Random Thoughts

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.

Raw One-Shot #4: Invasion of the Elvis Zombies by Gary Panter (165x233mm)

This was published in 1984, and I was 16 at the time. I remember being very puzzled by the book: I’d read a couple of issues of Raw at the time, but this was … something else?

First of all, the format: It’s book size, with hardback covers, a serious-looking binding, not a lot of pages, and this:

A flexi disk fastened with a split pin to the back cover. It’s all black and white except these end papers, so as an object it feels like it wants to be both “respectable” and playful.

You can listen to it, too! (I put it on repeat while re-reading this book now.)

“Rozz Tox Music”.

The indicia here seems to indicate that this was published both in the US and in Spain simultaneously, and that there’s a Spanish translation?

So there is! Invasion de los Elvis Zombies.

I remember reading this little book quite a few times — it’s a bit slippery. It’s a narrative work, but it’s not quite clear just what’s really happening. The Melancholic Rustabout somehow becomes a zombie and then terrorises some girls, and … that’s it. But it’s so…

Panter uses a number of different art techniques and different voices, kinda overloading the pages with things to consider. For instance, there’s the kinda-sorta flipbook thing going on in the lower right hand corners, and there’s the typeset text (in Futura, of course)…

… but there’s also these inset panels in a different style.

It feels like reading four different things at once, that somehow connect.

And did you know that the plural of “Elvis” is “Elvis”?

The back cover explains that the flexi doesn’t really have anything to do with anything. And note exorbitant price: I’m guessing comics nerds were just going “LOOK AT THIS! LOOK AT THIS PRICE! THIS IS SO PRETENTIOUS!”

I really adored this book as a teenager — it made me feel very clever indeed to own such an object. I remember thinking that the narrative bits could perhaps have been developed more, but reading it now, I think it’s perfect.

Kenneth Smith writes in The Comics Journal #100, page 62:

THE INFERNO OF FAME: HOW
TO DIE OF CONSUMPTION

Gary Panter’s Invasion Of The Elvis
Zombies, like Sue Coe’s How To Commit
Suicide In South Africa, is a RAW One-Shot
of -probably more limited appeal than
RAW itself. Maybe “appeal” is not even the
word, since Panter’s style is bent on putting
a grisly facade over an already grostesque
subject, and the immediate impact Of the
first, as well as its second and
third, impression—is Ofthe sort Of aesthetic
cacophony that RAW itself is, at its
extreme. A revie.ver, reaching for an ade-
quate phrase, might even wish that the
language offered such an option as “caco-
appearance or revelation of
the evil and foul or ugly—since this pro-
duct, unlike a horror comic that only
wants to play with surface emotions, seems
relentlessly to lay that ghastly emotion in-
side the reader’s soul, to make a permanent
redecoration Of that inner apartment from
which the hapless culture-consumer peers
forth. As with Coe’s book, there isa deeper
rationale—not political, as in her case, but
cultural—for this horror, a kind of pro-
found twist designed to make us reinterpret
forever the necrophilia that passes for
mass-cult. Panter’s book makes a devout
attempt to change the primal flavor with
which we sample popular experience.

Yes, exactly!

He goes on like that for several pages and ends with:

The strategic initiative in our culture,
our history, has gone under-
ground, to infernal regions of our psyche;
and art is left equivocating whether it is an
xssertion or only a symptom, To play these
subliminal novelties—the new styles in
punk coupterculture—only for effect,
blindly and without forethought as to the
eventualities they may contribute to, seems
criminally irresponsible to me. American
culture, shaping as it does the conscience
and sympathies of an awesome super-
mower, needs to come to terms con•stantly
with the changing course of its history and
its options; it needs to recapture some
tangible sense not only of its ideal values
but also of its actual motives. Elvis Zombies,
like virtually every one of R.AW”s produc-
tions, seems gratuitously out Of tune With
those tasks: they are distractions that can
Ex• mass-distributed to the alienated many.
The privilege of alienated isolation is not
something that history tends to respect for
very long: freedom that does not play an
organic, political role in its society com-
monly becomes (in Edgar Friedenberg’s
phrase) another dispensable “industrial
waste.” But then, all delusions are a kind Of
fool ‘s paradise.

Carter Scholz writes in The Comics Journal #101, page 52:

Epater la bourgeoisie! was once a common
cry in Paris cafes. It came from artists, of
course, and meant, more or less, “confuse
the yuppies,” or “spit on the fuckers.”

[…]

This brings us to Art Spiegelman.
Spiegelman is an instructor at the School
of Visual Arts in New York. He is the
originator of RA W. The aesthetic Of RAW
is close to epater la bourgeoisie, to the line
which runs from Alfred Jarry to Dada to
Surrealism to punk. Spiegelman is a tireless
promoter of new talent.
Spiegelman’s latest offering is Raw One.
Shot a 36-page hardbound book,
printed in duotone, for $7.50. It is Invasion
Of the Elvis Zombies, by Gary Panter. It in-
cludes a flexi-disc recording of Panter’s
song ‘ ‘Precambrian Bath,” which has noth-
ing to do with the book, “except that it also
asks where time goes when it passes.” The
disc is faintly punkish, but even more
reminiscent of early Zappa.
Gary Panter does not have what you
would call a normal mind. Invasion of the
Evis Zombies includes many full-page and
double-truck drawings in ink, wash, and
pencil, vaguely in the manner Of a Ralph
Steadman with serious drug problems.
Each of these is accompanied by a short
typeset text, sometimes grammatical,
not, and never linear. Each page
also includes a few panels from a more
linear comic strip, drawn in Panter’s Jimbo
style. The two “stories” sort of interlock; at
least, Elvis figures in each.
I am not about to pass judgment on this
work. It is certainly no madder than, say,
U.S. foreign policy. All I will say is that
Panter’s vision is authentic, and Spiegel-
man shows considerable and continuing
Courage in bringing work like this out.

I think Smith found more to say about the book, so I think he wins.

A news item in The Comics Journal #105, page 25:

(Several copies of Raw 7 and this book were stolen from a warehouse.)

Mystery salesman: Cutler said he
came into the books when a
stranger came into his shop and
offered to sell the copies Of RAW
and Elvis Zombies at a discount
that Cutler uouldn•t divulge. He
added that he didn’t think the
copies were illicit because he had
heard that copies had just
recently become available. had
a couple Of friends Who went to a
party at Art’s. and they said they
were copies on sale there: • Cutler
said. Spiegelman hotly denied
that. according to Cutler. and
Spiegelman also told the Journal
that no copies had been sold
when Cutler had them in his
Mouly said that when Cutler
realized that she and Spiegelman
were intent on pressing chargers.
Cutler•s immediate reaction was.
• •If can get the COPS out Of
here, I can make a deal With
you.” Cutler said that the deal he
wanted to make was to give the
two the books they claimed were
theirs. rather than fighting
through legal channels for them.
wasn’t trying to do anything
underhanded.” he said. “l just
didn’t want the voliee involved.”
However. Spiegelman and Mouly
proved intractable: they had
Culler booked and taken in
handcuffs to the milice station.
“The guy isn’t evil—I didn’t feel
great about having him booked: •
Mouly said. “But the choice was
to dismiss it as if there were no
law enforcement.”

[…]

Charges dismissed: On November
25. Cutler had the allegation
against him dismissed due to the
overly long time involved in
bringing the case to trial. Cutler
said that While he is glad the ease
is finished. he still hasn’t received
the S52 worth of Elvis Z»nbies
that the police confiscated.
although he expects to. Spiegel-
man said that although he didn’t
Win the case. he did learn from
it. having installed greater
security on his warehousc_ “l
guess it’s a lesson in civics.” he
said.

So much drama!

Dale Luciano interviews Panter in The Comics Journal #100, page 225:

LUCIANO: The uork in RAW seems
much more painterly than some of the other
uork.
PANTER: I’ve finally got my sketch
books—I just draw in these sketch books all
day long. just draw-out of my head or
copy from photos. Then I make paintings
from those, so the cartoons and the pain-
tings are starting to overlap with one
another. Jimbo’s the closest I’ve come to
combining all the stuff. Let me mention
one other thing. There’s a book I’ve been
working on for some time entitled Invasion
of the Elvis Zorhbies…
[ pause]
LUCIANO: Nothing surprises me any more.
Invasion of the Elvis Zombies?
PANTER: Yeah. And RAW’s going to
publish it simultaneously here and in
Spain. It’s being published by… well, I’m
not sure what the publisher’s name is…
uhhhh… IRummaging around in search of
something with the publisher’s name on it].
uh, here’s something.. Carnival de los
Ciervos. That’s it.
LUCIANO: Carnival of the Deers? That’s
the Spanish translation of the title or the name
Of the Publisher?
PANTER: I guess that’s the publisher.
[Reading some more from a letter] Collection
Impossible… Arregato Cardinale.. .l’m
not sure what… Spiegelman will know.
Can you ask Spiegelman?
LUCIANO: Why don’t we just transcribe
that as is and call it ratty interviewing?
PANTER: Anyway, that’s the big project
for the fall.
LUCIANO: Invasion of the Elvis Zorn.
bies!
PANTER: It’s supposedly going to be out
in time for Christmas!

For a book that’s kinda famous, there isn’t much writing about it on the net, but here’s somebody:

Surreal, almost dada-ist in delivery, this is a challenging read but shows just how far the medium of comics can push its own envelope.

But the book has never been reprinted, I think? Except tree pages as part of this anthology. So I guess few people have read it.

This blog post is part of the Punk Comix series.