be used to sell Dolly Madison snack cakes.
Complete Essex County by Jeff Lemire (Top Shelf)
Lemire’s acclaimed trilogy is collected in one book and begs the indulgence of anyone who missed it the first time around. Focusing on a rural 
Canadian community, the historical and emotional connections between a circle of current residents are examined through surrealism and psychology. It’s a jarring and haunting view of the hidden connections and a quiet work that benefits from the jagged visual imagery. Lauded outside of the comic book world and justifiably so, Lemire provides a bleak introspection that is related more to Ingmar Bergman than anything else in comics.
Long Time Gone #1 & 2 by George Cochrane (Mass MoCA)
It’s not often that an art museum puts out a comic book, but the Mass MoCA in North Adams breaks new ground with Long Time Gone, painter George Cochrane’s 24-issue epic foray. Capturing a day in the life via a netherworld where the conscious and subconscious collide, Cochrane references Homer and James Joyce as he pulls in the history of comics as his layout guide. For added layers, Cochrane collaborates with his seven year old daughter. I’ve never seen anything like it in comics — it’s one of the most visually rich creations in the form — and if copies of the actual comic disappear from the museum store, you can always read it page by page on the walls of the gallery.
Low Moon by Jason (Fantagraphics)
Dry and absurd as ever, Norwegian cartoonist Jason returns with an anthology featuring more of the verbally-spare cartoon animals that populate his surreal and depthful extended gag strips. The five stories within — on of which was serialized in the New York Times Sunday Magazine — offer up loss, despair, fear, mystery, rejection, humiliation and multiple other downers as played out by a bunch of lanky cats and dogs with stunned expression. The best stories include “Proto Film Noir,” in which lovers’ plot to kill the woman’s husband turns into some Sisyphusean cosmic joke, and “You Are Here,” an heartbreaking tale of irony that examines dysfunctional families by way of UFO abductions. There’s no other cartoonist with Jason’s somber deadpan and this serves as a great introduction to his work.
Marvin Monster by John Stanley (Drawn & Quarterly)
A great one one for the kiddies as well as the adults! The antidote to antiseptic childrens’ comics of the 1950s, but unlike EC horrors, this one meets the goody-two-shoes on their own level. The inspired creation of John Stanley, who otherwise found renown for his work on Little Lulu, Marvin Monster is a bit of dark tomfoolery with a smart edge about a young ghoul who doesn’t want to be bad. Unfortunately for monsters, bad is good — and his Mummy and Baddy want him to be very bad. Melvin mixes with the human world and contends with the absurd elements of the monster one in his quest get through life with as little gruesomeness as possible.
MOME Vol 15 (Fantagraphics)
The summer edition of this journal of intentionally obscure modern cartooning manages to be more pleasing than curious to those who might not be inclined toward the experimental — it’s a good introduction to short works from the other side. Particularly interesting are Ray Fenwick’s “How I Do It,” T. Edward Bask’s “Stellar” and Noah Van Scriver’s “True Tale of the Denver Spider-Man” all of which bring an edge of teetering and playful insanity to the anthology.
Second Thoughts by Niklas Asker (Top Shelf)
Pushing aside bombast and embracing quiet subtlety and emotional maturity, Niklas Asker takes the graphic novel into new territory, albeit an unassuming one. Like a small foreign film contained wthin a graphic novel, “Second Thoughts” follows parallel romances in turm
oil, juxtaposing two different relationships with one love bird each flying its respective coop. A brief meeting in the airport sets into motion these two intimate investigations of doubt and change in love, unfolding with understanding and delicacy from Asker.
Sgt Rock: The Lost Battalion# 1 - 6 (DC Comics)
Creator Billy Tucci weaves DC Comics characters like Sgt. Rock and the crew of the Haunted Tank into a real incident at the end of World War II. Rather than going for the existential quality of the classic DC war comics, Tucci brings the characters into a well-considered reality, filled with action, but also a hefty amount of characterization and analysis. It’s not quite Sgt. Rock as we’ve known him — he’s really only one character in a tapestry that reveals battle as a collaborative fury — but Tucci provides a solid war story of depth. A hardcover collection will be released in September.
Wednesday Comics #1 - 6 (DC Comics)
Armed with a clever marketing plan — a weekly newspaper tabloid format — and some first rate talent, DC ushers comics backwards and forwards at the same time. Boasting 15 one-page, serialized adventures, this is a delight from start to finish with several standouts — a Prince Valiant inspired take on Kamandi the Last Boy on Earth; Paul Pope’s primitive and exciting Adam Strange, a stylish Little Nemo style take on Wonder Woman, Neil Gaiman and Mike Allred’s old-fashioned Metamorpho, Kubert father and son tackling Sgt. Rock,and a dizzying split Flash strip — half superhero adventure, half dramatic romance comic as seen through the eyes of his wife. Are comics actually fun again?
John Seven • 11th Jul 2009 • Book Articles, Comics • autobiography, biography, Carol Lay, Carol Tyler, Fantagraphics, memoir, weight loss, women's issues, World War 2
Two new graphic novels aim to present the words and pictures of an audience not traditionally thought of as targets of comic book reading — women in their 50s.
Carol Tyler’s “You’ll Never Know” mines similar territory to women graphic novelists before her — the life of her father and its relationship to her own foibles — and manages to make a work entirely her own, neither derivative nor overly familiar.
The framing device is her interest in uncovering her dad’s s World War II experience, but what unfolds in the story is an examination of the father-daughter relationship forged through a retelling of both their lives as well as the actual making of this book.
Tyler is able to take the genre of war veteran memoir and twist it around her own autobiography as a way to reveal not only how war affects a person but also how a parent affects a child — it’s the march of history through personal psychology, and it’s more personal to your own life experience than you might expect.
The book begins with Tyler investigating why her father never advertises his involvement in the war and a recollection of her many attempts to get information about that time.
Eventually, her father does open up and reveals not only details about his early war experience but also vivid stories of his courtship with Tyler’s mom. She puts together her father’s history through an impromptu phone babble one evening, as well as scrapbooks he has previous kept to himself. Tyler reproduces and embellishes these with genuinely gorgeous illustration, turning her father’s army life into a cartoon photo album in which each panel is a crafted page that reveals another moment in his life. As Tyler continues the story, though, she focuses on hints to an unstated trauma and wrestles with her own on-again-off-again romantic tug of war. (more…)
John Seven • 26th Jun 2009 • Book Articles, Comics • comic strips, Fantagraphics, Jules Feiffer, Village Voice
Contrary to popular legend, an intelligent, literary liberal newspaper comic strip did exist before “Doonesbury” — Jules Feiffer’s “Sick, Sick, Sick.” Feiffer would never received the same kind of popular culture accolades as Gary Trudeau — largely because his strip did not build on continuity through its characters, but also because it’s place as a weekly fixture in The Village Voice did not lend itself to mass fame. The strip ran for 44 years and is currently being collected in “Explainers,” a veritable Bible of middle class American dysfunction. This first volume covers 1956 to 1966.
Feiffer began his career as an apprentice for legendary cartoonist Will Eisner — he actually wrote some later stories for “The Spirit” — and moved on to other freelance work before blundering into The Village Voice offices and securing his longest running gig. Feiffer went onto become a renowned screenwriter, novelist and children’s book author — seriously, the guy is a national treasure — but the comic strips contained in “Explainers” reveal the roots of his particular form of intellectual artistry.
The set-up for the cartoons is fairly simple — usually it is a monologue from one person explaining something about their life, or sometimes a dialogue between two people, often at cross purposes. Feiffer reveals the depths of his subject not only through the dialogue — which are filled with psychological, social and politic depths that few cartoonists have ever plumbed — but also through an amazing skill to capture the body language so crucial to human communication.
Too often, it seems less that Feiffer is creating these monologues and conversations and more as if he is transcribing them — as the strip continues on, situations become less black and white, types become less good and bad. The problems of the world seem to be the result not of any particular groups or groups but the result of varying co-dependencies. It takes two to tango and that particular dance is making the world intolerable.
Thanks to the daily documentation by Feiffer, it’s easy to see that the psychological threads through modern American social history — self-obsession and self-deception — remain a constant even still. Five decades later, the two continue to twine around each other like twin serpents and it’s always a mystery which one is going to strike at you. Sometimes, they team-up to create something far weirder than you expect — Feiffer captures the root of that modern dichotomy of emotional fraud.
In Feiffer’s world, relationships are created from two one-sided conversations running concurrently, intelligent discourse is born from obsessing about the latest fads in intellectualism and qualifying yourself and the world around you is a product of over-thinking rather than disciplined analysis. People justify themselves rather than ever investigate and change. Feiffer’s world isn’t too much different from our own — it tends to be less depressing that ours, actually — and “Explainers” as 500 pages of startling truth captured in sequential squiggles on paper, a real masterpiece worth delving into.
John Seven • 16th Jun 2009 • Book Articles, Comics • Boody Rogers, Fantagraphics
As is so often the case, yesterday’s bawdiness has become today’s curiosity and, in the eyes of some, lost genius. With “Boody: The Bizarre Comics of Boody Rogers” I think I’d have to dispute the genius part, though I’d agree that there’s an undercurrent in this anthology that points to something curious and bizarre that’s worth the same sort of glance as a fake freak in a smarmy sideshow.
Following on the heels of the Fletcher Hanks rediscovery, this volume of Boody Rogers hopes for the same vibe from eager armchair archaeologists — at least those of the cartoon variety — and though there is, indeed, something to see here, it’s nowhere near as charming or complicated as what Hanks’ work presented.
Rogers specialized in a form of extended gag strip, often centered around hillbilly humor. The focal point is Babe, the Amazonian Ozarks girl stacked to the gills with cartoonish sexuality, but Rogers also gives attention to characters like the ever-shrinking Sparky Watts, who has to get a fresh dose of cosmic rays to keep him from descending into an inner world of weirdness (when he does, he meets up with weird alien bug things).
The problem is that for there to be real interest in Rogers’ work, it would be helpful if it were funny in some capacity. Sadly, it’s filled with typical, third-rate hackneyed humor from the era, just given some bizarre window dressing to help it stand out from the crowd. As such, it certainly qualifies as what it sells itself as, but beyond the oddity of the work, there’s nothing there to enjoy — in fact, getting through the book borders on tedious. It’s not helped by the fact that the work would be way more palatable if the stories weren’t so long — they’re gag strip ideas with novella length execution.
As such, it would be interesting to encounter one Boody Rogers story in an anthology of weirdness, like Fantagraphics’ previously released “Supermen,” a much better book that focused on early superheroes, but a whole book of this stuff is a patience tester.
All that said, if you’re already obsessed with Rogers’ work and have an opposite reaction to it from mine, you’re surely going to love this collection.
John Seven • 20th Mar 2009 • Book Articles, Comics • Basil Wolverton, Charles Burns, Chris Ware, Dan Clowes, Dann Zettwoch, Fantagraphics, Fletcher Hanks, Gilbert Hernandez, Harvey Pekar, Ivan Brunetti, Jack Cole, Jaime Hernandez, Jessica Abel, Joe Sacco, Kevin Huizenga, Kim Deitch, Robert Crumb, Seth, superheroes
Comic books have come a long way, but not as far as you think. On one hand, the creators who seized the medium in order to create literature comparable to any of its non-sequential cousins have garnered plenty of attention in the last decade. However, superheroes still exist and though companies try to grit them up, they’re still rather silly.
What is surprising, though, is that the superhero comics of yesteryear — we’re talking the pioneering first works from as far back as 1936 — hold much more in common with the literate graphic novels of today than their logical ancestors in the mainstream. Two new books give readers the opportunity to trace that path.
“Supermen” collects the earliest examples of lesser-known superhero comics from 1936 to 1941, the so-called first wave. No Superman or Batman here — instead, lost champions like Dr. Mystic, The Face and Sub-Zero seek to protect the Earth from bizarre villains bent on kidnapping, robbery, revolution, invasion and other efforts against the decent citizenry.
In pawing out the genre, there are areas of clunkiness that are charming — The Silver Streak lives in an apartment that anyone can visit, while The Comet’s house is easily found by criminals while he takes a snooze in his superhero get-up. The creators also have good humor revolving around the absurdity of the their chosen genre — suave man of mystery The Clock tries to calm a cop down after one-upping him, reminding him of his blood pressure.
Meanwhile, Marvelo — know as the Monarch of Magicians — starts off his adventure after the inconvenience of gangsters stealing a much-needed taxi from him. Marvelo retaliates by turning the crooks into pigs. (more…)
John Seven • 15th Feb 2009 • Art Articles • cryptozoology, Fantagraphics, Illustrators
In “Beasts Book 2,” as with the first, cryptozoology, international myth and legends, top-notch illustration and a good sense of humor are mixed together for fun kind of coffee table book that offers something a little different for anyone bored in your parlor.
As curated by Jacob Covey, this “prodigious bestiary from the interest of modern artisans” gathers together just short of 100 different monsters throughout time and the ages. Some you already know well, like a nymph or a mermaid, while others are more obscure — I’d never heard of a domovoi, for instance. A domovoi, for the equally uninitiated, is a little, horned and hairy man in Russia who likes to do house and yard work, but will get bent out of shape if its adopted family does not. Sweep your floors or there will be hell to pay.
There are plenty of other creatures on display, revealing a common trait in all humans — the innate ability to mix the absurd with the gruesome, usually for the purpose of berating children, though often just to teach a lesson to anyone for any reason. Bad wives in Japan can end up as the one-eyed, two-mouthed futakuchi-onna. In Bali, practicing black magic can transform you into a cannibalistic floating head called a leyak. And in England, when you don’t listen to your parent and go near the water, a peg prowler might just pull you in and gobble you up.
More prevalent than any other beast, though,are the creatures designed to scare people of anything unknown. That’s a belief that has united humankind for ages — if you don’t know about it, it’s bad. And mean. Dare to venture from home in the Phillipines and a tikbalang — a fetus-like man-horse — will play tricks on you. In Japan, the Mountain Woman will find you, pounce on you and eat you. In the Gobi Desert, a Mongolian death worm might spray you with acid.
Each creature is realized by some of the best artists, illustrators and cartoonists you’ll find working today — Jaime Hernandez, Lilli Carre, Ray Fenwick, Kim Deitch and Anthony Lister, among many others.
The book also boasts a short comic story by the marvelous Dan Zettwoch focusing on a real life incident in 1865 involving a Kraken — or, much more likely, a giant squid. Adding to the book are two fascinating interviews — one with cryptozoologist Ken Gerhard, the other with renowned giant squid researcher Richard Ellis. With all the pieces put together, “Beasts Book 2? actually surpasses the first volume in quality and interest and provide hope that maybe a “Beasts Book 3? will come along to top those.
