Random Thoughts

The Big Book of Hell by Matt Groening (271x270mm)

I didn’t buy this book at the time — I assumed that this was just a reprint of the smaller books that had already been printed. But… while doing this blog series, I couldn’t find any web sites that stated this outright, so curiosity (and a mad wish for more Life in Hell strips that I haven’t read) made me buy this book.

First of all, this is a physically bigger book — it’s 20% larger in both directions than the original collections. However, it’s just 170 pages long, and the original books were 48 pages… so this can’t collect all five of the previous books.

Let us see what we shall see…

Right, the indicia mentions the previous five books…

What’s with the lame hand lettering-like font? Life in Hell is such a hand-drawn strip that this looks kinda glaringly off.

*gasp* I don’t think I’ve seen this strip before? I mean, I could be wrong — this blog series is like a death march that just won’t end… but I’ve read all of the Life in Hell books over the last… er… five? months, and I may just be misremembering, but that doesn’t look familiar.

These are definitely new! I mean, to me. Whoho! This book really has strips that haven’t been reprinted before.

And it seems like this book is largely chronological, so it opens with strips from 80, and then proceeds from there.

The strip looked somewhat different early on — it’s fun to see.

The earlier collections had collected pieces from Life in Hell’s history, seemingly at random, but picking mostly from recent years. The first collection was published in 87, by which time the strip had changed somewhat, so I guess Groening didn’t want to include any strips like this? I mean, more straightforward comics — Binky meets a woman, and then has an awkward date with her that lasts for half a dozen strips.

So naughty!

Finally, on page 20, we get the first strip that has been reprinted before. And it’s from 87 — dropped into the middle of the unreprinted 81 strips.

Oh! This is the strip where Binky meets Bongo? Who’s his son. I don’t think I’ve seen this before, either? I mean, you’d think I’d remember.

If that’s the case — how odd for Groening to skip this altogether when doing the original collections?

It’s hard to remember whether I’ve seen this before — Groening’s done a lot of variations over this theme.

*gasp* So political! (That’s a Reagan reference.)

Heh. A previous owner has cut out this page from the book — presumably to hang it on the wall or something? But then put the page back into the book later.

So many variations on this iconic page…

Oh! The back cover explains it all!

So Groening has assembled this book to celebrate the first ten years of Life in Hell? So it’s “vintage strips no one ever before dared to print in book form”, along with greatest hits from the previous five books.

Well, I’m happy I bought this book — it’s fun to read those unreprinted strips. By my guesstimate, there’s about… 40? “new” strips in here.

But I do wish that Groening would just do a complete, sequential reprinting of the series instead of this … selective … approach to reprinting.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

Lynda Barry ‘n’ Matt Groening’s Funky World Fun Calendar 1987 by Lynda Barry and Matt Groening (305x306mm)

This is organised in a every-other-spread kind of fashion — on half the spreads, Groening does the cartoon at the top and Barry does the calendar at the bottom…

… and the other half, vice versa.

Most of the strips are reprints from Life in Hell or Ernie Pook’s Comeek, but both artists contribute two new full page images, like the above. If I counted correctly.

I think this is new, for instance?

Anyway, a lot of work has gone into this calendar.

There’s so much stuff — it’s perfect for a calendar. You can read these little bits while waiting for the tea water to boil or something. I think they had fun making this thing.

So dense! And quite amusing.

I got this off of ebay, but unfortunately the previous owner has just scribbled a couple things… “Marge”? Marge!?

And a trip to Fire Island in September. Possibly with their mother(s).

And in just five years, I can hang this calendar on my fridge. I’ll do it, too!

Wow. Those faces do not look like either Barry or Groening, do they? How odd.

Finally, a collage on the back.

This calendar was just what I expected: Something that looks like it was fun to make, and is fun to look at.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

Sheep of Fools by Sue Coe and Judith Brody (260x261mm)

This is published by Fantagraphics, but it’s a Blab book. When talking about anthologies from the 80s, Raw and Weirdo are seen as the two opposite poles, and nobody much mentions Blab. Which, OK, it’s a timing issue — Blab didn’t really find its form until the very late 80s/early 90s, and by that time all the excitement was over, but I think you can see Blab as a … er… third pole? Is that how magnetics work? Who even knows?

That is, Blab was very arty, but mostly from a 50s lower middle middle class tradition. I.e., more Robert Williams and less Art Spiegelman. People who can draw hands. “Proper artists.”

But really, a bunch of the people who worked for Raw also published stuff in Blab. Sue Coe, Charles Burns, Bill Griffith, Kaz, Gary Panter, Richard Sala, Chris Ware… they all did stuff for Blab. So it might have made sense to cover Blab in this blog series, too, but I just can’t be bothered. I’ve got them all over there *waves at bookshelf*, but there’s so much … boring stuff in Blab, I can make myself do it.

This one solo book by Sue Coe, though, that I found the other day, between the proper Blab volumes. Let’s read this one.

A song cycle for five voices? Perhaps this is a nice, pleasant book from Sue Coe, for a change?

Well, one can dream.

This book has a lot of historical factoids about sheep rearing.

It’s pretty interesting, and as usual with a Coe book, it makes you want to go vegan.

“Auschwitz tight”? Some comparisons should perhaps be avoided…

Anyway, this book has Coe’s usual gorgeous/horrifying artwork, but it seems a bit aimless. It doesn’t really built up to anything in particular… it just feels so random, like mentioning a couple of ships carrying sheep that’s gone down.

And they get in a swipe against halal/kosher butchery, which is nice.

I guess:

The only thing hindering this book is the writing by Coe and coauthor Brody: the rhyming couplets fade in and out throughout, and the prose is somewhat overblown and precious, as if trying to compete with, rather than complement, the art. Nevertheless, few people will feel like chowing down on a lamb kebob after reading this book.

Hm:

That subject is the Australian phenomenon of live transport—in which live sheep are carried on huge ships to Middle Eastern meat markets. Viewing photographs of the transport practices online, I can see that Coe hit the issue spot-on.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.