Comics Daze

It’s a rainy night, so I think I’ll ditch my plans to start training for the ultra marathon tonight and instead read some comics.

But with a twist: This time I’m only going to read comics that I’ve had for a long time but have avoided reading.

Excitement!

Electrelane: Singles, B-Sides & Live

16:34: Boston Corbett by Andy Douglas Day

The reason I haven’t read this is, of course, that it’s… long. Perhaps I won’t have time to do anything but read this all night long?

Oh, it comes with a soundtrack? And there’s supposed to be glyphs that show me what song to play?

And… I don’t see any of those? Did he forget to draw them in? IT”S DRIVING ME CRAZY WHEN DO I START THE MUSIC

That was all I could obsess about for the first part of the book, so I probably missed a lot, and eventually just started the music at random.

It’s an interesting read. It feels like there’s a lot of private signifiers everywhere, or perhaps cultural signifiers that I’m not really aware of. Is this all about doing drugs and watching Adventure Time?

But I mean, it’s good… things connect in weirdly satisfying ways, and there’s a bunch of jokes that are really funny.

But I have no idea what relevance the third book has to the first two. The first two tell a pretty straightforward narrative about Boston Corbett (and some other characters), but then the last bit is… much more druggy? And not about that at all?

Oh! It’s a biography:

The real Thomas “Boston” Corbett — a hatter by trade given to religious zealotry so all-consuming that he castrated himself with a pair of scissors to relive himself of sexual temptation, and who insisted, to no small acclaim, that God had directed his action in the killing of Booth

I had no idea that it was about somebody that actually existed. I guess that’s one of those “cultural signifiers” I was babbling about.

Electrelane: In Berlin

18:55: Drawn to Change: Graphic Histories of Working Class Struggle edited by Paul Buhle and others (Between the Lines)

As expected, some of these comics are hard sledding. They’re barely comics at all — mostly just lists of facts about Canadian unions, and I have to admit that I started skipping during these bits.

But there’s one that’s really good — this one by Kara Sievewright. It’s enagingly told and is really interesting. I had no idea that people were going to China in 1932 to try to help defend against the Chinese. (He later went to Spain to help fight against the fascists there, too, but that’s more traditional.)

After all that reading, I need a refreshing drink of water.

Aaah.

Various: Cashier Escape Route

19:57: Coin-Up Comics Anthology 1997-2017 by Peter Hoey + Maria Hoey (Top Shelf)

OK, this is just me — I really, really dislike this sort of computer-assisted artwork. I have zero, no negative interest in art that looks like this. It’s just me!

But this is pretty interesting. Even if every separate panel is offputting, the post-Ware/Colombia storytelling is pretty much on point. It’s very pomo what with all the simultaneous voices going on and the many references to… well, OK, the references are mostly to old movies.

Movies that I like.

These pieces are so close to being brilliant — for instance this thing where each panel tells a separate story, and then many of them intersect. It’s fun. But they feel more like excersises in storytelling than anything else? There’s, like, no emotional impact. Or if there is, I’m not interested enough to invest the take the time to root out what that might be.

Archie Shepp: Blasé

21:11: Jan Lööfs serier 3 by Jan Lööf (Cobolt)

Huh. This is a Swedish book translated to Danish? How odd.

(I’m neither. Except odd.)

Lööf is somebody who I’ve been vaguely aware of — he’s been doing comics (in Sweden) for many decades, but has never really been translated much? And I’ve somehow managed to avoid picking up his stuff in Swedish?

In any case, this looks like a massive career retrospective kind of book — we get a 60 page illustrated introduction, reprinting many, many illustrations he’s done…

… and then onto his Felix strip. It’s really choppy.

OK, I read 40 pages of this and then I gave up. It’s not that it’s bad — it’s not; it’s got a kinda Gilbert Sheltonesque thing going on in the plot department — but it’s just hard to be interested, because there’s no character. To the characters. And the gags aren’t all that.

Stereolab: Sound-Dust

21:50: Spain: Warrior Women by Spain (Fantagraphics)

I’m starting to see a pattern to the books I’ve been holding off on reading — most of them are collections.

There’s something about collections that make them seem less urgent to read? And… in general, I really like reading the original books; the context makes a lot of difference when reading comics. In a collection, everything is slightly more bland.

Fantagraphics is reprinting all of Spain’s work in a series of themed collections, and this one is about er women. I love Spain, and I can see why people were shocked/enthusiastic about these early strips, but most of them don’t really go anywhere.

Like with Crumb (controversial opinion alert), Spain’s 80s strips are much more accomplished. The artwork’s less scratchy, and the stories are, like, you know, stories instead of random things that happen until he’s drawn a sufficient number of pages.

New Musik: Warp

Or perhaps that’s not quite accurate. When Spain’s doing a story he feels strongly about (like his autobio/political comics), he’s great. When he half-asses it, like in the skating granny comics or the Big Bitch comics, it’s… well… half-assed. Individually, these stories are amusing, but it was a chore to read them, one after another.

The Notwist: Neon Golden

23:25: Vieilles canailles by Trillo/Mandrafina (Tegneseriekompagniet)

This was originally serialised in eight page chapters in L’Écho des savanes, apparently, and (almost) every episode has a setup and a resolution, but it’s one continuous story about a … very complicated family. I really thought this was gonna suck, but it’s fun.

It’s a large cast of characters, but the creators manage to get some characterisation in amongst all the plot.

However, the series kind of… peters out instead of reaching a resolution. If they’d stopped about … six? chapters before the end, then it might have felt like a real ending.

But the first three quarters are pretty entertaining.

Barbara Morgenstern: Fjorden

00:43: Sleepytime

PX06: An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, & True Stories Vols. 1 & 2

An Anthology of Graphic Fiction, Cartoons, & True Stories Vols. 1 & 2 edited by Ivan Brunetti (200x260mm)

I wanted to have a quick look at these due to their sheer heft, both physically and metaphorically. Altogether they weigh 2.6 kgs, collect over seven hundred pages of comics (or “graphic fiction” as the title portentously tries to convince us that this is), and it’s from the Yale University press.

What are they going to focus on? Is it going to be all Stan Lee superheroes, or just 700 pages of Gary Panter, or what?

These books are edited by Ivan Brunetti, and I guess that these are meant to be used in college courses about comics? If that’s the case, there’s a surprising dearth of text about the artists and pieces — there’s just a short introduction by Brunetti, and then it’s onto the comics.

(And, yes, that’s the contents page to the left there. Utterly useless, but… er… fun?)

I’m not re-reading these books now — I read them last year, I think, so I’m just flipping through them for this blog post. I wanted basically to see whether the 80s “punk comics” generation was going to be represented here or not, and in that case, by which pieces. And, indeed, it seems like all the more famous people from Raw are here, and with… er… sometimes obvious (but understandable) choices, like Love’s Savage Fury by Mark Newgarden.

The most annoying thing about these books (especially the first volume) is how many strips are printed sideways. That’s fun in pamphlets, but it’s a chore with these heavy books. But I guess students can handle it and get a work-out at the same time. (Kaz.)

The book has a few sections (not marked as such) dealing with the same subject, like a handful of different cartoonists doing Charles Schulz. (Art Spiegelman.)

Most of the people are represented with less than a handful of pages: A bunch of people only get a single page, and Lynda Barry gets three. It makes for a choppy reading experience, but I guess that’s not really the point of these books?

All the Raw people are here (except Sue Coe). Here’s Mark Beyer…

Can’t do a book like this without Richard McGuire’s Here.

Oddball choice for Gary Panter: A Jimbo in Purgatory (I think) excerpt.

Charles Burns, of course.

Jerry Moriarty.

Ben Katchor and Art Spiegelman again. They’re all here.

The book does have a certain flow. After Maus, we get Jason Lutes’ Berlin — things are arranged according to themes, but pretty loosely.

Or according to other connections — we get all the 90s Drawn & Quarterly people in a row: Seth, Chester Brown, Joe Matt, and here Julie Doucet.

The reproduction’s pretty good, too.

And this is how much we get about each contributor.

Pretty odd.

The first volume must have been a success for Yale, because we get a second volume two years later. This one has real contents pages!

And as you can see, it’s basically all of the people from the first volume all over again. But with some new additions. If these books were meant for reading in class, you’d think the next volume would be all-new artists? Brunetti says in the introduction that he’s just gathered people he loves to read, so it’s a singular vision.

Some of the juxtapositions are pretty good, like Mike Kupperman and Drew Friedman.

We also get a few of the Raw people that weren’t included the first time around, like Jayr Pulga.

And yet another strange Gary Panter choice — this is from the first part of the collection Jimbo edition.

Brunetti’s aesthetic is pretty congruent with mine, so there’s only a handful of things in these books that I don’t already have. But… it’s like a small subset of the comics I like: Brunetti leans hard into harsh, stark, shocking comics, and nothing else, basically.

One new development in this development is the inclusion of a few up-and-coming people, like C. F….

… and Anders Nilssen. So it’s not all heavily narrative comics, like the first volume was.

I’ve only included snaps of a handful of people in this blog post — this isn’t an ahem in-depth look at these books. There’s oodles of fantastic stuff in here, and if you don’t already have all these comics, it’s a great way to get several kilos of fabulous comics.

And you can pick them up cheaply. Perhaps students are flogging them after finishing whatever comics course they’re being used in? Or perhaps people just hate the books?

But perhaps it wasn’t made for students?

Aain unlike past anthologies of comics — indeed, unlike many anthologies of most kinds — this one is conceived not as a reference book but as an episodic narrative. “After much deliberation,” Brunetti explains, “I have chosen to arrange the work so that it flows smoothly, unobstructed by strict chronology.” The stories connect, one to another, with threads sewn deep: A tale of quiet despair, by Jerry Moriarty, leads to another of genteel solitude by Ben Katchor; a memoir of childlike sexless love by Chester Brown leads us to one of frantic carnal yearning by Joe Matt. This design works — so well that despite the mad variety of visual styles in the book, one comes away with an appreciation for the commonalty of serious comics today.

Yup:

Brunetti’s second collection of his favorite cartoonists’ work is even better than the first—more far-ranging, more personal and eccentric. Clearly a tour of one person’s singular tastes, it’s arranged in a stream-of-consciousness “oh, and you have to see this one” sort of way

Good point:

There are, however, some less successful moments. Both the overly iconic table of contents and the reductive contributors section are unhelpful, especially to readers not familiar with the material. Equally baffling is the decision to lavish attention exclusively on Charles Schulz, who receives several graphic tributes yet, curiously, is himself represented by a written essay rather than his comics.

And why include an extended excerpt from Daniel Raeburn’s (poorly proofread) article about graphic artist Daniel Clowes and not do the same for other contributors? And what rationale underlies an explanatory caption for Crockett Johnson and introductory notes for Frans Masereel and Henry Darger and no one else?

Awkward and uneven, such formal eccentricities undermine the spirit of the anthology, as does erratic editing that sometimes turns a selection into a banal half-thought.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.