Random Thoughts

The Previous Future edited by Pete Friedrich (215x275mm)

This is published by Look Mom, Comics — the same people who published Psycho Comics. So I wasn’t going to cover this magazine in this blog series, but I had already bought it, and the cover looks pretty intriguing… so let’s give it a go.

Oh, well: It’s more of the same amateurish stuff, except for the cover, which is done by a French guy called Eric Cartier, which kinda sounds like a fake name? But isn’t.

As with Psycho Comics, this isn’t so much “adjacent” to the comics I’m covering in this blog as stuff presumably by teenagers in New York. Here’s Daniel Clowes — he’s perfected his signature, but the artwork’s pretty rough. But it’s a somewhat amusing story.

Is that a parody of one of these scam ads, or is it one of those scam ads?

The most timely story here is the one about the dangers of using that new-fangled “Walkman” technology.

The most successful story here is this one by Gene Fama. I mean, it’s an O. Henry story, but it’s pretty inspired.

The editor explains that, yes, they’re doing ads, but only if they’re of the same professionalism and attractiveness as the contents of the book.

I think this ad for… “Vonozat”?… nails it.

(I’m not sure whether that’s a joke or not? It seems too on the nose for it not to be a joke?)

… Oh! It’s “Sohozat”! And it Existed!

The American version of Axiom is not really a store, but a stall located in the back of Sohozat, 307 West Broadway, a New Wave emporium where one can buy thrift-shop-grade smoking jackets or old monster magazines.

So it’s not a joke?

Sheesh.

The Comics Journal #73, page 47:

From the same EC-inspired band of writers
and artists that released Psycho Cornics
last year (see the Journal #66) now comes
the first issue of Look Mom Comics pre-
sents, subtitled The Previous Future. It’s
a loose-knit assemblage of pieces coming
under the various headings of “Urban Fan-
‘tasy,” “Science Fantasy,” “Urban Fiction”
and “Science Fiction.” (The Look Mom
staff is infatuated with genre designations.
Promised for future release are such special
“theme” issues as True Psycho Romances,
psycho Crime Stories, and Psycho Animals On
parade; also, Look Mom Comics Presents #2
will have as its theme, “All-Genre Comics
…all the genres comics have been through
and then some! Editor/ Art Director Pete
Friedrich has a taste for the bizarre and
the apocalyptic, as evidenced by the fancy
title which, truth be told, doesn’t accurate-
ly mirror the various moods Or thematic
preoccupations of the pieces. (I’m not
certain whac title would.) Most of the
contributions are short, pungent tales of
the macabre that build toward an “unex-
pected,” twist ending; there is an attempt
in each story to . end with @ touch of
irony.
Because I had such ambivalent feelings
about psycho Comics I approached The
Previous Future with particular interest,
hoping to glean more of creators’
motives and aspirations as they ventured
into these new realms (“Urban Fantasy,
“Science Fantasy,” etc.); I also hoped for
more evidence of solid, sustained achieve.
ment than was apparent in Psycho Comics
Alas, the results are mixed—promising
ideas only half-realized in the execution.
The material ranges from Eel O’Brien’s
frenzied, Lurid writing and Mort Todd’s
overwrought art in “Eddie’s
space jockey is transported back through
time by his “empath ship,” the Oedipus,
and fathers himself—to the naturalistic,
sordid, “Paranoid,” a tale of a “prize panty-
waist” who, tormented at every turn
throughout a dismal life, comes to a miser-
able end in a violent subway incident. This
latter piece could easily have appeared in
Friedrich’s “ShockSubway Stories,” in
Psycho ComicS.) A lot of energetic, promis-
ing talent is expended on material that isn’t
nearly so daring, imaginative or engrossing
as Friedrich and company may suppose.
Here’s something, though. The Belgian
artist Gene Fama contributes the seven-
page “Squirrel Juice,” a nightmare fantasy
of a man who confronts his “davof reckon-
ing” aboard an airliner. He is offered the
alternatives of Hell or reincarnation,
chooses reincarnation, becomes a fly, and
is subsequently dispatched from this Earth
in a most unpleasant manner by the foot of
a passenger strolling to the bathroom.
Fama’s violent black-and-white imagery is
disturbing and grotesque, involving distor-
tion and metamorphosis. The piece is an
authentic slice of dementia; its fear and
despair are not easily dismissed. It’s bizarre,
grotesque stuff, probably an apt indication
of the kind of overt weirdness that
Friedrich is looking to capture in the book.
There’s an amusing trifle from Daniel
Clowes that features private eye Bill Trou-
ble,” in a story that has the baby-faced
hero searching out the whereabouts of a
girl for Death, then challenging Death to a
game of checkers for the girl’s life. (Natural-
ly, Death loses, and says, “You must have
cheated!”) It’s a bit humdrum in the actual
telling—Clowes devotes two pages to the
least interesting aspect of the narrative
—and the checker game with Death is a bit
anticlimactic. There’s a funny throwaway
bit early on in which Death, asked to
validate his identity, casually summons up
a creature that demolishes an entire city
street. (It feels like an homage to Steve
Ditko and Marvel horror comics.) Light-
weight but diverting.

[…]

The French illustratOr Eric Cartier con-
tributes an extremely handsome color
cover depicting an automobile graveyard,
countless wrecks piled atop one another in
a lumbering pyramid of junk. I trust I am
not alone in thinking this is an icon Of
that has lost much Of
its power through overuse. (A press release
from Look Mom Presents notes. “The cover
was a risk because it does nor your
usual Superhero or Woman with big T’s
and A’s.” This strikes me as an unwar-
ranted solicitation of approval—in essence,
seeking praise for Look Mom Presents’ virtue
in not doing something. Not is not
enough. )
The Look Mom crew is an enthusiastic,
spirited bunch, The Previous Future is
printed handsomely on very good quality
stock, and the anthology approach is
appealing. I wish the art work were more
skillfully executed and, more to the point,
the writing more effectively worked out
and sustained. On the plus side, there is an
NO superheroes or Women with
big Ts and As on the cover here,
folks, just wrecked cars.
obsessive, visionary fervor to the Fama
piece that redeems the surreal parable from
its more banal implications. And in
“Paranoid,” Friedrich and Michael Delle
Femine (“Dr. Death”) again exhibit their
fascination with aberrant, psychotic be-
havior. They have no wish to explore it,
but simply to document its more flam-
boyant, violent aspects. It is absorbing,
however, to see the results of their col-
laboration, even if it’s not fully satisfying
work,

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

Buzzbomb by Kaz (280x380mm)

OK, here’s my deepest, darkest secret: I’m not really much of a Kaz fan. So I haven’t read this book since it was published, and I pretty much forgot that it existed — otherwise I would have covered it in the Fantagraphics blog series.

So: This is a big (Raw-sized) saddle-stitched collection of Kaz strips published by Fantagraphics.

The designer seems to be going after the Raw/punk/post-modern design aesthetic, but… kinda doesn’t get there at all? Wrong font and haphazard placement of the elements. Even the cover stock (very shiny and thick) just feels off.

On the other hand, Kaz looks exactly like you’d imagine.

Almost all if this is reprinted from various sources, but the sources aren’t specified and comics.org isn’t very helpful, either.

Raw reprinted the first three issues of the magazine as Read Yourself Raw around this time, and the Kaz strip(s) from those issues were left out from Read Yourself Raw. Perhaps because they’d just been reprinted, or… other reasons.

I do often like Kaz’ design sense (especially here, where he’s basically cribbed everything from Mark Beyer), and I like the stark graphic qualities in his rendering, but these are basically traditional underground gags in new dressing.

The vast majority of these pieces are strongly narrative, but the stories are pretty shaggy and not very well-though-out. There doesn’t seem to be any subtext here: These stories are as shallow as they come.

He was a student at the SVA at the time, which explains these exercises in exploring form, but he’s going over territory that’s pretty well-covered.

I guess “so what!” is pretty punk, but… so what.

Gregory Cwiklik writes in The Comics Journal #192, page 47:

Buzzbomb has some Of the artist’s earliest and
least accomplished work, but also some of his best,
like the expressionistic punk noir Tot,” and the
volume ‘s large-scale format and appropriately pulpy
paper stock show the better artwork to dramatic
advan tage.
The fledgling strips that Kaz produced in the
early 1980s are mostly single-page gag strips of the
sick humor variety and the artwork in them is rather
amateurish. Their saving grace is Kais creative page
layout, Often inspired by classic newspaper strips.
But even in these early pieces there is a clear the-
matic consistency With his later work; there is the
same concern with overtly “dumb” humor, the ma-
cabre (one early page irreverently illustrates frag-
ments of verse taken from old gravestone inscrip-
lions). and With the meaning or meaninglessness Of
life. Like many other alternative cartoonists who
emerged in the 1980s, Kaz’s work is also grounded
stories take place in the industrial swamplands of
New Jersey were the sky is eternally black above a
landscape dominated by bleak factories and chemi-
cal plancs and littered with trash and toxic wastes.
The plots are absurd, surreal things dripping
with attitude and film noiratmosphere. In one epi-
sode Tot is brainwashed and conditioned by an
ambitious priest tostab the local bishop at the sound
Of the theme music from •l Dream Of Jeannie.”

The Comics Journal #122, page 23:

TWO PUBLISHERS DELAYED
PRINTERS REJECT BOOKS
Two books from different
publishers—Buzzbomb. by Kaz, from
Fantagraphics, and Peter Hsu’s self-
published Hellrazor Graphic Novel—
were delayed by printers who agreed
to print the books, then refused
because of objections to the books’
content.

[…]

Buzzbomb, a graphic album Of work
by Kaz (Kazimieras G. Prapuolenis),
was already several months late when
it was sent to Griffin Printing early this
year. The Glendale, California firm’s
refusal to print the book delayed
publication at least another five weeks,
according to Fantagraphics Publisher
Gary Groth.
Groth said he sent the tmks to Grif-
fin’s sales representative, who told
him that the book had approved,
whereupn Fantagraphics Sent an
advance deposit.
About four days later, a sales rep
from Griffin called Groth and told him
that they uould not print the bCX)k. The
Griffin sales rep said that the company
does a lot of business with publishers
Of religious material. and it was feared
that printing Buzzbomb might jeopar-
dize those accounts.
In a subsequent phone conversation
with Griffin’s president. Groth said,
the president refused to confirm the
sales rep’s story, but did say that he
personally found the book immoral.
Groth said Fantagraphics• check was
returned. and a new printer was found,
although at a higher price than
Griffin’s.

Wow.

You can still pick up copies of Buzzbomb pretty cheaply on ebay.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

Spy vs Spy by by John Zorn with a cover by Mark Beyer (1989).

It’s Zorn doing hardcore/jazz versions of Ornette Coleman stuff. It’s fun!

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

Raw #6: The Graphix Magazine That Overestimates The Taste Of The American Public edited by Françoise Mouly and Art Spiegelman (269x359mm)

This is it: This is the first issue of Raw I read, and I was 15, and I thought it was the most amazing thing ever in the history of ever.

Sure; I’d read good comics before — Varenne, Hernandez, Pratt, etc — but this was something completely different.

Just look at that cover. Look at it!

And just look at this opening spread: A gorgeous, but very mysterious painting (Komar and Melomid), and a very stylish contents page. (And a way to buy older issues and sign up for a subscription. And… no extra charge for sending to non-US addresses! *gasp*)

And then we’re off with a five page Mark Beyer story about Tony Target: I can’t imagine anything more perfect for a pretentious fifteen-year-old. It mixes angst and ridicule of that angst perfectly. “It’s disgusting… it reminds me of myself somehow.” And then Tony lies down to die, but people walk all over him, so he gives up on that idea.

I remember reading this book over and over again, feeling very smug and smart indeed.

And then a Joost Swarte thing! What! I remember being so thrilled at seeing somebody working in the Herge idiom, but doing something modern.

There’s only a single text page here (a story about somebody visiting New York, which I identified with immediately).

There’s no editorial voice in this issue — it all comes decontextualised to the reader. There’s no editor saying “with this issue, we’re doing X, Y and Zed”, but instead everything is just here for the reader to ponder.

I’d never seen Muñoz and/or Sampaya either, and they have the longest thing in this issue: A 20 page story about a deranged European director working in Mexico. Reading it now, I guess it’s really a story about Alejandro Jodorowsky? The artwork’s so thrilling.

I also remember being fascinated by these ads… Danceteria… “In search of a lower common denominator: Independent Publications”… It’s very New York. And it’s fun to see ads for Big Ideas by Lynda Barry and Mark Marek’s New Wave Comics now.

Jayr Pulga does a very unnerving little piece.

I guess this two-pager by Jerry Moriarty is really just a funny anecdote, but it conveys so much through gestures. It’s gorgeous and somehow meaningful.

Hey, more ads… what do we have here… Anarcoma from Catalan… Clothing Warehouse!? Printed Matter still exists…

Anyway, the preceding pages were all well and good: Fabulous artwork with an oppressive (and exhilarating) mood… but that didn’t prepare me for the Maus insert, which is just heart-wrenching.

Reading it now, I can’t help notice that Spiegelman has both his step-mother and his father complimenting him on his Prisoner on the Hell Planet strip, which seems… er… slightly gauche? If I remember correctly, it was stuff like this that put Harvey Pekar off Maus and made him, for a couple of decades, the only person who dared say anything negative about Maus.

This chapter covers many of the same things Spiegelman previously had done in his “Maus” short a decade earlier, and it contradicts that strip in various small ways…

Things get a bit lighter with an intricately told Ben Katchor four-pager. I mean, it’s not hard to decipher, but it’s a very interesting reading experience.

Oh, yeah, this isn’t the copy I had as a teenager — I’ve got that framed on the wall here. Instead I got a new copy for reading, and… This one is from the Fantagraphics collection!? Or Dale Crain’s collection. Tee hee. Didn’t buy it until two years later, though.

Charles Burns shows up and does an amusing riff on 50s Romance (and Horror) comics. Look at those lines. So sharp!

Caro takes the angst to 11.

Mark Newgarden also did one of these strips for Bad News #2 (which I got shortly after I got this book)… I guess it’s a skit, basically? I remember just being fascinated with it all, and I still am. There’s some good jokes in there.

And then Gary Panter does a few more pages of his Jimbo story. Reading this totally out of context, as I did at the time, it came off as a punch to the stomach. There’s so much here, and it speaks directly to everything in my brain.

Reading this now, I’m amazed at how intense this issue is. It’s one sucker punch after another: It’s an emotional journey… so we get one Krazy Kat page to chill off with after the … ordeal.

This is just the most perfect issue of an anthology ever. There’s not a single piece in here that’s not an artist working at the peak of his (I don’t think there’s any women in this issue?) form, and everything seems to be in dialogue with everything else.

So, OK, I’m biased: I’ve read this book many, many times, and it was An Event in my life, and it help seed my love of New York and becoming a pretentious wise-ass, but… It’s kinda good, eh?

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

Mark Beyer screen print.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.