TBE1995: Jar of Fools

Jar of Fools (1995) #1-2 by Jason Lutes

Lutes had had a few appearances in a few anthologies before Jar of Fools was published, but the book took people by surprise: He self-published (using a Xeric Foundation grant; i.e. Teenage Mutant Turtle money) the first volume — and it was a 70 page book, which was very unusual at the time. People used to serialise things in smaller instalments before publishing a “book”.

I guess Lutes found self publishing to be too much work, because Black Eye reprinted the first volume, and then published the second and final volume a year later.

Let’s see how it starts:

Yeah, they’re using all the signifiers of “serious work” possible — French flaps, end papers, title pages, indicia pages etc etc. It’s like they’re trying to entice the reader looking at the book in the bookstore: “Look! I’m just like a Penguin book! Serious and stuff!”

Which I quite enjoy, but it’s a bit… excessive? When the book is just 70 pages long.

For a first work (ish) it’s a remarkably assured work. Lutes has got the pacing down perfectly, and his artwork is so clear that it’s almost transparent.

(And I’m not sure that’s really a compliment.)

Structurally, it’s a bit odd. The first half we’re introduced to the five main characters, and they move around the city a lot. In the second half, most of it takes place in one location, and the book starts feeling like it started off as a play for a stage?

If I remember correctly, this was Lutes’ most controversial thing: When faces would get too small, he’d just avoid drawing in the features. It’s pretty distracting — you start wondering whether it has some meaning or not, but I guess not.

It’s got a proper mood going on. Especially on the pages where there’s less talk, you get into the rhythm of the panels, and it just flows so well.

The dialogue, though, isn’t always convincing, but then on the other hand, I’m not sure whether it’s meant to be naturalistic, anyway.

I think the book made quite an impression at the time, but I’m not sure I’ve seen it mentioned even once the last couple decades? Was it ever reprinted?

Black Eye did a single volume edition in 1997, and then Drawn & Quarterly reprinted it in 2003, but it doesn’t look like it’s been reprinted after that? (Man, what a terrible cover on the D&Q edition.)

Comics Scene Volume 2 #56, page #57:

Lutes originally published Jar
of Fools a page at a time in a
weekly Seattle paper, The
Stranger. He was awarded a
Xeric Foundation grant, which
allowed him to collect the strips
and publish the first part of Jar
of Fools on his own. That volume
garnered much critical praise and
both Part One and Part Two are
now available from Black Eye Pub-
lications.
Though he both wrote and illustrat-
ed Jar of Fools, Lutes’ view of the comic
book form is more organic. “I would
consider myself more of a cartoonist,”
he reveals. “That’s kind of the peculiar
thing about comics. It’s pretty easy to
think that writing and drawing are the
two separate disciplines that together
make comics. The way that I conceive
of the form, the way that I use its I think
about them both together. That’s how I
write my scripts. That’s how I conceive
of the whole thing. ”
Indeed, Lutes “wrote” Jar of Fools
using thumbnail drawings and dia-
logue. The opportunity to do a weekly
strip presented itself while he was
working in the production department
of The Stranger. And from that oppor-
tunity, Jar of Fools started with a sim-
ple image, as Lutes explains: “I started
out with the image of a melting woman.
I think I was looking through some old
Golden Age comic, or maybe a romance
comic, and there was a man holding a
woman’s head. I re-drew the picture,
only I made her melting through his
hands. That was the beginning of the
whole thing, just that image.”

Oh, it was indeed serialised first! But in a magazine.

The Comics Journal #228, page #60:

The kind of comics we’re talking about are financially — whatk the
word — unfeasible; [Stump laughs] there are no immediate rewards; itk an
incredibly medium, because you’re doing it all yourself. All
of these things, and the things you mention, contribute to the fact that
been very limited. The whole time I We been excited about comics and pur-
suing them and being into them, I feel like there’s something there I’m try-
ing to get at it, that I know is there. I glimpse it in other cartoonists’ work,
and occasionally I’ll experience the satisfaction of touching it myself. I don’t
know if anybody else gets that on the receiving end… but itk tremendous-
ly exciting to know that the potential is there. At this point, confident
that the potential is there. It’s just a matter of getting at it and making use
of it.
But it’s a bastard little medium. I guess we’re actually better off than
the poetry market, possibly [laughs] but in terms of processing and under-
standing comics, people have been completely poisoned by the newspaper
strip. My best experiences with readers have been from people who have
come to my work wi thout any preconceptions, because they were not comics
readers. The whole reason I tried to make Jar of Fools “go down easy” was
not because I didn’t want the content to be affecting, but because I wanted
anybody to be able to pick it up and read it.

And I think it succeeds in that.

Ng Suat Tong writes in The Comics Journal #187, page #50:

[…]

What has this got to do with Jason Lutes and
Jar of Fools? Well, storytelling Of course. Hav-
ing taken the time to read some of the glowing
reviews of Jar of Fools, I have gained the
impression that there is some sort of indefin-
able excellence about the work. Yet the same
book left me utterly cold and dissatisfied. Have
you ever wondered why Jar Of Fools is consid-
ered “one of the more satisfying works of the
last five years” (Crash), or “instantly and un-
doubtedly recognizable as one of the year’s
best” (The Comics Journal)? Or is it just a
vague feeling ofquality you have after reading
it? I wanted to understand why so many people
liked this book.
Scott McCloud calls Jason Lutes a “world
class storyteller” and many people seem to
agree with him. Lutes has certainly written a
book which can be easily read through. It should
be obvious, however, that the ease with which
a comic book is read is not only a matter Of
choice but also relates directly to the subject
matter. Should it also be equated with some
form of merit? A pointl acknowledge about Jar
of Fools is the beauty with which a story un-
folds. But why shouldLutes’ style be so appeal-
ing?

[…]

The technical skill involved in constructing
the narrative and structure Of Jar Of Fools is
outstanding for a relative newcomer, but I have
the impression that the reason people feel so
drawn to books like JarofF001s is the intimacy
created by the ease with which the book is read
and the refinement of the drawing. It’s prob-
ably the same reason why books like Bone have
succeeded so well. But we shouldn’t delude
ourselves. Skill in narrative is well and good,
the story however, is all-important.
At all events i! is safe to say that it is only
greatest stories that can be told in simple prose; ir
is only where the stuff itself does the work thal
prose had better do as little as possible, though
that little it must do effectively. If prose has to do
more. and after all some lesser stories are well
worth telling, it should do only So much more as is
necessary…

[…]

Reading Jar of Fools made me think of
Eduardo Phillipo’ s ln Gran Magia, a play about
a man whose wife leaves him and the fabric of
lies and illusions which are constructed for him
(and which he finally comes to believe in) to help
him deal with his grief. The magic here is man-
made and instigated by a charlatan; consolatory
in the short term, but ultimately damning. In the
world of Jar of Fools. the magic of existence is
as imperfect as the sleight of hand practiced by
its protagonists. The magic is flawed, temporal
and mixed in with the biliousness of life. I remain
unmoved by Lutes’ constructs but it would be
perverse to deny the coherence ofhis themes and
the conviction Of his writing.

The Comics Journal #170, page #120:

It’s extremely rare to come across a comic ülat is in-
stantly, undoubtedly recognizable as one of the
year’s best, but that’s exactly what part one of Jason
Lutes’ Jar of Fools is. The Xeric award-winning
Lutes (his last comic was the self-published, quasi-
anthology title Catchpenny Comics) has spent the
last 16 months laboriously producing Jar at the rate
of •one page per week, each page appearing as a
panel cartoon in the Seattle weekly paper The
Stranger. This 80-page issue is the first half of the
complete Jar (the second half will presumably ap-
pear 16 months from now), and it tells the story of
Ernie, a young, small-time magician (stage name:
ne Amazing Ernesto). Ernie seems pretty washed-
up; he’s been going downhill since his older brother
Howard, an escape artist, went to
the bottom of a river in a strait-
jacket. chained to an iron ball. He
hasn’t gotten a gig in months, he’s
broke and Owes back rent, and he’s
lost his girlfriend Esther — her
story forms the second half of the
split narrative. Ernie’s slide into
drink and debt is interrupted, how-
ever, by the appearance of his men-
tor, Albert Flosso (Flosscv the
Magnificent), who has escaped
from his nursing home, and Nathan Lender, a myste-
rious, down-on-his-luck confidence man who lives
in his car and pulls nickle-and-dime cons to take
care of his youthful charge, Claire.
Lutes is by far the best cartoonist of the Xeric
gang, and this book is a tribute to his talent. Layout,
composition, rendering, camera angle, timing, narra-
tive structure, and especially the perfectly-captured
urban environment — every part is flawless and
seamlessly integrated into the whole. Jar of Fools is
a beautifully realized creation, and no one who pro-
fesses a love of comics should be without it.

Indy Magazine #7, page #35:

Wow: Let me say that again. Wow! The folks
at the Xeric Foundation certainly know what they
are doing when they are giving grants for cartoon-
ists to help them publish their work Jar of Fools,
by Jason Lutes, is one of the handful of wonclerful
cornies that have been helped by the support of the
Xeric Founclation, established by Peter laird, co-cre-
ator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Jar of
Fools may have a high price tag at $5.95, but
believe me, it is well worth it. It IS the stotv of
Ernie Weiss a street magician whose life has lost its
magic. Jason Lutes has imbued each character with
such depth that they cease to appear•to be just
characters, they become real to the reader. Jar of
Fools is an example of why I still read comics
today.

The Comics Journal #187, page #43:

BERLIN IS JASON LUTES’ followup
to his unmistakably ambitious two-volume
graphic novel, Jar of Fools. While Ja,r’s first
volume evoked widespread, and well-deserved,
critical acclaim, the second volume was met
with puzzling (and for Lutes, undoubtedly
frustrating) silence. The indifferent response to
Jar’s second volume seemed to indicate a
falling-off. or relaxation of the formidable
cartooning skills Lutes brought to bear in the
first volume, which still stands as a benchmark
ofLutes’ achievement.

Yeah, people didn’t have a lot to say about the second volume, did they?

This person didn’t like it:

Maybe if the novel hard a clear plot and a clear destination there would be some sense of enjoyment and pace for this work. But no, the author decides to fuck with us, and we, the poor readers, are given a work with no real cohesion or plot at all.

What a douche.

This person did:

Because Lutes relies on sparse dialogue and keeps the visual language simple, the intricacy and craftsmanship are only revealed near the end. Even more satisfying on rereading, this work emphasises the second word in the term “graphic novel”.

Well OK:

Jar of Fools is the book that makes me believe that the graphic novel has more potential to move people than does any form of traditional literature. It’s convinced me that in modern times the combination of image and word holds more power than the word alone.

This blog post is part of the Total Black Eye series.