Random Thoughts

Laundryland by Forg & Jeans.

A rather mysterious comic book. There’s no introduction, no editorial text: Just the comics themselves. Is this a translated comic? Where are Forg & Jeans from? What’s going on?

It’s about a woman who runs a laundry, and her friends. The first issue is very laid back. What happens is that she gets a house guest that she then gets rid of. It has a very appealing slice-of-life kind of atmosphere. The last three issues are more plot driven, though.

I find this style of artwork very attractive, too. It’s easy but charming.

Solving the age-old “how do you draw characters against a black background?” conundrum is solved by adding a white outline outside the black outline.

The artwork is somewhat uneven, though. The four issues were published with a nine month gap between each issue (approx.), so perhaps this wasn’t exactly the creator’s day job…

Finally! In the fourth and final issue we get a smidgen of information: The artists live in Calgary. I guessed it was Canadian, because it had that BD/US crossover synergy going on.

And that’s it. The somewhat complicated plot was even resolved in this issue. No mention of it being the last issue, of course.

I wonder whether Forg & Jeans have made anything else? This was a rather pleasant and diverting little read… They have names that are rather difficult to google. Nope. Can’t find anything other than Laundryland.

Which reminds me of this. Robert Boyd talks about survivorship bias and comics: The idea that comics artists are in it for the long run, and that it’s something unique for the art form. Some are, but they are the minority. Writing this series of articles has really driven home the point of how prevalent dropping out is.

The typical arc of an alternative comic book creator is 1) appearing in a few anthologies and self-published minis, before 2) Fantagraphics publishes three issues of your comic before cancelling it due to low sales, and then 3a) publishing one more issue via Neverheardof Comics or 3c) never publish anything again.

A fair number end up in adjacent industries that actually pay money, like magazine illustration or animation, but most just seem to get a normal day job and give up on the entire thing.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

Duplex Planet Illustrated #1-15, A Vast Knowledge of General Subjects by David Greenberger and various.

This is one of those early-90s Fantagraphics comics that I don’t recall all that well, other than I liked it fine at the time. I wasn’t really very enthusiastic about re-reading it, so I wondered whether I had suppressed some deep, dark feelings about it…

Greenberger works at a nursing home and collects stories from the residents, and prints them in a long running fanzine (over 100 issues). Daniel Clowes had previously adapted a few for his Eightball series, but now it was time for a more concerted effort at making these stories known through comics adaptation.

There are basically two modes to these pieces. In the first, we’re presented with a rambling series of remembrances. Well, senile ramblings, really.  I mean that technically.  These ramblings are either illustrated realistically: Just showing the guy who’s rambling on, like here.

But there’s often a punch line at the end where the old person in question says something particularly odd. (Artwork by Dean Rohrer.)

A series of CDs had also been created based on poems written by one of the residents, and a couple of them are included on this flexi in the first issue that I apparently was never curious enough about to listen to, which is rather unusual for me…

Hey! Very early Tim Hensley art! Later famous for his Wally Gropius comics.

The other approach to illustrating the ramblings is to show what the person is saying in a more literal fashion. Since these older people have a shaky grasp on reality sometimes, especially when talking about what they remember, that can result in rather wild and amusing narratives.

In addition to the remembrances, the other major mode used in the book  Greenberger asking the residents some question or other, and then taking note of what they answer. It frequently tips over into the “Old People Say The Darndest Things” category, but the more lucid residents (like this one illustrated by Pat Moriarty) are sometimes rather funny.

Ooo! A two-pager illustrated by Chris Ware. Ware often works with memory in his work, so having him illustrate one of these anecdotes is just perfect. Probably the best piece in the Duplex run.

The funniest one is this one illustrated by JR Williams, though. It goes on for several more glorious pages.

Wow. That’s a very different style than Ellen Forney usually uses. Fantastic!

Many of the characters in this series are recurring, and the Bern and Edwina stories (all illustrated by Pat Moriarty) are the cutest ones. (And also the ones with the most traditional narrative structures.) They were later collected in a trade paperback, I think.

You can’t say that Duplex Planet Illustrated isn’t educational.

Most of the stories aren’t very dense: Just a paragraph of rambling expanded to a handful of pages. This makes the comic book a rather breezy reading experience, which is nice. Here’s an early Ron Regé page, somewhat different from his later style.

Firemen were so helpful in olden times. Illustrated by Gabby Gamboa.

One of the things I liked about the Duplex reading experience is that there isn’t an editorial voice to explain what were reading: We’re getting old people talking at us, all the time. Of course it’s heavily remediated by Greenberger, but he’s not there to talk to us “in person” to tell us about what it all means, and that’s nice.

In the final issue he can’t help himself, though.

I read all these issues in one afternoon, and I think that was a mistake. Picking up an issue now and then would probably be satisfying: Spending a few minutes with these people and all these non sequiturs is fun. But after spending hours with them, I grew bored by the longer ramblings, and I grew annoyed at the “question time” pieces. Yes, if you ask senile people about random stuff, they will answer random things. Is this funny? Really? I guess it could be the basis of a TV show, and Bill Cosby could be the host, as usual in this genre.

Let’s end the Duplex examination on a happier note. Still as cute a pair as ever. (Pat Moriarty art.)

Greenberger also wrote a companion book, sort of, A Vast Knowledge of General Subjects, which are illustrated version of the poetry of one of the residents.

When there’s an exciting artist, like Mark Martin, illustrating them, it’s fun, but page after page of basically nonsense is a bit wearying.

Greenberger continues to publish Duplex Planet, but hasn’t done much comics work after Duplex Planet Illustrated was cancelled.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

Black Dogs by Ho Che Anderson.

This book is a short (14-page) introduction to the Martin Luther King, jr. series of graphic novels Ho Che Anderson would publish later. It’s set in the present day, and Anderson kinda explains why it exists:

So it’s set in the present, and it discusses whether it’s appropriate to use violence to protest injustice. And as Anderson says, it doesn’t really offer any answers.

It uses a rather restricted palette with lots of negative space and the occasional photography, too.

I think there’s something rather irresistable about Anderson’s artwork. His figures seem very natural, and not posed for the most effective storytelling, but it also has a high degree of artificiality about it. It’s a somewhat confusing mix, but very pretty.

Hm… I wonder whether he’s influenced by Howard Chaykin… or Bill Sienkiewicz. Perhaps more the latter than the former?

Anyway, this is in introduction to King, which will not be covered by this article series, since it’s not a floppy. But we’ll return to Ho Che Anderson later when we cover Pop Life.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

Jizz #1-10 by Scott Russo.

There was an double entendre epidemic going around at the time: Colin Upton’s Big Thing, Roberta Gregory’s Naughty Bits… and Scott Russo’s Jizz, which is, perhaps, only half as entendrey.  A single entendre.

I didn’t remember much of this series, only that it was outrageous and somewhat controversial, but I was pretty stoked to be re-reading it.

Oh, yeah. I had forgotten how much self-loathing was in this book. It reminds me a bit of Ivan Brunetti, only a very juvenile one who’s not very interested in the artwork.

There’s a couple of pages in this style, which I would call “telephone notebook scribble Ted McKeever” (what with all those little teeth)…

… but most are in this very simple, cartoony and rather lazy style. And this excerpt exemplifies why I remembered it being controversial. Russo depicts himself thinking many racist thoughts (always with the Jew stuff), but he also depicts other people saying racist things and then saying clearly that he’s upset at being a witness to those things.

In additions to the comics, there are text pieces and “found objects” like this, often with jokes underneath.

It’s rather sophomoric, isn’t it? It’s very much like what an alienated 16-year-old would create, what with all the outrage and angst…

These free-floating parodies are an opportunity to write shocking screeds but not take responsibility for them.

The humour is often extremely lazy, as in this piece featuring Akira Kurosawa. He’s Japanese, so L/R.

Russo calls the Fantagraphics office and talks to one of the Hernandez brothers. They’re Mexican! Hilarious! Not that he’s the only one to make these lazy jokes…  Clowes does one, and…  Hm, I should have made a note every time a Fantagraphics artist makes the same edgy joke, because I just can recall who else did this…

And speaking of lazy, Russo will do things like use four pages to print facsimiles of a pistol license application. Russo is apparently a gun nut for real (and a Libertarian, possibly) and writes quite a bit about wanting to buy guns, so it makes sense in context, but still… Sometimes reading Jizz it feels like Russo thinks that putting the thing together is a chore, so he just puts in some page fillers.

So it sounds like a rather loathsome package, right? But I enjoyed reading these issues. When Russo pulls himself together and actually draws, it doesn’t look half bad. And while I didn’t really laugh once, it’s frequently amusing, especially the way that Russo seems hell-bent on alienating as many people as possible.

His most frequent targets are other comic book artists, but he also goes after comic book dealers. So courageous.

The final major constituent part of the series are the letters that Russo sends to officials (some of them seem kinda deranged), and the restrained answers he gets back. I feel rather sorry for the people who are wasting their time responding to this dreck. Semi-serious letter above…

… and here’s a prank letter to ex-mayor Koch. I dunno. I’m just old and I only see someone who wasted ten minutes having to respond to this nonsense when they could have been doing something more useful, like sniffing their fingers.

Russo depicts Gary Groth, leading the Fantagraphics Empire. See? His drawing isn’t that bad when he makes an effort.

Apparently Russo had created a small backlog of issues, so the first five were created before he’d gotten any response from publishing the first issue. By issue six, the publishing schedule had caught up with what he was making, and he starts to get letters, reviews and can give critiques of Fantagraphics’ solicitation copy.

There’s also a rather prescient parody of Eightball. Yes, the surrealism in Eightball would work well in a perfume commercial.

And speaking of prescient… (The one on the bottom, not the one about lightbulbs.)

It’s not all parodies and fun. He also has various exposés: Here he reveals the shocking truth about olive oil, apparently sincerely, like this was big news to him. And perhaps these shenanigans weren’t well-known in 1991?

But Russo seems in general rather credulous, willing to believe and print any old thing somebody tells him. Or perhaps he’s being ironic, pretending to believe this stuff?

Russo gets fan mail, which included a used condom. With fans like these…

Oh, yeah, I had forgotten to mention the many pages where he features his parents. (Russo was apparently living at home while doing Jizz.) He unfailingly portrays his father as a racist asshole. Which may well be true, but the way Russo does this makes it seem like he’s doing these strips as revenge (especially with that final panel).

Sales figures! My favourite. Apparently Jizz started at 3K copies, but by issue six, it’s down to 1,800. That can’t be healthy.

Russo tries to do an ad campaign with the slogan “The comic that doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Carol Kalish”. To give some context, Kalish was an editor and sales manager at Marvel comics, and had recently died. The Comics Buyer’s Guide had published a large number of remembrances from people about Kalish, and some people thought that it was a bit excessive.

If only The Comics Buyer’s Guide  had run it, it would probably have sent the circulation sky rocketing, right?

Russo tells how Fantagraphics came to publish him.

The most famous issue of Jizz, if those words in that order make any sense, is the ninth. It’s the story of what happened when Sam Henderson (the comic book humorist) sent a death threat to the president in Russo’s name.

The Secret Service took it seriously and sent out agents to investigate. The entire issue is about the event, and is drawn by Jeff Wong.

Russo’s parents immediately think he’s guilty and told the Secret Service that the note was in Russo’s handwriting.

The Secret Service determines pretty quickly that Russo is innocent, and further investigation leads Russo to point at Sam Henderson as the guilty part. The Secret Service conclude that, indeed, he is. Henderson sends a half-hearted apology to Russo half a year later, but doesn’t really explain why the prank happened.

Russo’s mom is given the opportunity to tell her side of the story.

I remember reading this, er, 25 years ago? Yes. And wondering whether it was true or just a hoax. I think I eventually assumed that it was true, because it’s such a stupid story, and nothing really horrible happened. Surely if Russo had made it up, the Secret Service people would be inefficient and moronic, I think my reasoning was.

But I’ve never checked before, so I Googled a bit now. It looks like other people think it’s true, too, so perhaps it is?

The final issue opens with a vicious parody of the autobio comics artists over at Drawn & Quarterly, drawn again by Jeff Wong. It’s a four page piece, with each page drawn in the style of one of Julie Doucet, Seth, Joe Matt and Chester Brown.

Russo notes that he hasn’t gotten much specific negative critique, other than from that Hernandez joke.

And then Jizz is cancelled, primarily because it’s losing money, but also because Groth has grown ambivalent about the work artistically.

I guess that’s me, too. Like I almost said earlier, it’s like reading an angsty sixteen-year-old’s secret diary slash art project, which is rather interesting. But Russo wasn’t sixteen when he did this, which makes it somewhat creepy, too.

After Jizz was cancelled, Russo didn’t publish anything more, apparently. Jizz has never been reprinted, and I would guess that it’s somewhat unlikely that that would ever happen. But you can still pick up all the issues quite cheaply.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.