Random Thoughts

Is That All There Is? by Joost Swarte (198x267mm)

I was going to keep this blog series All-American, but let’s digress for one post (ahem) and have a look at this book.

I guess all comics collections have to have an introduction by Chris Ware, and this one isn’t too bad.

This is allegedly a complete collection of all comics Swarte has created — and it’s just 140 pages, which explains the title of this collection.

Swarte is, of course, the most Hergé artist of all artists inspired by Hergé, and that extends beyond his line.

Swarte basically does all of the pieces (they’re mostly fewer than six pages long) using this style, but varying how it’s coloured.

Oh, and there’s this one. Hold your phone upside down.

This book is a bit smaller than normal “album” size… which is an odd choice. I mean, a smaller book looks cuter and thicker, but it means that more than a handful of the strips have to be printed sideways to be legible. Sideways printing is fun in pamphlets, but not so much in books, I think. I’d love to have an oversized version of this book. I mean, the artwork’s so gorgeous…

The stories are mostly pretty straight forward and funny, but here’s a political one, and I guess it shows that the football organisations haven’t changed much (Argentinian dictators then; Qatari slavery now).

And this book is also very edumacational: Here’s how colour separations are done.

The book reads like what it is: A collection of all the comics a person has made, mostly presented chronologically. So there’s not really any… coherence… it’s more like a treasure trove.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

Come Over, Come Over/My Perfect Life/It’s So Magic/The Freddie Stories by Lynda Barry (229x153mm)

I’m not sure whether it’s because of the way I’ve read Barry’s collections over the years (I’ve tended to stumble across a copy here and a copy there in bookstores, without knowing that the book existed, and in no particular order), or it’s something innate in the work itself… but Barry’s books about Marlys (and the rest) seem less like fictions created by Barry, and more like a reality that Barry has somehow excavated.

I realise that when I’m thinking about these characters, Marlys, Maybonne, Arnold, Arna and Freddie are real to me, emotionally speaking: When Barry was still doing these books, when I found one of them, my brain would go “Yay! Now I can find out what’s happened to them since last time” in a distinctly different way than with other works I’ve followed for decades (like Jaime Hernandez’ Locas characters), that remain resolutely fictional to me.

If I’m counting correctly, there are nine of these collections, which means that there are about 550 strips collected. But Barry has worked on this weekly strip for about 27 years, so there should be about 1400 strips out there! MY GOD!!! There’s more Ernie Pook that hasn’t been collected than has been?! *image of me having a nervous breakdown*

But let’s have a look at the final four of these collections. I mean, I’ll start reading them now, and I’ll let you have a look at some of the strips, m kay?

The previous collections had focused on Arna and her cousin Marlys, but Maybonne (Marlys’ sister) had been introduced, and was in the margins of the series.

Come Over, Come Over flips that completely — now Maybonne becomes the main character, and Marlys is seen from her point of view (instead of Arna being the viewpoint character). (And Arna, Freddie and Arnold aren’t mentioned at all in this book, I think?)

Another difference is that we get more of a continuity between strips. The previous books had mostly had free-standing strips — moving to more continuity gives a very different reading experience; it’s less choppy, less dense.

And this strip is, I think, the first one to be partially “drawn by Marlys” (I seem to remember that becoming more of a thing in later books).

The strip had also, pretty much, been of the “steady state” school of storytelling. That is, nothing much changed over the course of the strips; you could read the strips in pretty much any order, and it’d make as much sense. Here there’s real, life-changing events: the sisters move to their grandmother, for instance.

Oh! This longer story was originally printed in Raw. It was awesome there, but completely without context. Here it fits neatly into the storyline, so it reads very differently. It’s… it’s even better here? It seems impossible, because it was the best thing in that Raw issue, but it is, indeed, even better in this collection.

Marlys introduces My Perfect Life on the back cover, saying that it depicts one year in the life of Maybonne. And… that’s what it does. This strip is now one long narrative, where we follow Maybonne’s life (which deals a lot with her friends and boyfriend drama).

And in the middle of it, we get another longer story that originally ran in Raw. I didn’t quite clock that it was about Maybonne when I read it there… and it doesn’t totally fit in here (it seems to contradict some other bits in the surrounding strips). But, again, it’s still an awesome story.

In earlier collections, I was impressed by how crotchety Barry kept Marlys, but in Maybonne’s eyes, she’s a much more lovable character. Or perhaps Barry has softened some.

My Perfect Life is pretty perfect. I laughed, I cried, etc.

Then it’s It’s So Magic, the final collection from Harper Collins.

This one starts with a presentation of all the characters.

The previous two collections had been about Maybonne, and Maybonne is still (mostly) the viewpoint character, but we shift back to focusing on Marlys again, and Marlys continues her journey into becoming more lovable.

After the deep turmoil in the Maybonne stories, it’s nice to pull a bit back… but… Marlys’ stories feel a bit like a retread?

It’s also a partial return to Barry’s very dense style from early in her career. I’m not complaining; it’s pretty funny.

However, the many strips that are drawn by Marlys do nothing for me graphically. Yes, they’re really convincing recreations of how children draw, but Barry’s normal drawing style is stunning, so I just get impatient and want to turn the page to see whether there’s anything good on the next page.

These strips are mostly from 91 and 92, and as in the previous two books, it’s one continuous story — but it’s a bit more episodic than the Maybonne epics.

Freddie (the younger brother) returns, and… then they all go back to live with their mother again.

Sounds delicious! Fried baloney, mayo, lettuce, crisps and banana sandwich. I’ve gotta try it. Freddie is a culinary genius!

The previous book was published in 94, and then The Freddie Stories, the next one, is from 99, and is from Sasquatch Books (and I see that Matt Groening is no longer funklord of the USA in the indicia) — definitely not as huge an outfit as Harper Collins. What happened over these five years? It’s So Magic felt a lot less… urgent… than any of the previous books, and all those strips that were drawn in the style of children drawing might not (and I’m just guessing) be very commercially appealing.

Was Barry dropped by Harper Collins? Did she stop doing the strip for five years? So perhaps there’s no collecting gap? I’ve tried to google this, but I can’t find anybody that’s written a historical overview of Ernie Pook’s Comeek and its publishing history. You’d think that would be a thing that would exist on the interwebs, but nope.

This future sucks. No flying cars and no Ernie Pook chronology.

Again, we start with an introduction… and this book is printed on bright white paper with a fair bit of bleed-through. Those Harper Collins books looked and felt just right, while this is just kinda brittle.

Hey! That’s a re-run of the baloney strip (but redrawn). Still sounds good.

These strips aren’t dated (all her previous strips have been), so I’ve no idea whether these were made over a number of years. The art styles Barry uses vary a lot — here she’s doing a kinda smudged, rough style.

There’s always been heart-wrenching things happening in this strip, but for the first time, it just doesn’t feel convincing. In this book, Freddie is involved with a case of arson (that he tried to stop happening), landed in jail, got bonked on the head so that he saw everybody as burning skulls, he’s raped, rapist dies, he gets a fever, becomes semi-autistic and… I’m sure I’m repressing a few of the atrocities.

It’s just a lot. And it’s really harsh, with barely any light let in. It’s like… what happened to sour and curdle Barry’s outlook on life?

The art style continues morphing… now she’s doing Dame Darcy? It’s a very luxurious title.

And then the lettering grows really really big, which I take to mean that the newspapers running the strip reduced the size, so Barry had to up the lettering size.

The Freddie Stories is a depressing book. And not in a good way.

Brian J. Dillard writes in The Comics Journal #215, page 43:

Like Roberta Gregory or Aline
Kominsky-Crumb, Barry’s work is often dismissed
because it’s “sloppy.”

[…]

Debbie Drechsler’s work approaches the verisi-
militude of Barry’s, but its heavy tone sometimes
sinks into maudlin excess. David Kelly has tackled
similar issues of gender and childhood, but his
scenarios lack Barry’s nuance and authority. Not
even Julie Doucet’s dream comics, which are richer
visually, embody such a perfect synthesis of clever
scripting and freaky pictures. Fans ofall these artists
would do well to step outside the comics shop and
into a newsstand, where Barry’s strips will be avail-
able week after week, long after The Freddie Stories
goes out of print.

That was the stupidest review ever. Dismissed as sloppy!? Yes, I’m sure that’s true, but only by the most moronic of morons, presumably, so why mention it?

Darcy Sullivan writes in The Comics Journal #140, page 45:

Lynda Barry’s
Come Over, Come Over

[…]

Why does Barry’s sweetness — Maybonne
says the book is “mainly about how life can
magically turn cruddy then turn .and
then back to cruddy again” — still seem so
fresh? partly because it’s so unique. The cur-
rent “adult age” of comics has misplaced
goodness. Our honest-John super-heroes have
become dark blights, sneaky sadists who bleed
like hemophiliacs. Baker considers his book
“mature” because the characters smoke and
drink and cuss before they heft the rocket
launcher.
Things aren’t a whole lot better in Barry’s
own genre, the family comedy. It’s all the rage
for dads, moms. and siblings to trade savage
wisecracks in series like Roseanne or The Cosby
Show, but any problem can be solved with a hug.
Pundits rave about the reality Of The Simpsons,
a droll but stale brood Of Fred Flint-
stone fathers Dennis the Menace (the women,
inexcusably. are disposable — this is another
bonding-with-dad dream). But even this quar-
relsome family is never more than a commer-
Cial break away from a cure-all embrace; the
treacle here is only mitigated by the fact that
Bart is such a little shit.
Lynda Barry’s sweetness seems much more
bearable, mainly because it’s more than Offset
by abject terror. Hugs won’t keep her Mullen
family from disintegrating. In Come Over, Come
Over Maymnne and Marlys, the tux) sisters who
have held Barry’s “Ernie Pook’s Comeek” since
1988. live with their divorced mom until they’re
Shunted away to grandma’s, where they again
see their alcoholic, estranged father. Tossed like
hot potatoes, they attempt to hide their feelings
and to order their world by constructing some
sharp categorizations, like the “cruddy” and the
“beautiful”.
That dichotomy says a lot about Barry, but
even more about Maybonne, whose letters and
diary entries relate most of this volume’s strips.
Maybonne, 14, is growing up here, groping her
way through puberty and a shattered family. At
times her observations seem too wise, too
philosophical, the straining voice of her author
rather than her soul. But, for the most part,
Maybonne struggles with a really tough part of
maturity: the breakdown of classifications.
Barry has always given us lists, multiple-
choice questions, labels (as has, more famous-
ly, Matt Groening). Sometimes these take the
form of jokes: one strip, “Marlys’ Auto Bingo,”
bullets 23 familiar items to look for on car
drives. More subtly, the characters classify each
other. developing codes to help them understand
their lives.

Well, that’s better.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

Heck! edited by Bob Donahue (214x768mm)

Donahue claims in the introduction that this is the first paperback anthology of all-new comics. Can that be true? Er… Well, Raw #8 was squarebound… and… uhm… *ponder* What about Blab? Wasn’t that before this?

Anyway, he talks a bit about Underground comics here, and it’s clear that he sees this anthology as coming from that tradition.

But it’s a quite varied selection of artists — mostly pretty fresh ones, like Carol Tyler, who opens the book.

Then straight on to Carel Moiseiwitch.

Many of the Raw regulars put in an appearance. Here’s Mark Beyer with a Thomas House sequence I can’t remember reading anywhere else.

Mark Marek does an illustrated noir thing.

It’s hard to say what the aesthetic here is, really. You get whiplash from the sudden changes in approaches… but I guess the main theme is… being funny? The vast majority do gag strips.

For instance, Mary Fleener does a very funny anecdote about corpses.

Kaz gets really out there in this one-page strip. Most of the contributions are two pages or longer.

Almost all the contributions are heavily narrative. I think John Howard is the only one that goes more abstract.

*gasp* Julie Doucet! Well, Donahue obviously has great taste — he’s including basically everybody that were hot in 1989.

And some surprising choices, like Lee Binswanger, who is the only one who does formal comics play.

Mario Hernandez!

And, of course, Richard Sala, who was in All The Anthologies around this time (and they were all the better for it).

Huh. A very unusual Aline Kominsky strip — I don’t think I’ve seen her do collage strips before?

And, of course, there’s a quote from Art Spiegelman at the back.

So! That’s a rather excellent anthology. I thought it was gonna feel like a choppy read (due to the number of people included), but it hangs together well. It’s not a very weighty book — it’s all mostly yuks — but it’s well done.

And while typing this… There’s an unusual number of women represented here (for this kind of thing, at this point in time), isn’t there? Let’s see… There’s 32 pieces, and (if I’m counting right) nine women, which is (/ 9.0 32) => 28% women.

I’m unable to find any reviews of the book (either contemporaneous or on the web now), so it looks like it pretty much sank without a trace?

Yup. You can still pick up copies pretty cheaply. (I bought my copy at the time.)

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

Demo #1 edited by… Mary Fleener? (216x142mm)

I was ebaying for “punk comics”, and this mini came up. It features stuff by Mary Fleener, so I thought “what the hey”. So let’s have a very quick look at it.

This is a very good looking mini. (It’s of the sheet-folded-in-half type.)

Most of the comics are by Mary Fleener and Dennis Worden, but other people show up for a page or two.

And an interview with Worden.

It’s the Fleener material that’s interesting here. Some of it’s in Fleener’s well-known Cubismo style, but she also experiments with other styles.

Hey! It’s autographed! Vernon!

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

Casual Casual #1-9 by Peter Dako (140x217mm)

Casual Casual turned into an anthology later (covered earlier in this blog series), but I stumbled across somebody selling the original mini-comics cheaply on ebay, so let’s have a quick look at them.

This starts out as an eight page comic (i.e., two sheets folded in half), and then becomes a three sheet book. The first half dozen issues were published weekly, which is pretty impressive… I mean, if he drew them in that time, too.

Which I guess he could have.

The first few issues are about the Casual Casual band — here we have an overview of members who have left the band.

And they apparently had a weekly gig? Perhaps Dako sold these comics at the gigs? Makes the weekly schedule more urgent.

But the subject matter starts deviating, and soon the book isn’t about the band at all.

And here’s an illustrated version of Dead Joe.

(The Birthday Party for reference.)

In the final issue I have here (after the book moved to a monthly schedule), the art starts getting more interesting.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.