Random Thoughts

Painting onto cel plastic by Mark Beyer.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

Raw #2 edited by Françoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman (268x360mm)

I love that cover by Joost Swarte. I had a subscription to Raw, but when they cancelled Raw after #8, they sent me this poster as a substitute for the remaining issue(s):

The poster has a much better tag line than Raw #2: “Putting the litter back into literature”.

I’ve spent many a moment looking at all the details here.

And it’s apparently hot shit now?

Anyway!

The first issue of Raw had been a triumph — how to follow up that? Well, to me the second issue seems like a retrenchment: You get more American underground artists… like S. Clay Wilson here, with a page that’s not very typical S. Clay Wilson.

Which reminds me — I happened upon this on ebay the other day:

It’s a letter from the editors to Wilson, soliciting something for Raw 4 “that might be appropriate”. I.e., not Wilson’s usual stuff?

The first issue of Raw had a nice mixture of shorter and longer things, but it’s all shorter pieces in this issue, which is perhaps what makes it slightly less fascinating. But basically all the individual pieces are good, like this Joost Swarte trifle.

Speaking of underground artists, Bill Griffith (Spiegelman’s co-editor on Arcade) has fun with scale on this two-pager — every row of panels growing smaller. The huge Raw pages lend themselves to this sort of playfulness.

Wow. A French (?) strip from 1897 that reads like a modern comic strip, with speech balloons and everything. By Caran d’Ache? It’s not a familiar name to me.

Rick Geary’s an artist who’s lived in the margins between undergrounds and the mainstream (and has been solidly in the mainstream for the last few decades with his Victorian Murder series), but it’s surprising to see him pop up here. But Geary does have a very intriguing storytelling style.

David Levy does a… cultural critique?… over five pages, which feels excessive. tl;dr: FAKE NEWS.

This issue of Raw is known for two things: And the first is that it had a bubble gum insert — with City of Terror trading cards. I’ve been trolling ebay for decades now, but I’ve never been able to lay my hands on a copy of this comic that has those cards included. (Or the bubble gum.) But they’re supposed to look like this:

I love Mark Beyer, and I like the idea, but this is a pretty weak Beyer piece. Perhaps his heart wasn’t in it?

Cathy Millet does the artiest piece in the book.

Kaz plays around with comics conventions. It’s fun.

Drew Friedman’s two-pager is… er… it’s… “unfortunate”? I guess it’s supposed to be all transgressive and stuff, but it comes off as pretty boorish.

I did the first issue of Picture Story Magazine (78) the other day, and here’s more Ben Katchor. He’s grown a lot in the two years — you can see that he’s going somewhere now.

The other thing this issue is well-known for is that it carries the first chapter of Spiegelman’s Maus serialisation. It’s a 13x17cm insert, glued onto the inner back page.

I guess I don’t have to say anything about Maus — you’ve got a copy or two in your bookshelf. The only thing… is that it looks so good in this first edition: It’s on slightly not-quite newsprint; off-white and scratchy, which is so perfect for the art style.

Here’s the same page from a 2003 edition: On shiny white paper, it looks… well… kinda amateurish?

I wondered whether Spiegelman had reworked some of these pages…

… and… Yes? It’s kinda subtle, but he seems to at least have redrawn the faces? The faces are longer and slimmer in the original version? Has he completely redrawn these pages? I guess he must have, but … why?

Hm, OK, some of the figures in the original version look slightly awkward. Like:

vs

Anyway.

It’s still a thrilling read.

An interview in The Comics Journal #65, page 119:

This led to a dilemma for Maus, which I conceived Of
primarily as a comic wherein the pictures were in service
of the Story. I wanted very much to keep the pictures
subservient to the idea. In fact, it’s drawn quite small
—the original for each page is about five by seven or
something like that.
I didn’t quite know how to make use of Maus in Raw.
On the other hand, if I didn’t combine these two projects,
my head would go rolling off down the sidewalk, bounce
into a sewer somewhere and never Come back, because it
was just spreading myself way, way too thin.
First thought was, well, we’ll blow up the pages. Now ,
that makes a very strong graphic statement, to take a
relatively simple drawing , and blow it up so the hairs at
the edge of the line are all showing. I kind of liked the
way that looked. But I think it’s all wrong for Maus.
Also. it would be 17 pages of the magazine.
The final solution was a separate small-sized booklet ,
like “Two-Fisted painters” in the first issue. I found that
it involved very little reduction. The pages remained
very clear. Although it looks very dense, it has some of
the qualities that I really wanted to catch in Maus. It
makes it look like a manuscript. Seeing these small pages
Of kind of doodle drawings, almost—they’re rough , quick
drawings—mounted together makes it seem like we found
somebody’s diary , and are publishing facsimilies of it.
And that’s kind of nice.
I’m not sure how Maus fits in with the material that’s
been in Raw so far. It’s something else. And yet, as we
quoted in the introduction to the magazine, the intro-
ductory editorial, there was this line from Juan Gris, “The
question of what will emerge is left open. One functions
in an attitude of expectancy. You are lost the instant
you know what the result will be. Although Maus doesn’t
feel like the kind of material I would’ve predicted would
be in Raw, there’s no reason why it can’t be.
MOULY; You should mention the other reasons why you
want to see Maus published in Raw—having some kind Of
discipline.
SPIEGELMAN: Yeah, the requirement of having to pro-
duce it, rather than just let it be a project that could
easily take the rest of my life if I allow it to. The fact
that every time an issue of Raw is ready to come out I ‘ve
got to have another chapter ready. That’s good. I think
if the deadline were too tight, it would become really
excruciating. I’ve been given the opportunity Or the pos-
sibility of running a running chapter of Maus each month
in a magazine in France called (A Suivre). That would
have involved producing approximately 12 pages a month.
I just don’t feel capable of that. On the Other hand, pro-
ducing a chapter for Raw, which will come out twice a
year. it’s easier. Especially since I can now rest on my
laurels for the first few issues and continue working and
build up more Of a backlog, because about four chapters
are done .
CAVALIERI : What happens to it When it’s finished?
SPIEGELMAN Hopefully, I’ll find a publisher. Hope-
fully, (A Suivre) will still be interested in serializing it.
At that point it will be easy to feed them 12 pages a
month. because, by God, they’ll be done.
CAVALIERI : You mentioned that a couple of overground
publishers were interested.
SPIEGELMAN: Again, it’s premature for me to approach
somebody, because just didn’t want to make that kind
Of commitment, having to get it done by a certain time.
I feel more comfortable making a commitment to myself,
saying, “Okay, we’re putting out a magazine. I’ll do it
for our magazine.” presume that at the end there’ll
Still be room for a collection Of Maus in book form. I don’t
think that I’ll have exhausted it by publishing it in Raw.
MOULY: It shouldn’t be a problem.
SPIEGEL-NIAN: I think that it’s the kind of book that. ..
it should be easier to find an audience for than something
like Breakdowns. It isn’t a piece of work that’s designed
for a very small select audience. It can be read, I would
think, by anyone who would be willing to, and they can
go through this whole rite of, is Willie going to escape
from the mean ol’ cats, and all that stuff.

Well, it certainly did achieve a crossover when it was collected.

Carter Scholz writes in The Comics Journal #64, page 35:

Raw 2, this being the first install-
ment Of a long black-and-white strip
called Maus. It is , Of all things, a
funny-animal retelling Of the Holo-
caust, and promises to be a very sig-
nificant piece of work, on the scale Of
Eisner’s comics “novels. The concept
sounds utterly implausible, but Spieg-
elman displays the intelligence and
sensitivity, at least in this opening
chapter , needed to bring it Off.
“Funny-animal” is perhaps unjust; it
just happens that the characters are
mice, as Orwell’s Anirnal Farm happens
to set in a barnyard. These are
probably the only terms in which a
serious war tale can be told in comics
form without resorting to the brutal-
ity„ and trivialization Of Sgt. Rock;
because (as Newgarden points out in
another strip) “cu•toons ain’t human”
(P.T. sailorman, 1943). The best
approach, then, is to accept this
limitation, and not try to make your
cartoons literally human. By using
mice, traditionally innocent and
Set-upon characters , Spiegelman has
done much better than, say, Bode’s
lizards-in-Vietnam. I think there is
every reason to hope for great things
from this strip , which is projected to
run over 200 pages in its entirety.
Raw 2 also features work by Bill
Griffith, Rick Geary, Ever Meulen,
Cathy Millet, and Ben Katchor. My
taste runs to Spiegelman , Moriarty ,
and Swarte (who did a brilliant cover
for Rav 2, spendid!y colored by
Francoise Mouly) , but all the work is
accomplished and varied.
The only evident weakness of the
books is A lack of sustained effort.
Except for the three long strips de-
scribed , and one 3-page strip by
Swarte, and a 4-page strip by Kaz,
the works are all one or two pages.
Of course the pages are big, and one
or two are adequate to most all the
strips, but there is an overall im-
pression of jumpiness. It’s support-
able to want a variety of work, and
it is hard to expect an artist to work
for free at an extended length, and
printing is expensive, and the insert
books are a fine compromise… but I
would still prefer six or seven strips
of moderate length to fifteen short ones.
Since Spiegelman teaches at the
School Of Visual Arts, it is natural he
should use some student work. Only a
little of this is not so good. I think
Drew Friedman is mainly an illustrator ,
and does not yet understand comics nar-
ration very well. The page by Patricia
Caire has the look of an “illustrate-
this-text” assignment. I hope that Raw’s
partial subsidy from SVA will not turn
it into a kind of student portfolio from
the school’s illustration department .
(My experience has been that illustra-
tors tend erroneously to regard comics
as a minor, undemanding form of illus-
tration. )

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

Girls and Boys by Lynda Barry (218x139mm)

My first exposure to Lynda Barry was in The Comics Journal #92:

I was just fascinated by this, and I so wanted to read Ernie Pook’s Comeek. It’s not that these jokes are the funniest in the world (but they are funny) — it was the artwork. Her linework was just irresistible to me.

Or as R. Fiore puts it in The Comics Journal #92, page 41:

Barry was originally part of what you
might call the draws-like-a-five-year-old
school, but over the last couple of years
she’s developed one of the most expressive
styles anywhere in comics.

I don’t agree with his assessment of her earlier style at all… but I wouldn’t find that out until nearly two decades later, when I finally scored a copy of this book.

It asks all the deep questions.

This collection reprints the earliest Ernie Pook’s Comeek strips, but in no particular order. (And like many others covered in this “Punk Comix” blog series, she tries to avoid the actual “comic” word.)

I guess this was a very successful collection — gone through three printings in four years.

I find it amusing that the very first strip in Barry’s very first collection is about teaching people how to draw comics. She’s now a professor and all her latest books are about this stuff, but she was totally into it from the start. (And there are no other strips like this in the first book.)

Barry’s most famous for her stories about children, and indeed, the second strip in this book echoes what she’d do a decade later. Even the name “Eddie” is reminiscent of “Freddy” (the kid brother in the family that’d come to dominate the strip). But there aren’t any recurring characters at this point.

I like the design of these books. It’s not an unusual format for alternative comic strips (Sylvia, Dykes To Watch Out For, etc), but it’s just so right for these comics. And I love the little messy lines everywhere in the margins… which are different on every page, so Barry sat an dotted every page before it went to the printer?

The artwork varies wildly, but perhaps that mostly due to these comics being made over at least a two year period. This style is very punk indeed.

She has so much fun with the artwork, trying out fantastic stuff all over the place.

And some of these strips are downright harrowing.

There aren’t too many of these strips… which is where she puts her best outright jokes. This one made me LOL out loud.

This is a very apt illustration of how men talk, but in my experience, there’s at least some talk about Emacs?

Look at that panel. Just look at it. Absolutely gorgeous.

It reminds me slightly of Rick Geary… but also what Richard Sala would do about five years later? Am I way off base here? (Sala’s style would change a lot over the first few years, though.)

It’s so edumacational!

And finally a snap of the author.

It’s just a marvellous collection — the artwork and the stories mesh well, and it’s all fresh and original. And sad and funny. It’s a little masterpiece of a book.

The Boys and Girls book was kept in print for quite a while, but was then part of the Everything vol 1 collection, published by Drawn & Quarterly in 2014.

But printed in this format, which may be more true to the original strip format, but it’s… not as cute in this, more hefty format?

The second volume of Everything was announced in 2015, and then in 2018, and in 2019 (according to Amazon), but has yet to appear. So I guess most of the early Barry strips are out of print now? The first volume also includes a number of strips that were left out of the first volume.

And that first Comeek strip that I saw in the Comics Journal? I don’t think that’s been reprinted in any of the subsequent strip collections? Which means that there’s possibly a trove of un-reprinted Ernie Pook strips languishing for inexplicable reasons.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

Picture Story Magazine #1 edited by Ben Katchor (215x276mm)

A lot of the comics I’m covering in this blog series I’ve had since I was a teenager — but more obscure ones, like this book, I’ve picked up over the last few years while thinking about doing this blog series. (Believe it or not, picking up oddball comics from New York wasn’t trivial in the early 80s when you’re living way north of the Polar Circle.)

So this is new to me… and it’s an early book edited by Ben Katchor, published by Brooklyn Bridge Publication. Which you may perhaps guess is Katchor and friends? I’m unable to find any mentions of the thing, but this says that the first issue of WW3 Illustrated was put together there.

It does share some of the obsessions that Raw would later display — like avoiding the word “comics” (going for the very serious Pictory Story Magazine, while Raw would go for more punny names), and making connections between comics’ (pre-)history and contemporary art comics. So here’s a Dutch thing from 1840…

… and then a 20 page story by Martin Millard (possibly; it’s hard to make out the name) that kinda has echoes of the Dutch thing.

Most of the pieces are pretty long, and are narrative, but there’s a few illustrations, too, like this one by Eve Marie LeBer.

The main interest here, though, is reading two early pieces by Katchor himself. And it’s such a surprise to read these, because Katchor’s style in Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer seems like it’s always been like that, and always has to have been like that. Reading a Knipl page is experiencing something that seems so obviously right and correct that it’s never occurred to me that Katchor could have been making comics in a different style.

There are some echoes of later Katchor here, though, and the two stories themselves are interesting in themselves. The artwork is more clearly underground-ey than it would later become, but he’s got that strange logic working on some of these pages.

There’s one “traditional” story in here (by Larry lee). The artwork’s fine, I guess, and the story is amusing, but…

Martin Millard’s second (and much shorter) piece is more successful. Reminds me a bit of Rick Geary? But Geary draws more interesting objects.

The final Katchor page seems to point towards Julius Knipl, perhaps.

So I’m guessing that this book was put together by the featured artists? It’s pretty nicely printed, and it’s squarebound, so it’s not a throw-away item, either.

Googling a couple of minutes, I’m unable to find anybody talking about this book, but there’s an interview with Katchor:

FLA:In 1975, Art Spiegelman’s and Bill Griffith’s Arcade, The Comics Revuepublished underground comic creators and in 1980 Art Spiegelman with François Mouly published Raw.Both seem to be important moments in the growing of a readership for the kind of work you began publishing.

BK:The models I was looking at were the underground comics andArcade was publishing really interesting work that provided new models for creating text/image stories for adult readers.

By the 1980s I was self-publishing fanzines and later Picture Story Magazine where Art Spiegelman saw my work. There was a store downtown in Soho that carried small circulation zines thattook my work on consignment. By then I was aspiring to create some kind of literary/art comic strip. I wanted to bring together what I thought were the most interesting ideas in figurative art with the most interesting literature that I had been exposed to. I wanted to write serious fiction but in comic-strip form. There was a very small audience for alternative comics at that time and comic shop dealers would look at Picture Story Magazine and wonder what it was. They didn’t recognize it as comics, nor would most of their customers.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.