Last opportunity to read comics this year (I think), so here we go. And today’s music is from the halcyon days of 2009 only.
| Circlesquare: Songs About Dancing And Drugs |  |
14:05: Flash Point by Imai Arata (Glacier Bay Books)
This is a pretty original book, really. Or rather, really confusing, because it totally starts off as perhaps an autobio book…
… and then veers into being a satire on influencer culture…
… and then it’s a broad comedy about Shinzo Abe’s assassination and hi-hinx following that.
It’s a funny book, but you get whiplash from the way it meanders towards its conclusion.
| DJ Rupture & Matt Shadetek: Solar Light Raft |  |
14:46: Star Trek Lower Decks #1 by Ryan North/Derek Charm (IDW)
The team from the last half of the Squirrel Girl run united! So I had to get this — I have not seen the cartoon series this is based on.
Oh, I’d forgotten that I’d read the first North/Charm Lower Decks series…
This is very funny. But there’s a lot of Star Trek in jokes that I’m barely getting? I think? But it’s so full of jokes that it’s doesn’t really matter. I’m on board.
15:09: Livet er gas by Annemette Bramsen (Plutoid)
This is set in the early 70s, and is about a guy in a small town who’s really into T. Rex.
The artwork is really enjoyable — it’s got a kind of 70s underground vibe, but updated. The story doesn’t really quite work, though — it’s feels like a sketch towards a larger story?
| Hype Williams: Untitled |  |
15:23: The Return of Captain Nemo by Schuiten & Peeters (Alaxis Press)
It seems like nobody who’s tried to publish the Obscure Cities series has lasted very long… Alaxis is somebody new, I think?
Most of this book is told in this way — we see an old guy recounting the story of Captain Nemo while we get a lot of really nice artwork depicting Nemo’s squid sub in various situations (which seem to have little to do with what the guy is saying most of the time). So I was wondering whether Peeters just wanted to do a lot of these drawings and the text is just an excuse. Because it’s tedious as fuck.
But then we get a clever ending! That’ll probably make everybody groan out loudly, but at least it’s something.
But then the last third of the book is more illustrations of a retro-futuristic city, again with some text accompanying it, but this time around without any narrative.
So I’m back to my original thought: Peeters (or is it Schuiten?) just wanted to draw these things, but they couldn’t come up with a story this time around.
This book was so soporific that I have to take a nap now.
| Laura Jean: Tour EP, 2009 |  |
17:39: Hilda and Twig: Hide from the Rain by Luke Pearson (Flying Eye Books)
I remember really liking the first few Hilda books, but then it was adapted into an animated Netflix series, and that resulted in smoothing out the comics, too, so I lost interest. But I bought this at random to see what it’s like now.
Yeah, the artwork’s more cartoony than it used to be, I think?
But… it’s really good! It’s funny, it’s a bit scary, it’s kinda epic.
| Various: Ze Records Story 1979-2009 |  |
17:52: Erased by Loo Hui Pang & Hugues Micoli (NBM)
So this is about an obviously fictional actor called “Maximus Wyld”, which is a preposterously un-30s movie name. Fake names back then were like “Cary Grant”. I guess it’s better than Fakename McFakeface, but only barely.
I assume! I haven’t googled the name.
The artwork looks pretty good. I mean, rendering wise. It’s pretty inept, though — whenever somebody’s actually doing something, you have to have the text explaining what the artwork supposed to be showing.
And oh, the dialogue… I get that the author’s not going for naturalistic talk, and sometimes he achieves almost Brechtian heights. But it’s mostly just really wooden and awful.
And he has Hattie McDaniel saying stuff like this? That maid quip is famous, of course, but he has her seeming like she’s a slavery apologist and a racist?
This is an awkward and tedious book, so I’m ditching it.
18:36: Fanden til præst by Sylvian Vallée/Jacky Schwartzmann (Shadow Zone)
This is very, very by the numbers — it’s high concept nonsense about a gangster having to disappear, so he takes over the identity of a priest who died.
So you get all the set pieces — him fumbling the mass (and becoming hugely popular), reluctantly taking care of the local urchin, setting up his own little pot distribution thing — all the normal heartwarming things required to make a French comedy drama.
But it’s pretty well done? It’s 100% formulaic, but it’s a formula that works, so…
| Fever Ray: Fever Ray |  |
18:59: Spring Tides by Andrew White (Glacier Bay Books)
Is this the first book by Glacier Bay that isn’t a translation of a Japanese comic book?
Anyway, the first part of this is a kinda slightly abstract post apocalyptic but really more symbolic kind of thing from 2023, and it’s amazing.
The last two thirds are newer and continues the story — but makes it way more concrete. Instead of living in a vaguely non-functioning place, we’re now in a normal city, and there’s doctors and stuff. And it’s good? But I kinda feel that the first part didn’t need to be brought down to Earth like this.
Ah, I see that I’ve forgotten to buy White’s Yearly 2024, so I’m doing that now.
19:24: Fragment (Blokk Forlag)
This is a bunch of small books.
There’s a variety of approaches — we’ve got poetry…
… jokes …
… autobio …
… and illustration. It’s really good.
| Mapstation: The African Chamber |  |
20:01: Pure Pajamas by Marc Bell (Drawn & Quarterly)
Somehow I missed this Marc Bell book from 2011.
This is a collection of stuff done from the mid 90s onwards. It’s interesting to see the older stuff from before Bell got his present style.
And kittens with kittens? Perfect.
It’s brilliant lunacy.
I guess I never made the connection to Robert Crumb, but now that Bell points it out, it’s like duh.
Anyway, it’s so much fun. And somehow for a grab bag of random stuff like this, it works well as a book as well.
| Machinedrum: Want to 1 2? |  |
20:59: Never Again Will I Visit Auschwitz by Ari Richter (Fantagraphics)
Sorry, this is just so fugly. Everything about it is wrong. The heavy black border around the pages, and then an extremely white border. The lettering on the narration part IS SO BIG THAT IT”S LIKE HE”S SHOUTING ALL THE TIME. And the artwork itself looks like he’s scribbling on top of images on his Ipad. And there’s like zero colour sense.
This may be the most unpleasant comics spread I’ve opened up in yonks.
And it just goes on like that — page after page that’s just unpleasant to have in your vicinity. The overwhelming computeryness of it all… was this originally done as a web comic?
After about 70 pages of, well, introduction, we get to the main bulk of the book, where Richter retells stories of his relatives in Germany and Poland before and during WWII, and it’s harrowing indeed.
Unfortunately, the things that Richter makes up (dialogues and stuff) never seem that convincing (“You’ll no longer be poisoning these children’s minds” doesn’t really roll off the tongue).
| Peaches: I Feel Cream |  |
But it’s pretty interesting.
And dissing the feverish Polish history rewrites is always fun, of course. (And that’s why he’s not going back — because it’s a horribly run parody of what it should have been, from the looks of it.)
Hey! I’ve been to Dachau.
Anyway… it’s not a successful book, but Richter’s heart seems to be in the right place, so I wish I liked it. But I’m gonna do something I rarely do in a daze: Google what people thought of it.
The book is less compelling when it attempts to unpack how Holocaust remembrance works in Germany and Poland. Even as he foregrounds the importance of this issue, Richter dedicates only a few pages to each, making it impossible to capture the nuances of either. Poland gets particularly short shrift. As it happened, I visited Auschwitz just before writing this review, and Richter’s depiction of his own experience — especially of the pains taken by his guide to stress Polish suffering and downplay Jewish suffering — deeply resonated. However, Richter’s own tour through Polish-Jewish relations and contested memory is rushed. Missing from it is the perspective of Jews in Poland today.
Er… OK, but… that’s not what the book is about. So, yes, he could have written a different book, but you’re reviewing this one. Man.
Hm… there really aren’t that many reviews out there? Well, I found a handful more, but none of them really said anything interesting — and only a couple mentioned the art at all.
| David Bowie: A Reality Tour (1) |  |
22:42: Shuna’s Journey by Hayao Miyazaki (First Second)
Well, this is very pretty… It’s from the Nausicäa guy, but from 1983.
But! It’s not a comic book! I don’t remember who said it, but there’s a real disappointment when you open a book you think is going to be a comic book, but it’s an illustrated story instead.
It’s not that bad, though? It’s a bit fairytalish (that’s a word), which is always tedious, but it’s OK. Without the excellent artwork it would have been piffle, though.
Oh, those Japanese! They even have a word for what this is — emonogatari. If only English wasn’t such an impoverished language, it’d have a word (or expression) for it, too.
OK, I’m fading, so just one more comic book…
23:15: Havedammen by Marie Sandmand (Forlaget Bogprint)
Wow, love this artwork… it reminds me of late 70s Annie Goetzinger? It’s got that associative flow.
And just original storytelling that’s not confusing despite being this freeflowing.
The only problem is how brief this book is — it’s 30 pages! It’s basically one brief scene, and then it’s over. I mean, it works — it’s a good scene — but more would have been even better.
23:26: The End
OK, but now it’s time to call it a night.