PX14: Here

Here by Richard McGuire (173x242mm)

“Here” was originally a short piece printed in Raw Vol 2 #1, and was hugely influential: It was a brand new way to tell a story.

So — 25 years later, McGuire expanded it to a three hundred page graphic novel.

If you’ve been living under one of those them there rocks where they don’t have comics, “Here” told the story of a location — we skip back and forth through history, but all the drawings are made from the exact same angle.

So the differences between pages may be small or large…

… and they sometimes tell little narratives.

None of them were very extensive in the original strip, but here they get longer.

And the layout can get pretty convoluted — and you can follow the progression between the different ages and watch people grow up (and old). So — it’s like multi-narrative: There’s narrative between the images, and when turning the pages, too. It’s a fascinating reading experience.

But. While the original short story was “*gasp* it cannot be!”, this is more like… “hm; interesting”. I mean, there’s a lot to enjoy here: The artwork’s good; the colouring’s spot on, the bits are interesting. But it’s like… there’s stuff that annoys, too, like just the way it’s printed. It feels like I have to constantly fight the book not to lose so much in the gutters.

McGuire also makes everything so explicit: We’re being told, several times, that this is a book about history. He even drops in some historians, and he has Benjamin Franklin drop by… and then somebody actually naming him, as if he had no confidence that we’d already guessed that.

It just feels like he had people telling him he should make it more edumacational.

And then he seems to say that the entire book is basically a tour taken in 2213 with space age projectors, which just took all the fun out of it for me.

So, sorry: There’s so much to enjoy here, but that twist just makes it into a dumb sci-fi thing for me.

I can’t remember reading anything negative about the book, though:

Read, watch, or peruse Here in one mood, and you’ll discover a lyrical tribute to those attachments; read it in another, more fatalistic mood, and you might admire even more the varying textures of the lives—the many lives, in one place—that McGuire has made.

So it’s probably just me:

In “Here,” McGuire has introduced a third dimension to the flat page. He can poke holes in the space-time continuum simply by imposing frames that act as trans­temporal windows into the larger frame that stands for the provisional now. “Here” is the ­comic-book equivalent of a scientific breakthrough. It is also a lovely evocation of the spirit of place, a family drama under the gaze of eternity and a ghost story in which all of us are enlisted to haunt and be haunted in turn.

I guess:

In Here, we are a particularly fascinating species of flourishing fauna, a force as elemental in our time as the sun or the ocean. We’ve never seemed so small or so big, so important or so meaningless. Neither have comics. The pink lady remembers why she came in here again, and picks up a small hardcover book.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

PX17: Whatsa paintoonist?

Whatsa paintoonist? by Jerry Moriarty (261x335mm)

The Jack Survives strips were absolutely amazing — strong graphics and moving, mysterious pages. I didn’t know quite to expect from this book — but absolutely not this: Moriarty is drawing from his childhood again: This time around he paints himself in, but as a girl.

So we basically get his (narrative) paintings paired with a dialogue between him and himself.

It evolves slowly, from being quite goofy at the start…

… to becoming very moving. And I love those colours, man.

It’s all about his mother, his father, his sister and his cat: Now all dead.

What!? The School of Visual Arts fired him?

Geez:

He does not sell his art and he does not navigate the world of fine art very adroitly, which may be to his credit. He is not only marginalized, but may be self-marginalizing, which may also be to his credit. He has taught at the School of Visual Arts from 1963, but was “fired” in 2012, being told that the school: “has no need for a class that involves drawing without using photo references.”

*sniff* (That’s his mother, father, sister and his cat welcoming him.)

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

Comics Daze

I feel like another comics day coming on — the rules are: Read comics until I plotz. No reviews, just a few random musings.

Various: DJ Kicks: Kamaal Williams

12:28: What’s Michael? Fatcat Collection Volume 1 by Makoto Kobayashi (Dark Horse)

I’ve read this series before — but in the smaller individual books that were published… er… a couple decades ago? But when Dark Horse published a collected edition, I couldn’t help myself and bought it again.

And I started reading it a couple of days ago, so I just have the last third of this huge book to read today.

The mixture of impeccably observed cat dorkiness and expert silliness makes this the funniest comic ever.

It’s hilarious and the artwork’s perfect.

Soft Cell: Cruelty Without Beauty: Remixes

13:16: Celestia by Manuele Fior (Fantagraphics)

This reminds me of 70s French(ey) comics — all mystical/poetic with a vague plot. It’s good.

However, the last third of the book is mostly a long chase scene, and it’s really boring, so the book kind of lost me there.

The dreaded three act structure strikes again.

Mark Fell & Will Guthrie: Infoldings

14:03: Lysning by Antonia Kühn (Blokk forlag)

I love the inventiveness in the storytelling and the page layout. It’s also got the perfect melancholic atmosphere going on, and lovely artwork.

But there’s something aimless about the storytelling. I know, it’s on purpose — it’s about people not getting on with their lives after a shock, so days go by like broken records — but it makes it hard to pay attention in the middle of all of this.

Kühn nails the ending, though.

Hilt: Stoneman

14:28: Nestor Burma – Les rats de Montsouris by Ravard/Moynot/Malet (Faraos Cigarer)

This is another album in the Leo Malet adaptation series — based on Tardi’s approach to adapting Malet’s novels. (It’s less complicated than it sounds.)

I read the first one of these … er… last year? earlier this year? And it was great fun. So I’m excited to read this one.

The first album was rather overwhelming — seemingly a hundred different names were swirling around. This is tighter. I mean, it’s still twistier than a drawerful of USB cables, but the plot is a lot easier to follow.

It’s really entertaining (if you like this sort of thing), and Ravard does a pretty good Tardi pastiche.

I hope there’ll be a bunch more of these.

Matmos: The Consuming Flame: Open Exercises in Group Form (2): On the Team

15:23: Night Bus by Zuo Ma (Drawn & Quarterly)

I thought this was a bit choppy going at first…

But then the rhythms started making sense — this is absolutely wonderful. The way it flows from “reality” to dreams to fantasy to remembrance is seamless. The way scenes repeat, bringing more meaning every time, and the way motifs seem to mirror each other…

It’s absolutely amazing. It’s a collection of stories (one very long one and many shorter), but they seem to tie together in oblique ways that makes this a complete, satisfying work.

The artwork shifts between kinda simple and very sumptuous and striking.

I want to read this again straight away, but I think I’ll hold off a bit. Comic book of the year?

Various: Tuxedomooning: A Tribute

16:40: Pojken i skogen by Mats Johsson (Galago)

This is a new edition of the book that won “best comic” in Sweden in 2006. I think I’ve read most of his other books, but I think I missed this one somehow?

The artwork’s so relentlessly ugly it’s hard to care, though.

I mean, this is worse than it usually is? Is there a problem with the reproduction? There seems to be a lot of ink gain here… has this been shot from the printed version of the previous edition? Was it originally in a different format somehow?

Anyway, it’s a bit of a chore to read, even if it’s intermittently interesting. It feels more private than personal, though.

Vilde & Inga: How Forests Think

19:11: Food break

Black Stereo Faith: Hey (House Naté HD Club Mix)

19:38: A SAW Guite to Gainesville Wildlife by John Porcellino

Hey! Cute.

Kelly Lee Owens: Inner Song

19:42: Naken (Blokk forlag)

Heh. This book (name translated: “Naked”) has a … er… a naked spine? That is, there’s just glue and thread, no cardboard at the end.

So conceptual.

This is a Norwegian anthology of illustrations, photos, poetry…

… and comics. (Anna Fiske here.) The theme is “being naked”, and people approach the subject from a variety of angles.

It’s a really strong, cohesive reading experience — the pieces complement each other nicely without being samey. (Sara Lundberg here.) Everything here is good, and some of these pieces are great.

Scout Niblett: It’s Time My Beloved

20:30: Esther’s Notebooks by Riad Sattouf (Pushkin Press)

Oh! This is the guy who did the Arab of the Future books? I’m guessing this is more geared towards children…

OK, not really. Now I’m guessing that this ran as a weekly one-page strip in some general-audience magazine? It’s got that cutesy thing going. Perhaps I should just google it.

… Yeah, it ran in L’Obs. Heh heh:

it is the most prominent French general information magazine in terms of audience and circulation

“General” and “audience”. Man, I’m good at guessing.

I’ll read some more, but I feel ready to ditch this after a handful of pages.

I think this is the sort of things that a lot of people would definitely like, but I just find it tedious. It’s so… faux cutesy. I love cute, but not this.

So I skipped to the end to see whether it gets any better, and nope.

Cat Power: Myra Lee

21:00: Sabotør: I skyggen av Tirpitz by John S. Jamtu (Strand)

This is a Norwegian album, and I’m making a wild guess that it has something to do with World War II? So I’m guessing this is going to be absolutely awful.

I’ve got such an open mind.

So this is drawn in a broadly Belgian way, but kinda unappealing? The bobble heads are distracting on the somewhat realistic figures.

The storytelling is pretty choppy, and I never could tell the different characters apart. It’s about the bombing of the Tirpitz, and a problem here is that the protagonists don’t really seem to do anything significant — they just sit around waiting for the Brits to bomb that damn ship time after time. (OK, they radio in the weather sometimes, but…)

It’s OK? But I definitely won’t be getting the other albums in the series.

Cat Power: Dear Sir

21:36: Monstress volume six by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda (Image)

Oh, man. This thing again. I mean, I like Monstress, but I’m always completely befuddled when reading it, because I never remember who any of the three hundred characters are or the nineteen factions who are fighting are.

OK, I think I remember more about these people than usual… this is a pretty exciting chapter. Lots of twists and turns.

As usual the main weakness is how they pour all this fake drama into the book when there’s already a lot of real drama. But I guess I understand why — 90% of book are people standing around talking so that the reader can get some revelations, so they figure it’s more exciting if people are hitting each other a lot while standing around talking?

I guess it works, because it wins all the rewards.

It’s also rather unnecessary to have so many of the characters looking really similar.

But it’s fun.

Cat Power: Moon Pix

22:56: Nu klinger igjennom bartebyen by Khaleel Etwebi (Aschehoug)

This is very interesting… I like the mood and the storytelling rhythms here a lot. It’s got an appealing melancholy.

It’s graphically intriguing, but the minimalism sometimes makes it difficult to tell the characters apart. And a couple of scenes feel like a storyboard to a movie. But on the whole, it’s a good read.

Juana Molina: ANRMAL

23:24: Sleepytime

That was a good batch of comics — my head is all abuzz. But now it’s sleepytime.

PX10: X’ed Out/The Hive/Sugar Skull

X’ed Out/The Hive/Sugar Skull by Charles Burns (230x303mm)

After Burns had been doing comics about diseased teenagers for a few decades, X’ed Out arrived out of the blue. I certainly wasn’t expecting a kinda surreal Tintin-referencing book from Charles Burns: It’s in the classic European hardback album format, looking very classy.

I remember being really excited about X’ed Out, but… I remember nothing about the subsequent volumes (that arrived with a two year gap between).

But let’s open the first volume.

Ooh, cool.

Ooh, nice!

Oooh!

OOoh whaaaa!

Now that’s the way to do a book. Burns sets the tone from the moment you flip open the cover: The endpapers are perfect, then there’s some mysterious squares, and then we’re dropped right into some very mysterious action indeed.

It wouldn’t be Burns without plenty of body horror.

And then… we’re out of that universe and into the “real world”, and everything seems to reference everything else. It’s great! It’s gripping!

Those squares at the start? They’re used to mark shifts between time periods or worlds, and we slowly but surely are given more and more information about what’s really going on here.

Perfect first volume, and shows a lot of growth from Burns.

And then… the second volume. Burns adds more time levels, and adds more body horror in the Tintin-verse… but… we get more melodrama, and things start seeming less like a kick ass comic than the storyboards to a post-Lynch indie movie.

Burns does have a lot of fun with bringing romance comics into the proceedings — while the “real world” gets progressively more like an indie drama movie.

Finally, in the third book, he lost me. Everything ties together so neatly — we started with nothing but mystery, and we end with everything being made exceedingly clear. And it turns out that what we’ve been reading wasn’t that interesting, really.

Even Burn’s inhumanly fabulous artwork starts looking trite.

Burns is usually such a consummate perfectionist and amazing storyteller that pages like these are a real disappointment.

The post-ending (after the plot ends and everything is resolved) is pretty nice, though.

Exactly!

Sugar Skull was an immensely disappointing let-down to what has otherwise been a fascinating series. Charles Burns explains everything in this final volume of his X’ed Out Trilogy, which is something you’ll either appreciate, because you hate any ambiguity at the end of a story, or dislike because that’s not consistent with the way this has been written thus far.

But worse – far worse – is the disproportionate balance between the apocalyptic, messed-up, heightened tragedy of Doug and Sarah’s story, that has been built up now over two volumes, and the bafflingly banal and truly uninspired reveal of the secret at the heart of this series.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.