Random Thoughts

Grenuord #1-3 by Francesca Ghermandi.

I am not a comics publishing genius, but serialising a translation of an Italian graphic novel as a series of $5-6 comic books, in 2005, published with a four-month interval between each issue, does not seem like the plan most likely to succeed.

It’s told in a decompressed style: Big panels and not a lot of text. It’s also sometimes frustratingly oblique.

Wait, what? The second issue has a “recap” of the first issue where we learn that the protagonist is a walking corpse. I don’t think that was even slightly alluded to in the first issue?

There’s a sort of interwoven, but parallel story about some kids in the neighbourhood, and it’s drawn in this simpler, more child-like fashion.

Well, OK… his face is a skull, so perhaps we’re supposed to guess from that that he’s dead?

No continuation has been published in English.

It’s a pleasantly paranoid and vague story, and I think I’d enjoy reading a complete edition, but it felt like we were just setting up the premise by the end of the third issue, really, so I’m guessing that it’s a rather long book, really? I haven’t been able to find much out about the original edition.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

Primitive Cretin by Henriette Valium.

This is an oversized collection of Henriette Valium’s work from the early 90s. It’s slightly wider than a magazine, and quite a bit taller.

Kim Thompson hadpublished Valium earlier in Zero Zero, but the smaller size of that anthology meant that most of Valium’s drawings were somewhat difficult to make out.

The result is an imposing object filled with story after story in this vein. Very scatological.

Valium is from Montreal, and these pages were apparently published in French first before being translated (by Valium) into English. I would assume that they were as weird originally as they are in English.

Valium’s sheer inventiveness is quite astounding.

Valium continued to publish comics, but it looks like he’s doing more art than books these days.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

Way Out Strips volume 3 #1-4 by Carol Swain.

I’ve been a massive fan of Carol Swain ever since I happened onto one of her short, oblique, beautifully drawn stories in an issue of Chris Reynold’s Mauretania magazine.

After that, she self-published four issues of the first Way Out Strips series, but I’ve never been able to find any copies of those comics.

So we start here with volume 2, which was published by Tragedy Strikes Press, Michel Vrána’s first publishing empire.

The first issue has an introduction by Paul Gravett, and he explains that Swain is a painter that started doing comics a few years earlier. I like the “ligne grasse” term.

Swain’s pages almost always look like this: Three rows of panes, but not arranged completely on a grid. Each panel is usually drawn from a different angle than the preceding panel, giving it a most un-filmlike feeling: It’s pure comics.

I find her rough charcoal drawings irresistibly appealing. There’s a stillness to them that’s unique.

Even if most of the stories are somewhat obscure, Swain is also quietly funny.

OK, that’s the Tragedy Strikes issues, so we’re off to the Fantagraphics issues.

The first issue reprints a piece from the last Tragedy Strikes issue, which struck me as being rather odd. But it turns out that it’s the first part of a three-part series, so I guess it makes sense.

I think Swain has never drawn somebody with an open mouth. Having the mouths always be closed and their faces with relatively neutral expressions contributes to the stillness these panels have.

Every face is distinctive.

Fantagraphics announces that Way Out Strips is cancelled and that they’ll be releasing a longer collection next year. Which turned out to be true, for once! Having long-range plans when you’re a very underfunded comics publisher is tricky.

Carol Swain has continued to publish via Fantagraphics with a new graphic novel or a short story collection showing up about every five years. Unfortunately, not many of these have received a lot of attention (or, would I assume, massive sales), but perhaps that’s finally changing now. Her latest (and quite brilliant) graphic novel, Gast, got at least some attention.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.