Random Thoughts

Snake Eyes #1-3 edited by Glenn Head and Kaz (213x273mm)

Three issues of Bad News were published in the 80s, as a sort of School for the Visual Arts anthology (but only sorta kinda).

Mark Newgarden is interviewed in The Comics Journal #161, page 84:

KELLY: It seems like Bad News somehow evolved into
Snake Eyes.
NEWGARDEN: Yeah. I think at a certain point Glenn Head
was lobbying for another Bad News and I said, “I don’t
want to have anything to do with it. Why don’t you be
editor?” And ultimately it was renamed Snake Eyes and he
and Kaz took over as editors, They’ve done a great job.

So it feels natural to include Snake Eyes in this blog series, even if I hadn’t originally planned on doing so.

I haven’t re-read these books since they were published, and I don’t remember anything about the contents. But I seem to remember them being… kinda good? But… not really Earth-shattering either. And I seem to remember them not getting much attention at the time?

Let’s get reading.

Looking at the list of contributors, it’s a bunch of the people you’d expect, but it’s also many people from the 90s indie scene (many of whom would do series with Fantagraphics later).

The indicia presents itself as being from the East New York Posse… er… Staten Island?

All three of the books start with a one-page introduction that explains to you, the stupid reader, what a great book you’re reading.

Glenn Head and Kaz are the editors, so I was wondering how much stuff we’d be seeing from them… and… there’s not that much in the first book, at least?

R. Sikoryak does one of these per issue, and the first one, Action Camus, is pure genius. It’s funny, and he does the style so well.

Mark Newgarden does a bunch of these in every issue — I think he’s the one with the most pages? Or perhaps it just seems that way, because they’re all like this. I guess it’s supposed to be funny because it’s anti-funny? Draw out the tedium so much that you have to laugh? Or is it just Newgarden’s hatred for big-nosed cartoons that makes him do these things? I mean, we all hate those, don’t we?

The first of Glenn Head’s pieces is all about the mean streets of New York. Well, the mean subway, where he… er… almost comes into contact with some unpleasant people… So much drama.

Oh! Jayr Pulga! He’s in all three of the issues, too, and does his deeply unnerving (and gorgeous) strips.

Chris Ware!

Head illustrates a short story by Charles Bukowski, and I had to jam my fingers into my eyeballs to stop them from rolling so much. It’s hard to imagine anything that’d be more of a cliché for Head to do.

Yay! Finally! Julie Doucet! Amazing. The reproduction is kinda bad, though — the attention to detail on many of these pages are lacking. (And it’s not the best paper stock, either.)

Is Newgarden’s point that clowns are sad? Is that it?

Doug Allen does a strip about… his first… ten… cars….

At this point, I was getting pretty fed up with reading Snake Eyes, and I wasn’t even through the first issue. It’s not that there aren’t good things in here — Doucet, Ware, Pulga, Sikoryak: that sounds like an amazing lineup, right? But in between, there’s just these amazingly tedious things, seemingly done without any ambition beyond being vaguely amusing or tediously outrageous…

It’s not that this thing by Mark Leyner isn’t amusing, but it’s … what does this have to do with anything? I don’t think I’ve seen a less coherent anthology.

There’s too many things like Jonathon Rosen’s strip that feel totally hermetic — they feel like private projects; not like they’re meant for anybody else to get involved with.

And after a few of those strips, it gets harder to invest any effort in getting into things that are pretty funny, like this Mack White thing. Losing all confidence in the editors makes each new piece a chore to read: Is this gonna be a waste of time too, or is it something worth reading?

This Charles Burns/Gary Panter/Tom De Haven thing (“Pixie Meat”) is kinda spiffy, though.

Is this a precursor to the Facetasm book?

Are they going for a dada via New Jersey kinda vibe? At least Beyer’s artwork’s great, as usual, and the paper in the second issue is better (less bleed-though).

*sigh* (Roy Tompkins.)

Speaking of Beyer, he does some of his oddest work ever in these book — page after page of these weirdly laid-out strips. I love the normal strips, too, but it’s great seeing Beyer play around with the pages this much.

I feel I’ve seen David Sandlin fold-outs a few times before… does he have it in his contract that he has to fold out?

The second R. Sikoryak thing’s also good, but not as good as the Camus thing. The third one, Blondie as Adam and Eve, is pretty tedious, so perhaps it’s a good thing there were only three issues of Snake Eyes if Sikoryak felt compelled to follow the same format for every issue.

The second issue ends with almost thirty pages by Kaz, and it’s the most oblique work of his that I’ve read. “Read.” I zoned out after a few pages, because I just didn’t give a shit by this point. (My exasperation with Snake Eyes may seem out of place, because I’m doing snaps of the things that are kinda OK, right? I’ve left the complete twaddle out.)

Mark Newgarden branches out from his anti humour gag strips to an anti design front cover. Is he aiming for “so fugly that it’s good”? I have so many questions.

Newgarden’s 80s work was fantastic! Innovative and heartbreaking. What happened?

“P. Revess” (I think that’s Michael Kupperman?) contributes the funnest page in the series.

And this issue is on white, covered stock, which makes the black ink a lot blacker.

Chris Ware does the most heart rendering.

Is this about Waco? (Gary Panter.)

At this point, I’m just fuck this, fuck that, fuck this in particular… (Jonathon Rosen.)

Tony Mostrom leans heavily into edge lord territory… but successfully!

David Mazzucchelli does a pretty amusing (and “outrageous”) strip… but it also feels so tossed-off. Did the editors call people and say “just give us stuff nobody else would buy”?

And speaking of lords of the edge — Mike Diana. (It ends the way you’re thinking.)

So that was a big disappointment.

I seem to recall reading an interview with some person that was involved (mind like a steel sieve, me), and he said that he thought that Snake Eyes was cancelled because Kim Thompson started Zero Zero, and he didn’t want two “competing” anthologies at Fantagraphics. Zero Zero started in 1995, so I guess it’s possible (if Thompson started soliciting work a year before that).

Or was it Pictopia? Can’t find it.

Kaz is interviewed in The Comics Journal #186, page 122:

KAZ Because I was cranking out more comics, I had to
reach deeper into my skull for ideas. Anything that seeped
out, I used. In the past, I would usually approach a strip as
if I was doing something important. I wanted the work to
be arty. Pretentious was not a dirty word to me. But now
I had more deadlines and funnier stuff slipped out. I was
staying up, working later and later. All those old gag
comics began to look tragic to me. One morning I woke up
and everything in my room and apartment had a black
outline around it, with crosshatching and color separation.
I had gotten cartoonal knowledge! I learned to relax and
allow my drawings to get cruder so that my comics could
get more organic. Closer to the way my brain worked.
Glenn Head was starting up the old Bad News comic book,
which became Snake Eyes. And I was excited to get
involved with that, because there were a lot of talented
cartoonists living in New York that did not have a regular
outlet. I envisioned a book that showcased the New York
style of cartooning that had come out of SVA and RA W.
KELLY: What was it like working with a co-editor?
KAZ: It was fun to sit around and plan the books and talk
about comics. We had a similar vision about comics. We
both love that gritty, urban wiseguy school of cartooning.
For me, the most rewarding aspect was contracting artists
whose work I admired and asking them to draw a few
pages. My hands would tremble as I opened the envelopes.
Since we weren’t paying much and didn’ t really crack the.
whip as far as deadlines went, the issues took forever to put
together. Some Of the strips were too weird for most
people. Jonathon Rosen, Jayr Pulga, and Brad Johnson —
their visions seemed too private for most readers. At first,
I had a hard time convincing Glenn to run Brad Johnson’ s
work.
KELLY: It looks like it’s drawn by a retarded 12-year-old.
Which is why I like it.
KAZ To be fair, Glenn tried to get me excited about certain
cartoonists that I couldn’ t see until much later. Dan Clowes
is one example. At first I thought he was too slick and
surface-oriented. But I was wrong. Now he’s one of my
favorite cartoonists. And he’s doing work with so much
depth, it’s astonishing. Now I see people on the streets and
I automatically think, “He’s a Clowes character!” I wasn’t
looking below the surface. But for the most part, Glenn
and I agreed. It’s just that we don’t seem to have any
be a dangerous thing playing with your consciousness.
Your concept of the world changes. It becomes organic
and infinite. I never did much drawing on hallucinogens.
My hands were too shaky and my mind was exploding
commercial instincts. I tend to gravitate to work
that looks wrong.
I can remember Alex Ross and myself try-
ing to draw like someone who was insane or
retarded. Instead of attempting, like everybody
else, to be really sophisticated or smalt, we got
into this idea of American dumbness, like Philip
Guston, whose work looks completely dumb on
the surface — big eyeballed guys , big giant feet
— but there’s a sensitivity there. Basically, he
was still doing Abstract Expressionist painting,
but he was using these really simple symbols
that looked wrong on the surface, like Mutt and
Jeff Philip Guston was called a stumblebum
painterby a critic once. sounds
like Guston paints. I think it’s a way of being
nostalgic for the things you liked as a kid, like
Popeye, but also being sophisticated at the same
time. That ‘ s sort of what I do with Underworld.
Some of the gags are really dumb, but they
make me laugh so I leave them in. If it wasn’t a
weekly strip, I’d bea little more thoughtful. But
because I have to put it out every week, parts of
my personality that would otherwise be guarded
pop out. So you see me as the dumb vaudevil-
lian guy, falling down for a laugh.
KELLY: So Snake Eyes is no more?
KAZ It was too difficult editing a comic book
and balancing an illustration career and doing
my own comics and having a social life. I was
also co-hosting a weekly radio show. Glenn Head did a
wonderful job on that book, but it was driving him batty
too. Fantagraphics was not paying us anything for editing
and designing it. We were only getting a page rate. And it
didn’t seem like anyone besides our fellow cartoonists
were interested in an anthology comic book with no theme
that only came out once a year. It kicked the shit out of us
after three issues.

Chris McCubbin writes in Amazing Heroes #193, page 77:

“Post Popeye Picto-Fiction” my shiny
white butt, boys. This is comics.. .got
it? Words and pikturs—comics.
Y ‘know, I’m all for comics grmving
and changing as an artistic medium,
but I’m more and more convinced that
this “comix as art” movement inspired
by RAW and earnestly embraced by
Snake Eyes is about as good for the
comics medium as pompous put-on
bands like Rush and Genesis were for
rock ‘n’ roll… in other words, not at
all.
Most of the stuff in Snake Eyes will
only appeal to a certain kind of
“artistic” audience, either the com-
plete artistic technician, who values
technique above all consideration of
content (because, make no mistake, all
the contributors to this book are bril-
liant visual artists), or the black-clad
art school nerd whose definition of
“great art” is whatever would upset
mom if she got a look at it. No real
human being can feel any sort of emo-
tional connection with gnomic pieces
like David Sandlin’s “Snakes Crawl at
Night” or Alex Rose’s pompously
“Untitled” piece. And still Gary will
whine over at the Journal that this
undigestible mess isn’t outselling
Aliens Vs. Predator.
Still, pile this much talent into 80
pages and you’re bound to come up
with something interesting. There’s a
typically brilliant and disturbing piece
from Julie Doucet, the young Cana-
dian cartoonist who everyone (includ-
ing me and Harvey Pekar) is touting
as the Next Big Artistic Thing. Kaz’s
lead-off story “The Tragedy of Saun”
has a genuinely perverse cuteness to
it. Doug Allen’s “History of Art” is
a dead-on cautionary tale about the art
world, and his “My First 10 Cars” is
a nice bit of no-nonsense, whineless
autobiography. Mark Newgarden’s
“The Little Nun” is a classic bit of
visual slapstick. The artistic heavy-
weight Tom DeHaven/Gary Panter/
Charles Burns collaboration, “Pixie
Meat.” almost overcomes its essential
Onanism with sheer visual fascina-
tion.
My personal favorite was Bob Sik-
oryak’s “Action Camus,” which retells
the story of the classic existential nwel
The Stranger as a series of Golden
Age comics cwers, and is virtually the
only piece in the book to have the
common courtesy to acknowledge its
origins A new Mack White story is
always au delight, and the primal
vindictiveness of Dennis Worden’s
“Mohammed, Jesus and Moses Go
for a Stroll” on the inside front cover
is like crossing a large, hot room full
of obese, flatulent, pipe-smoking
pontificating philosophy professors
and suddely coming to an open win-
dow with a breeze blowing through.
Final score for Snake Eyes, about
50/50 minor gems and wasted poten-
tial. If you’ve got the S8 you could do
worse, but expect to be annoyed.

That’s a fair review.

Drew Friedman is interviewed The Comics Journal #151, page 79:

KELLY: What do you think of the different anthologies that
have sprung up in Weirdo’s demise?
FRIEDMAN: Some of them are very good. News and
Snake Eyes… I look forward to every issue of Snake Eyes;
Glenn Head is doing a great job with that. It meets some-
where between Weirdo and RAW — where it should be.
RAW used to be a little artsy to some people’s taste, and
Wéirdo was just a little bit too funky and ratty to other
people’s taste.

I do see people mentioning Snake Eyes out of the blue on twitter and stuff… “wasn’t that a good anthology”… But perhaps they haven’t re-read it over the past three decades, either.

Fantagraphics would go on to publish Zero Zero to greater acclaim.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

The Complete Jack Survives by Jerry Moriarty (273x362mm)

This book was published by the late and very lamented Buenaventura Press, and basically reprints the Raw One-Shot from 84, but adds a few more things.

This is in the same format at the first book, but is a hardback and is printed on shiny paper, so it looks less like a mysterious artefact than the original book.

It’s shot (and printed) in full colour, while the original book was in black and white. I’m not sure what all the wispy blueish paint is — is it all white-out?

We get two introductions — a short one by Richard McGuire, and a longer one by Chris Ware (who tells us what a genius Moriarty is). I mean, it’s true, but it feels like a hard sell. It’s probably a sound commercial move…

The reproduction here is outstanding — you can really get way into all the details. However — I think the original, stark black-and-white version of this just had more impact?

Let’s compare the discourager strip. Here’s the new printing…

… and here’s the 84 printing. Doesn’t that just grab you more?

Let’s zoom in on one of the panels… So much detail! He’s really slathered on the blue/white paint here (white-out?) that it’s difficult to imagine that this was really meant to be reproduced in black and white.

But then:

That’s an awesome panel!

OK, enough of this quibbling — the strips are still great, and it’s a fabulous book.

It also feels very generous — we get a bunch of newer pieces to, and that feels like discovering a new treasure trove.

Amazing book from a fantastic artist.

Hey! These people agree with me!

The first version of this book was a ‘Raw One Shot’ in 1984, printed in flat, contrasting black and white. Few people reading this volume will have seen it, but there is a focus and directness in that version that is missing here. Whereas the original version simply presented large format comics, this version is more of an ‘Art of’ book. The colour reproduction of these pages, which are so layered and worked over, is undeniably gorgeous, allowing you to see the original art photographed as is, in blue, black, greys and whites drawing the eye in and around the layers of ink and paint. But there is a distracting quality to that detail which makes the artwork itself almost more important than its subject matter. It might have been better to choose a few strips for this treatment rather than present the whole volume this way, particularly as there are plenty of pencil drawings, unfinished sketches and paintings included which provide a good overview of Moriarty’s style.

Bah:

Richard McGuire provides a brief preface while Chris Ware offers effusive praise in his introduction.[1] In it, he claims this volume as the “most important” comic art reprint to ever appear. Ware admits a tendency to hyperbole, and I must call “hyperbole” on the statement. Is this volume more important than Krazy Kat reprints (to name just one title that comes to mind) ? This is not to denigrate the work itself, it is excellent, just not as amazing as Ware would have you believe.

It was reviewed a lot at the time:

[…] this year brings The Complete Jack Survives, every strip, drawing and painting meticulously re-mastered to expose their full tonal range and previously little-seen under-drawing, and under-writing (“A dog napping seen I?” surfaces in an empty speech balloon), alongside tender photos and commentary. “My father has had time to become almost mythology to me, so Jack grows more poignant in my old age as I fuse myself with my Dad. 55 years after his death we survive.”

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

In the Shadow of No Towers by Art Spiegelman (255x367mm)

This is Spiegelman’s book about the 2001-09-11 attack on New York, so even being slightly critical feels both churlish and besides the point. On the other hand, I do remember feeling somewhat disappointed by this book, so let’s see…

This is a pretty thick book in just about the same format as Raw. But it doesn’t have that many pages — it’s printed on thick cardboard stock.

It’s got very high production values — the spot varnish is used in original ways. (This looks totally black unless you’re holding it in the right angle.) But… er… is this… is this in good taste? I mean, I winced when I realised what was going on on here.

The book starts with an introduction that explains how this book came to be: Spiegelman was offered a full page in one of those German newspapers that still haven’t converted to tabloid format. So one huge, full page per month.

So the pages are printed sideways here — and each full size original page span two pages in the book. I don’t think I’ve seen anything printed quite like this — it’s an interesting object in itself.

And while reading the first few pages, I couldn’t understand just why I was disappointed by the book. It’s pretty strong stuff.

There’s only ten full-sized pages, so there’s not that much room to develop much of anything… but as vignettes go, it’s pretty good? I don’t much enjoy the digital bits, but the artworks fine…

By the tenth and final page, I was agreeing with my assessment from a decade and a half ago — it’s just such a slight book. It feels like Spiegelman was bored by the entire thing by this point.

And then… we just get a handful of random newspaper comic strips from about a hundred years before?

The connection seems very tenuous indeed. It just feels like padding.

So there you go. I hope I didn’t say anything scandalous. I’ll leave that to Noah Berlatsky, in his In the Shadow of No Talent article about the book, from his phase where he seemed to try very hard to become disliked by all the “serious” people in comics:

For me, as for millions of Americans, September 11, 2001 was no big deal.

[…]

The latest cultural artifact to go rummaging for meaning and runaway sales amidst the charred bones of the World Trade Center is cartoonist Art Spiegelman’s “In the Shadow of No Towers.” Spiegelman knows first-hand about the profitability of tragedy — his most famous book, Maus, was based on his father’s experiences in the Holocaust, and was an unexpected and enormous commercial success. That was twenty years ago, however. In the intervening time, Spiegelman has edited some anthologies, written a mediocre children’s book, drawn some New Yorker covers, and generally rested on his reputation as the man who made art comics a (potentially) mass market genre.

[…]

Even with all these distractions, however, Spiegelman couldn’t quite grind out a book’s worth of material. Almost the second half of “In the Shadow of No Towers” is devoted to reprints of early full-page strips from the dawn of the medium.

I’m not sure, but I think this is a negative review:

As Spiegelman struggled to come to terms with the losses of Sept. 11, he lost himself in nostalgia for an irretrievable era in his art — the Old World of comics — much as his aging father longed for the Europe that had existed before the war.

The Guardian also couches their words:

In the Shadow of No Towers is most compelling as it charts the changing memory of 9/11. The last panel shows how time only widens the gap between those who can escape the shadow of 9/11 and those direct trauma victims who cannot.

Here’s a clearer one:

Along with the paltry content, the series — originally published in installments — loses something when collected together. Instead of a build-up, there is overlapping and repetition. Spiegelman’s tone also begins to grate. Overwhelmed by the continuing news and by conspiracy theories, he claims that instead of losing his life, he lost his mind. As with anyone who makes such a claim, it’s melodramatic and corny.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

Raw Vol 2 #3: High Culture for Lowbrows edited by Françoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman (165x229mm)

This is it: The third and final edition of the Penguin-published Raw, and the final Raw book. (Sort of.)

And… we’re getting pretty high in the instep, aren’t we? Spiegelman is selling a $1K print. Tsk tsk.

The book starts off with some vignettes from old acquaintances — here’s Francis Masse, and you can’t really escape the thought that his artwork looked so much better in the old, larger Raw format.

Then a three pager by Loustal, and I’m thinking — are the editors making the same mistake here they did in the first Penguin edition? That is, just jamming a lot of shorter pieces into the book, without any thought for rhythm or how things fit together?

But then we get a longer, intriguing portfolio by Cheri Samba…

… and then a one-pager (!) from Ben Katchor, and then a wistful/amusing thing from Kaz.

I still wasn’t sure whether this was really working at this point, but then…

32 pages of Krazy Kat! On newsprint! OK, now I’m aboard.

If there’s anything that’s the moral predecessor of the Raw generation, it’s George Herriman, with his tendency to avoid making work that can be pinned down easily. So in one way it’s slightly odd that they chose these strips to reprint: The Tiger Tea sequence is the longest narrative that Herriman did (according to the introduction), and it’s perhaps his most straightforward work; his least Avant Garde. So picking it for Raw is odd?

On the other hand, it’s pure and utter brilliance, so why quibble.

After the Krazy Kat, we’re on a roll here, and it feels like everything coheres in a way: There’s longer pieces, shorter pieces, funny bits, wistful bits and harrowing stuff. This Muñoz/Sampayo strip works well in this format.

A two-page ditty from Aline Kominsky. Finally.

Chris Ware plays with the form, and tells one story in the text and a completely different one in the artwork. It’s a fun schtick, of course, but it really works. It’s an unnerving and affecting piece.

R. Sikoryak deconstructs Garfield, and… Tom de Haven writes a story for Richard Sala to illustrate.

They finally hit on the correct paper stock for the penultimate Maus chapter. It’s a pity Penguin shut down their comics line before Maus was finished… or did the editors shut it down?

We’re on the home stretch in the Maus storyline, but it’s still gripping even as things aren’t as horrific as earlier in Vladek’s story.

Then… 32 pages of Gary Panter sketchbooks! On newsprint! In purple ink!

Awesome.

So first de Haven wrote for Sala, and then Alan Moore (yes that one) writes for Mark Beyer?! What’s going on? Did the editors have an idea of pairing iconic artists with writers or something? But then only these two pairs came through?

The pairing works — it’s both gripping and amusing. But this “ooh, aren’t the Japanese exotic! So exotic!” schtick was tired already back then.

Kim Deitch had had a few shorter pieces in Raw before, but none of them really gelled for me. Here he gets 40 (!) pages, and it’s brilliant: We get the world he’s presenting 100%.

Finally, Lynda Barry returns with her most heart-breaking story ever. It’s amazing, and the artwork’s gorgeous.

So!

I hadn’t read this book since it was published, so that’s 30 years. I remembered nothing about it, except the Moore/Beyer thing, so I wasn’t prepared for just how good it is! It’s the best of the Penguin issues by far: It has that magical flow that some great anthologies sometimes achieve, where it seems like the pieces somehow communicate with each other and create something bigger in sum.

It’s a magical reading experience.

So, of course, it’s the final issue.

Gene Kannenberg, Jr writes in The Comics Journal #200, page 39:

I BEGAN TO REDISCOVER COMICS IN 1991,
after several years of willful disregard.
During my undergraduate years, I had
decided to no longer waste my time or
money on superhero stories — at that
point I didn’t realize that there could be
other kinds of comics — so I just quit cold
turkey. Well, not exactly; somewhere along
the line I picked up Watchmen and The
Dark Knight Returns and the first volume
of Maus, succumbing to the trendy mar-
keting hype of the time. But good as I
thought they were, those all struck me as
anomalies … not that I knew any better.
Then one day on vacation, I saw RAW
Vol. 2 #3 in a bookstore. The cover by
R.Crumb (who?) was a bit different, but
the familiar little Maus icon made me pick
up the book. I flipped through it and saw
styles, subjects —even paper! —that were
unfamiliar to me. On a whim, I bought it
for a little “light reading” on the flight
home. That impulse purchase went a long
way toward changing how I looked at
comics and, ultimately, my Ph.D. disserta-
tion topic. Not bad for a simple little
funnybook.
On the plane my reading was haphaz-
ard, skipping from piece to piece as one
would catch my eye. I read the Mauschapter
first, and as good as it was (and I knew it
would be), it wasn’t my favorite piece in the
book. I grew fascinated by the book’s sheer
variety: of art styles, of narrative techniques,
of historical richness, of subject matter, of
contributors. Though I’ve read a lotof com-
icssince 1991, I continue
to seek out the work Of
Jacques Loustal, Ben
Katchor, Kaz, Munoz &
Aline
Sampayo,
Kominsky-Crumb,
Drew Friedman, R.
Sikoryak, Kamagura &
Seele, Lorenzo Mattotti,
Joost Swarte, Justin
Green, Gary Panter, Mark
Beyer, Kim Deitch, Lynda
Barry, and Kristine
Kryttre, all featured in
RAW vol. 2#3. This is-
sue was also my first
adultexposure to George
Herriman’s Krazy Kat,
with its inclusion of the
extended “Tiger Tea” se-
quence of daily strips
from May 15-July 16,
1936. Talk about variety!
I started with the shorter strips.
Krystine Kryttre’s “Between the Lines” was
my first exposure to the scratchboard
technique in comics, and I was amazed at
the expressiveness of the art — plus the
story’s movement from tragedy to com-
edy (only amplifying the tragedy) was
engaging, especially over only ten, word•
less panels. Kamgura & Seele’s “A Day in
the Life of Cowboy Henk” was delightfully
absurd, while Kaz’s “Little Bastard” — an
orgy of shape, color, and minimalist dia-
logue — was just plain weird (although I
was fascinated all the same). Francis
Masse’s essay on Mickey Mouse and the
appeal Of the neotonic, “The Mouseum of
Natural History,” made me chuckle and
think. For all their humor, these strips
were carefully crafted in ways that my
superhero-trained mind hadn’t before con-
sidered.
The longer stories were even more
affecting. Alan Moore’s script for “The
Bowing Machine” appeared to flow effort-
lessly from history to philosophy to psy-
chology, while Mark Beyer’s primitivist art
was at once elusive and disturbingly con-
crete. Kim & Simon Deitch’s epic “Boule-
vard of Broken Dreams” was, quite simply,
a revelation: its mixture of Fleischer ani-
mation-style art and exploded page de-
signs, along with meditations on anima-
tion, imagination, and ego, brought a dis-
turbingly accurate humanness to its char-
acters. This issue was also my first expo-
sure to the work of Lynda Barry; “The Most
Obvious Question” introduced me to
Barry’s gift for narrative voice, a prose
style at once beautifully lyrical and pain-
fully honest. From this story I observed
how important it is in comics to choose
which moments to illustrate, and which to
not. Barry’s spare use of dialogue in favor
of heavy narration gave the moments of
“action” a distinct life of their own. Here
were “comics” which revealed just how
inadequate that term truly is.
Most significant for me, however, was
Chris Ware’s “Thrilling Adventure Sto•
ries,” a six-page “superhero story that
wasn’t.” Even now it stands up as one of
the strongest pieces he’s ever done. The
visual narrative is a fairly clichéd super-
hero vs. mad scientist story, but the text
— while fitting into traditional caption
boxes, word balloons, sound effects, etc.
— tells a very different story, of a young
boy’s exposure to, and inability to com-
prehend, racism and other family faults.
“TAS” was the first comic I’d ever read
which aggressively challenged my notions
about what comics as an art form were all
about, which made me consider just how
fraught with potential this combination of
words and pictures could truly be if taken
seriously. If I had read Will Eisner’s Comics
and Sequential Art I would have known
that already, but discovering it “on my
own” thanks to Ware’s work made the
realization all the more powerful.
I’ve heard more than one person com-
plain that they simply skipped over “TAS,”
that they’d seen superhero parodies before
and certainly didn’t want to see them in
RAW. Given Ware’s subsequent acclaim, I’d
like to think that those naysayers have
since gone back, actually read the piece,
and discovered how wrong they were. Su-
perhero parodies generally attempt to
deconstruct the superhero genre, expos-
ing its inherent absurdities; “TAS,” how-
ever, deconstructs the comics form itself
to expose its strengths. I’ve since used “TAS’
in the classroom to introduce students to the
complexities of comics. Reading it is an exer-
cise in itself, one which initially leaves stu-
dents more than a bit baffled; but through
discussion they become acutely aware of
the possibilities and potentials of comics
due to the form’s synergistic combination
Of words and pictures.
Even without Ware’s contribution, RAW
Vol. 2 #3 would be perhaps the most
influential comic I’ve ever read; like every
other issue in the series, it served up a
bountiful selection of comics delicacies,
and I hungrily devoured them all. RAW
was my introduction to alternative Ameri-
can comics, European comics, and comics
as a unique artform. When I was younger,
I used to think that I loved comics, but I
can see now that what I’d really enjoyed
then were simply superhero stories. RAW
Vol. 2 #3 taught me how to appreciate
comics. •k

I didn’t mean to quote so much here, but it’s all so correct that I can’t find anything to edit out here. Sorry!

Alan Moore is interviewed in The Comics Journal #138, page 87:

Who else do I like? This is the problem when you’re
talking like this, you end up neglecting so many people,
and you think, “Shit, why didn’t I mention that?” Of
course there’s what Art Spiegelman’s doing at RAW The
new pocketbook-sized editions of RAW; if anything, are
better than the large-scale RAW of old. The last two issues
that I’ve seen are brilliant. It’s accessible without losing
any Of its fervor and experimentation. In fact, as soon as
I finish this episode Of Big Numbers that I’m writing, the
very next project that I’ve got tostart on is writing a strip
for Mark Beyer of RAW which will be very interesting.
I don’t know how the fuck I’m supposed to do that. I spoke
to Mark on the phone, and he sounds like a really great
bloke, undaunted by his brilliance. Mark Beyer’s style is
so personal that the big problem… I think I’ve got a story
that will work, that won’t just pointlessly pastiche Mark’s
own style, but will work with his style Of drawing.
GROTH: You might want to write something really cheer-
ful and upbeat.
MOORE: Yeah, well, I thought of that, but.
GROTH: Filled with people pleased with their lot in life
and just thrilled to be alive.
MOORE: I don’t know, I couldn’t see it somehow, Gary,
you know what I mean? [laughter. I He does have a lot
Of humor in his work, but… You could be right. The
Story I’ve got is a little more downbeat. I don’t know, we’ll
see how it turns out.
GROTH: Frolicking on the beach.
MOORE: I can see Amy and Jordan at the beach, that’d
be good.

Frank Young writes in The Comics Journal #145, page 50:

Since its inception a decade ago,
Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly’s R4W has
been the standard-bearer for progressive com-
ics. RAW has provided a necessary and solid
bridge between the farthest reaches of the avant-
garde and more conventional (but equally val-
uable) work.
The newest RAW, third Of the smaller, thicker
volumes published with Penguin Books, is the
finest to date. Within its 228 pages is inspiring,
challenging and relevant work that spans the en-
tire slrctnam of comics’ barely tapERd potential
Early RAW issues introduced many Amer-
ican readers to such idiosyncratic cartoonists as
Jacques Tardi, Drew Friedman, Jack Moriarty,
Joost Swarte, Charles Bums, Gary Panter, Mark
Beyer and Francis Masse. But to their detriment,
they sometimes smacked of a detached, ascetic
and ultimately frustrating ambivalence towards
the artform of comics. Many of the RAW crea-
tors seemed to like the idea of comics, but
denied themselves emotional involvement with
their medium.
At its best, this dichotomy — which might
pair the intense drama Of Spiegelman’s Maus
with the supremely inaccessible work of Beyer
has created a fascinating tension. But com-
ics is an artform that innately welcomes pas-
sion, and its greatest creators are those who’ve
arrived at a personal point between sheer emo-
tion and art-for-art’s-sake.
That delicate balance is a constant in this
RAW Almost none of the work is distanced, and
little of it is frivolous. This is strong, signifi-
cant comics, with the pleasant bonus of two
pieces by past masters of cartooning.
The weakest piece here, Chris Ware’s “I
Guess,” hews closest to the “detached” cliche
of RAWS past. Ware uses a clever gimmick: he’s
drawn a perfect simulation of an early ’40s
super-hero story, but replaced its dialogue, nar-
ration and sound-effects with a serious personal
narrative. Mild irony results, and the invasion
Of his incompatible story into the stereotypical
“funny book” images is often humorous. Yet
the story seems more an exercise than a genuine,
vital work. It simply lacks the resonance of the
other pieces in the book.

[…]

As RAW’s cover states, collaborative ‘ ‘co-
mix” dominate the issue. The most valuable and
unusual of these is “The Bowing Machine,”
written by Alan Moore and drawn by Mark
Beyer. The piece casts a fascinated yet reserved
eye toward the social customs and formalities
of a culture equally fascinated with us — Japan.
Beyer’s aformal art is weirdly right for this
piece: it’s hard to think of another artist better
suited for the alienating effect of Moore’s text.
Moore, who has an innate ability to tailor his
writing to an artist’s strengths, is pushed into
new territory in working with Beyer. The story,
written in fractured English (perhaps as if
translated from Japanese) has genuine irony —
even a sort-of punch line — and shows an acute
comprehension of Japanese social conven-
ions. “The Bowing Machine” is Moore’s farth-
est step away from his mainstream roots: it
would be good to see him work with other non-
representational artists.

[…]

This RAWs highlight is Kim and Simon
Deitch’s epic “The Boulevard of Broken
Dreams.” The first segment of a longer work-
in-progress, “Boulevard” may Kim Deitch’s
greatest work to date.

[…]

Kaz’s offhanded surrealism suitably in-
to the first of RAW’s two historical sections —
a 32-page reprint of one of George Herriman’s
most celebrated sequences from his classic Km-
zy Kat. Herriman maintained little continuity in
his comics, and this daily segment, titled ‘Tiger
Tea,” is among his few out-and-out major
narratives.
One of the highlights of Krazy Kars long
run, the 1936 “Tiger Tea” sequence is an Out-
standing example Of Herriman’s unique comic
timing, logic and linguistics. Without compro-
mising his sense of humor, Herriman, with this
story, created his own highly personal take on
the continuity strip.
The “Tiger Tea” sequence is appropriately
printed on cheap newspaper, as in its original
’30s apl_rarance. But it seems a pity that, time
grs by, these wonderful pages will grmv brmvn
and brittle while other paper stocks in this book
remain stable. “Tiger Tea,” along with an exten-
Sive selection of Herriman’s largely neglected
weekday Krazy Kat strips, begs for a permanent
collection.

[…]

In contrast, Lynda Barry’s “The Most Obvi-
ous Question” takes a leisurely 10 pages to relate
its bittersweet tale. Barry has a novelistic sense
of detail, characterization and atmosphere, and
even in her four-panel weekly Ernie Pook’s
Comeek she far surpasses the traditional amount
Of narrative- and character-content in comics.
Here, Barry lingers over a variety of richly
described, familiar settings — the interiors of
homes, bus stations and vehicles — and barren,
wintry landscapes. She tells a deeply emotional
(and admirably unromanticized) coming-of-age
story, underlined with the palpable tension of
a painful family situation.

[…]

Rumor has it that the next issue of RAW —
which will conclude Spiegelman’s Maus — may
also be the last. If this is true, let’s hope that
Spiegelman and Mouly — or someone — can
devise an adequate replacement. Though there •
are other fine comics anthologies, there is
nothing else like RAW, its absence will leave an
unfillable void.

Spiegelman is intereviewed in The Comics Journal #145, page 99:

BOLHAFNER: I thought the last issue of RAW’ was one of
the best yet.
SPIEGELMAN: Yeah, we’ve been hearing a lot of that…
mostly indirectly. We don’t get that many people writing
us. But it’s been well-received compared to the first two
Penguin issues. RAW was originally a large format publica-
tion, like life magazine, and when the Penguin books came
out it was a shock to a lot of people, and they thought
it was a commercial decision on Penguin’s part. But actu-
ally, we had decided to change format in 1988.

The Comics Journal #156, page 17:

Penguin Ceases Publication of Comics Albums

Penguin Books, one Of the few mainstream
American book publishers to print comics al-
bums. has decided to temporarily stop pub-
lishing them, according to Senior Editor David
Stanford. Penguin, which published such books
as From A to Zippy by Bill Griffith, Skin Deep
by Charles Burns, “tarts and All by Drew and
Josh Alan Friedman, Cheap Novelties by Ben
Katchor, and the anthologies Thisted Sisters and
RAW, will publish only tuo more comics col-
lections in 1993. Twisted Sisters II, originally
intended for publication by Penguin, will now
be published elsewhere.

Stanford, who has been with Penguin for
four-and-one-half years, edited the company’s
more avant garde comics projects (previously,
he worked at Henry Holt and Company, where
he edited books by Garry Trudeau, Charles
Schulz, Jeff MacNelly, Skip Morrow and Other
cartoonists). He cited a energy crisis”
as one of the main reasons Penguin is discon-
tinuing the publication Of comics collections,
although modest sales was also a factor.

So Penguin didn’t shut down their comics business until two years after Raw Vol 2 #3, and there was apparently a rumour going round already in 91 that #4 would be the final issue.

Gary Groth writes in The Comics Journal #199, page 77:

After the success of
Maus, Pantheon smelled money and launched a
series of graphic novels; none of them matched
Pantheon’s expectations and the graphic novel
line was canceled. Later, Penguin published RA W,
smelled money, and launched a series of graphic
novels; QED.

But I can’t find anything definite about why there never was any #4 (which would have had the final installment of Maus). Maus II was published in 1992, so it wasn’t because Spiegelman just could get himself to finish it, either.

Oh well. So an era ends. But on an up note.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

Casual Casual #19/20 edited by Peter Dako (214x279mm)

I blogged about Casual Causal some before, and in those issues, Peter Dako talked about putting on a travelling show exhibiting a bunch of artists. And now he’s finally gotten money from the gummint, so he’s doing it, and this 200 page magazine-sized publication is the result. It’s also the final Casual Casual issue.

So we get a whole bunch of introductions, one after the other, trying to explain how all these artists somehow relate to each other…

… and we get a “graphzine index”, which doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the show…

And then… another introduction by Paul Gravett?

Bruno Richard apparently had written an introduction to some of the artists for a previous show, so we get that, and then an updated version.

And then an overview of all the artists appearing here.

And then an interview with John Waters!? Sure! Why not! Everybody likes interviews with John Waters.

And then finally the artwork starts, and … it turns out to be just two random pages per artist. (See images for names.)

Some of it’s pretty cool!

Not much thought has been given to reproduction.

Most of the artists choose to eschew actual comics, but some of the pieces are fun, anyway, like this Peter Bagge thing where the characters gets cubismoised.

There’s a sizeable Japanese contingent in here, and it’s all from the punkier side of the scale.

Carel Moiseiwitch is one of the few people to do comics.

Hey! Gary Panter.

This is one of those books that have two covers, so when we get to the middle, we flip the book over and start from the other side. And … then we get most of the introductions again, but in French. Which is natural for a book financed by the Canadian gummint.

Most of the artists on the “other side” are French, too.

Wow, that’s pretty cool…

Heh. Chester Brown also sneaks in here, doing a sort of recontextualisation of artwork from Yummy Fur. Trey cool.

So… I guess it’s fine for what it is? I mean, a catalogue for an art show? It’s not much of a reading experience, though.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.