Random Thoughts

Comics Daze

I got a whole bunch of comics from various places before the weekend, and I’m raring to get some comics reading done, even if I’m kinda sorta theoretically busy this week. Let’s see how this day goes — I might have to cut it short and actually, like, do stuff. Let’s hope not! Doing stuff sucks!

And for music… only old favourites. That I haven’t listened to in a while.

Marianne Faithfull: Broken English

05:43: Camp Pock-a-Wocknee and the Dyn-o-mite Summer of 77 by Eric Glickman (Black Panel Press)

OK, let’s start off with something easy on the brain before diving off into the more er er the other stuff.

Huh, another comic book about summer camp… I’ve read so many of them by now — it’s one of the Major Subjects of autobio comics. But this time there’s a twist: The author actually liked it at camp! That’s unusual!

As is the artwork: This big-nosed style is pretty unusual to see these days, especially for stuff like this.

The cover says “this is not a book for kids”, but who is it for?

Barbara Morgenstern: The Grass is Always Greener

There’s an excessive amount of minutiae here — I think somebody could recreate an entire camp based on this book. But… while sometimes amusing, it’s not very exciting. It’s like reading a blog in book form. OOPS!!! I.e., it’s all navel gazing and 90% is stuff that a sensible editor would go “well, is that interesting for anybody but yourself, though?”

I started skimming after a while… the author is relentlessly pro-camp while describing various batshit hazing rituals and horrifying mishegas of this eight week (!) camp thing. Where did I leave my pearls? I need something to clutch!

Polmo Polpo: Kiss Me Again and Again

06:44: Baby Boom by Yokoyama Yuichi (Breakdown Press)

*gasp* We had a new Yokoyama book just a couple months ago, and now there’s another one? It cannot be!

This is from the Desert Island Mystery Mail this month. *slow clap*

This is very different from Yokoyama’s previous books — he’s usually super meticulous, inhumanly precise (and in black and white). This is more like sketchbook drawings. But still gorgeous.

And the stories are different, too. I mean, in his other books, it’s sometimes pretty obscure what the stories are a lot of the time, beyond propulsion — here it’s mostly very straighforward. Here, for instance, we have the two characters (an adult and a kid, I think) cleaning the apt.

A couple of the pieces are more like (say) Garden — where we get an enormous number of characters dushing around in odd landscaped.

It’s a really cool book, as always, although I can understand that this wouldn’t be the first book to show to somebody new to Yokoyama. It’s more accessible in some ways, but it’s also even more overwhelming in other ways.

Fantastic book.

Coil: Black Antlers

07:34: Sunk a Dink #1 by Max Huffman

Also from the Desert Island package…

This is a collection of odds and ends mostly published before in various venues?

It’s very funny.

Coil: Black Antlers

07:40: An Honest Performance by Will Dinski (2d cloud)

2d cloud is back! Most important news of the year! They’ve got four new books out later this year, and I also picked up this little thing that I’ve missed when shopping before, I think…

It’s absolutely wonderful.

Coil: Black Antlers

07:45: Hands by Una Jongenelis

I’ve been shopping from the web shop and got this lovely little book…

It’s about love and stuff.

But I also got socks, a scarf and lots of other bits and bobs were included in the package. Class!

Wildbirds & Peacedrums: Retina

07:58: Epoxy by John Pham

I’ve got #1, #2, #4 and #6 here, and then there’s one I can’t find an issue number in, so I’m missing one issue? Darn!

The first issue is traditionally printed, and is from all the way back in 2000.

This must be where Brian Vaughan got the idea for Paper Girls from?

Anyway, it’s a nice book — it’s three somewhat enigmatic vignettes. I’m not altogether convinced that Pham just ran out of story a couple of times, and that’s why they end kinda abruptly…

Oh! The second issue continues two of the storylines from the first issue. I didn’t expect that, for some reason.

Anyway, the second issue is in a smaller format and… is it riso? I mean, I guess it has to be, but it looks quite odd for riso printing…

The second issue is stronger than the first, and the boxing storyline gets really tense.

I think I’m missing the third issue? Boo! I wanna find out what happened to that boxer guy… anyway, the fourth issue is riso for sure, and has a little booklet and postcards and puzzles and stuff included.

And Pham’s art style has changed completely, as well as his subject matter. There’s no publication date anywhere that I can find, but I’m guessing this is a lot later than the first two issues?

It’s like a fractal of booklets and stuff. This must have been so much work to put together…

The Jay & Kay booklet this time around (about gloompires) is a lot of fun. I think I’ve read all that stuff before, though — there was a collected edition recently, I think?

Heh, the sixth issue even includes a cel…

Hm, perhaps what I thought was the fifth issue was really the third and I’m missing the fifth instead?

Anyway, these books are a thrill to read. The obsessive intricate physical formats paired with funny/moving/wistful stories (and attractive, unique artwork) makes these books lovable objects.

Gang Gang Dance: Eye Contact

09:05: Family Fun by Jesse Simpson (Mansion Press)

Anyway, I got the Exposies from Mansion Press, along with a number of random books…

Such transgressive.

There’s some comics towards the end of this book, but it’s mostly one atrocity after another (with some interspersed sex bits).

It’s kinda dull.

Bob Hund: Stumfilm

09:15: Dream of the Bat by Josh Simmons & Patrick Keck (Mansion Press)

There’s been rumours about this thing for decades, it seems like, but the collected edition finally here… a very non-licensed version of Batman, if I understand things correctly.

Such transgressive.

It’s a surprisingly substantial book. But… it’s like… it basically just a standard Batman book. You can’t even say that it has more torture than normal, these days — didn’t The Joker spend several years with somebody elses face stitched to his own or something?

So it’s… eh.

Boris with Michio Kurihara: Rainbow

09:51: Om by Andy Barron (Mansion Press)

This is… like… spiritual and stuff? These are wordless stories about the cycle of life and er enlightenment and I don’t know what.

But, since it’s Mansion Press: Such transgressive.

This is totally not my kind of thing, and one vignette after another like this is… OK, I ditched the book halfway through.

And, oops, I really do have some errands to run, so I have to cut this Daze short. *pout*

The Best Albums of 1994

Feeling a bit nostalgic, so I thought it might be vaguely diverting to look at some old albums, and look at specific years. I remember much of the 90s being kinda boring, music-wise, so let’s look at, say, 1994.

Here’s a mixtape I made at the time:

I don’t have data that says what music I actually listened to at the time — but when I started using an Emacs-based music player in 1997, I eventually (around 2002) made it note which albums I was playing, too.

So below is a “top listens” list — saying which ones of the albums released in 1994 I’ve been listening to the most since 2002.

Confused? You should be!

	Arthur Russell	Another Thought

	Joni Mitchell	Turbulent Indigo
Joni Mitchell - Yvette In English
	Golden Palominos	Pure
The Golden Palominos - Pure
	Dead Can Dance	Toward The Within
Dead Can Dance--Don't Fade Away
	Sidsel Endresen & Bugge Wesseltoft	Nightsong
Nightsong
	Aphex Twin	Classics
Flaphead
	Bob Hund	Bob Hund
Bob Hund - Mer än så kan ingen bli
	Stina Nordenstam	And She Closed Her Eyes
Stina Nordenstam - Hopefully Yours
	Lisa Germano	Geek the Girl
... A Psychopath
	Team Dresch	Personal Best
Team Dresch - She's Amazing
	µ-Ziq	PHI*1700 [U-V]
µ-ziq - summer living
	Consolidated	Business of Punishment
Worthy Victim
	Sidsel Endresen	Exile
Quest
	The Wolfgang Press	Funky Little Demons
People Say

As a year, it’s not particularly amazing, is it? Many of these albums are from the tail ends of band’s careers (Arthur Russel, Joni Mitchell, Golden Palominos, Dead Can Dance, Wolfgang Press and Consolidated), and aren’t their strongest ones. But Aphex Twin and u-Ziq are part of a new wave of music, and Bob Hund and Lisa Germano do some of their best stuff. And, of course, a new bright superstar — Stina Nordenstam, who unfortunately didn’t really have that long a career.

Perhaps I’ll do a few more of these — navel gazing is what blogs is for, eh? Eh? Now that I’ve got the code to hook everything up all written and stuff, I mean. Coding up something to search Youtube automatically for tracks from these albums that I’ve mixtaped took just, oh, five hours, which is a totally rational thing to do. So I guess I have to reuse the code. So… er… perhaps a weekly? monthly? series or something? We’ll see.

PX82: Sexy Politzei

Sexy Politzei by Bruno Richard and others (215x305mm)

I thought this blog series was over now for sure, but then I happened onto this book while spelunking the interwebs, and I thought it looked pretty interesting, so I finally scored a copy.

The book is, according to all sources, by Bruno Richard, but I can’t actually find his name anywhere in this pretty hefty tome.

But it’s a pretty moot point, because it certainly looks like Bruno Richard.

This is a very high concept book, I guess you could say — on each left-side page, there’s a photo of some cops, and on the right-side page, you have Richard’s version of that photo. And the renditions are sometimes oddly faithful to the originals…

… and sometimes it’s wilder. But then again, some of the original snaps are already pretty wild.

But what’s the point of all this? The book has over 90 of these drawings (which means the book is about 220 pages long, and ends with an appendix which details the origins of each image).

Is Richard just fascinated by cops? Or loathe them so much? Are the drawings just exercises in a sketchbook, collected here for our amusement?

He even replicated texts from the original pictures. It’s obsessive and it’s pretty fantastic.

There’s a handful of crime scene pics, and a couple of them are really gruesome (I’m not including any of those here).

And in many of the drawings, the politzei aren’t that sexy, but then some are.

But! The reason I’m snapping this book at all for this blog series is that Gary Panter makes several appearances! On the left page here, we see a collaboration between Richard and Panter, and on the right-hand page, Panter does the same image on his own. (According to the appendix, but I’d have goessed the opposite, really.)

And here’s more Panter.

Pascal Doury does a couple of pages, but is less faithful to the original compositions than Richard and Panter are.

And then we get a further break from the concept with several pages from Tomeo Cabot, which doesn’t really seem to feature cops at all?

And finally, the book ends with a bunch of two-page spreads…

… drawn as two-page spreads.

Richard also does a panel from a Hulk comic.

… in his way.

So that’s a really odd book, even for an art comic book of its era. The book itself says it’s published by Imprimeurs Libres, but according to the Internet, it’s really published by Futuropolis. Is the lack of information about who created the book (i.e., Bruno Richard) and an appearently misleading colophon (Imprimeurs Libres) because they foresaw some kind of controversy around the book? It doesn’t really seem like a book that would cause any kind of scandal (especially not in France), but then again, 1982 was a different era.

And is this the book Black Cab was singing about?

Black Cab - Sexy Polizei

Watch this video on YouTube

So many questions!

Anyway, it’s an awesome book, and my copy is very well-thumbed, so it seems like the previous owner(s) were also fascinated by it. (Or perhaps it’s been on the shelf of a used bookstore for decades without selling.)

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

December Music

Music I’ve bought in December.

The Best Comics of 2022

I’ve read stacks and stacks of comics this year — probably more than any year before. I guesstimate… about 1K books? It’s been one of those years.

When I read a comic that grabs me, it migrates to a special little shelf in the living room where I can stare at it some more, and at the end of the year, this is what was on that shelf. So here they are, the best comics of 2022 (in no particular order):

Time Zone J by Jule Doucet (Drawn & Quarterly)

How To Make A Monster by Casanova Frankenstein and Glenn Pearce (Fantagraphics)

Puttana Cartoonist by Heather Loase

Comic Collection Book 2022 by Gizem Vural

City Crime Comics by Teddy Goldenberg (Floating World Comics)

Headland by Kate Schneider (Fantagraphics)

Oslo by Johan Ingemarsson (Lystring)

Naracha by Lars Sjunnesson (Sanatorium forlag)

Magic Nation #1 by Ellen O’Grady (Fieldmouse Press)

Plaxa by Yokoyama Yuichi (Living the Line)

That’s it for the books published in 2022.

Are there any publishing trends here? Well, it’s a really weak year for Drawn & Quarterly. Time Zone J was fantastic, of course, but that’s basically it. It seems they’re more focused on mainstream acceptability these days than publishing exciting comics. (By “mainstream” I mean “mainstream”, not “comics shops”.) I used to buy D&Q books on faith, but after this year, with one book after another doing performative respectability, I think I’ll start giving the books a look-over before buying.

Also — just two Fantagraphics books? They did publish a bunch of pretty good books, but few that were astounding, so…

But there’s more! I caught up with a whole bunch of older books (about half of them from 2021, so I was just a bit too late on the uptake). Here’s the best pre-2022 books I read in 2022, and would have been on my “best of” list of those years if only I’d read them in time *sob*:

Six Hundred and Seventy-Six Apparitions of Killoffer by Killoffer (Typocrat)