Random Thoughts

Beyer’s Beasts by Mark Beyer (148x223mm)

This is published by Dark Horse, and I wonder what was going on there for a brief second: They did this, the Amy & Jordan figures, and the Jimbo action figures — and then nothing more. (And nothing in this area before this.)

So this is a stationary set with Beyer illustrations. And some stickers.

With envelopes.

They do look good, but I wonder how many were actually used to send letters…

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

The Asshole by Gary Panter (105x160mm)

This was originally published as a photocopied mini by Panter in 1979 — what I have here is the reprint he did in 2003 with stiff cardboard covers.

And I seem to have bought it in 2008? Possibly? Or later, I guess.

I’m not sure I would have guessed that this was Panter if I didn’t know — it’s a very straightforward story; very Underground and linear. The only “formal play” thing here is that all the characters look basically identical.

It’s a fun, brisk read, apparently drawn over four days in December 79. It’s got jokes and stuff. And murder. Lots of murder.

Dale Luciano interviews Panter in The Comics Journal #100, page 216:

PANTER: It’s just slop, but reality is
something different. I think it just reflects
anxiety about what can happen in everp
day life. The “Jimbo” stories represent ep
tremes of experience and you can come
away from this stuff relieved and thinking,
‘”Aren’t you happy your life’s not that ex-
citing?” mean, aren’t you happy life’s not
as exciting as having some psycho guy.
chase you around with a hatchet? That’s
the Henry Webb end of things. That was
just a black humor story, anxiety about
there really being some psycho people out
there who would hurt you if they could get
to you.
LUCIANO: (confused) Uh, referring
to—Oh, follow 2,ou, referring to The
Asshole?
PANTER: Yeah, The Asshole, whose
name is Henry Webb. That’s what I usually
call him, Henry Webb. That story was just
totally anxiety-produced.

The Comics Journal #264, page 198:

The Asshole
Gary Panter
One should never have to recom-
mend Gary Panter, whose approach to
comics is so primal and right-on that
those inspired by those inspired by those
inspired by the artist seem strange and
new. This was my favorite in a bunch Of
new minicomics released through his web
site at prices definitely not for the junk-
ethos minis crowd. What interests about
these specific books at this moment in
the medium’s development is that
through them you can view the fertile
period of the late 1970s and early 1980s
as groundwork for some of the almost
overpowering art Panter attempts now.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

Chemical Imbalance #4 edited by Mike McGonigal (215x275mm)

I was so impressed by #6 of this magazine — it was basically like a music version of The Comics Journal (format wise) — that I got this issue, too. #6 had a bunch of comics relevant to this blog series.

But this is a very different thing — it looks like it was typeset on a Mac, and has a much younger vibe.

It’s got lots of poetry.

We get a short interview with Harvey Pekar.

The first question the interviewer asks everybody is “what’s your favourite comic book”, which is fun.

And then we get some music review strips from Matt Howarth.

It’s very odd — this magazine changed utterly between #4 and #6, but I guess there’s nothing here that’s relevant for this blog series.

Oops! I guess I shouldn’t even have posted it. Well, too late now.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.

Cheap Novelties: The Pleasures of Urban Decay by Ben Katchor (202x193mm)

By this point, Penguin had taken over publishing Raw, so this is a kinda stealthy Raw One-Shot — it’s not presented as such on the front cover.

This is a collection of Katchor’s alt-weekly comic strip Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer. (Which isn’t mentioned on the front cover, either.)

The contents page is mysterious…

… but it all becomes er clear: Each strip is headed by some cheap novelty (also presented in the first panel of each strip with Knipl’s name on it). So these are trinkets Knipl give out to people to publicise his business.

So this all makes sense, but it makes me wonder whether those trinkets were also present in the original strip? I’m guessing so, but they eerily become part of the plot in the last section of the book.

But the bulk of the book are these one-pagers that have a certain calmness about them, and a sense of the absurd.

I mean… just imagining a newspaper weight industry…

Many of the strips have a kind of vague punchline of sorts — I mean, they’re funny. Others are more simply evocative.

Katchor’s artwork melds perfectly with the subject matter… kinda nostalgic for an imaginary age, with Knipl frequently striding forth in that determined manner.

Some of the strips are just beyond fabulous.

But as usual when reading these Knipl stories, it takes me a surprising amount of time. I find myself zoning out, and I have to re-read each strip several times to understand what’s happening. And I can’t read this entire book in one sitting: It’s like poetry; it takes a lot out of you.

The final section in this book is new stuff made specially for this book, I think? We finally get to visit the Cheap Novelty District, and we follow Knipl on a (thwarted) job, as well as a Venetian blind salesman. Their stories intertwine in oblique ways, and it’s all rather thrilling.

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.

Yeah, the first “Biff bang pow! Comics aren’t for kids any more!” wave of comics for adults from mainstream publishers (spurred on by Art Spiegelman’s Maus (especially Part II in 1991) from Pantheon) fizzled very quickly — I think by 1993, they’d all lost interest when they saw how little this stuff sold, and it wouldn’t be until Fun Home and Persepolis hit over a decade later that they realised they should get back in on the game again. (But less Avant Garde this time and more (auto-)biography.)

Drawn & Quarterly published a new version of it recentlyis:

In 1991, the original Cheap Novelties appeared in an unassuming paperback from the RAW contributor; it would become one of the first graphic novels of the contemporary graphic novel golden age and set the stage for Katchor as he is now regarded– a modern day cartooning genius.

They’re selling it short!

Drawn & Quarterly’s 25th anniversary edition will be a deluxe hardcover reformatted to Katchor’s original vision.

Oh, that’s interesting… Katchor didn’t like the design of the Penguin book?

Right, the new version doesn’t have the big novelties on each page, and everything’s reproduced in a larger size. Yay. I should get a copy of this, too…

People still like it:

The staccato vignettes, where narration and dialogue noisily intermix with one another like the cacophony of a busy street, are about pure pleasure.

Indeed:

Katchor reminds readers of the ever-presence of a past: no matter where — or when — you are, there is always something missing. But if you look closely, and wait for the newspapers to fly by, and for the new concrete to set, you might be able to bask, bittersweetly, in its former, fleeting glory.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.