Random Thoughts

I Before E #1-2 by Sam Kieth.

These two issues reprint a lot of Sam Kieth’s early work; Kieth had become a hot artist over the past few years. I like how “Fantagraphics” isn’t mentioned at all on the covers. Perhaps keeping that fact a secret would entice Sandman fans to buy them?

The most puzzling thing about these (56-44 page; newsprint; stiff covers) issues is how The Maxx is referenced on the covers as if that’s the big Kieth thing. But these were released in 1991? Didn’t The Maxx start in 1993? SO PUZZLE.

First we get a quite funny introduction by William Messner-Loebs explaining how Kieth got published for the first time. I found the idea that Kieth based his art style on Messner-Loebs’ odd; I thought it was more Wrightson and Suydam, and didn’t really see much of a Messner-Loebs vibe…

Oh. That’s totally Wolverine MacAlistaire. With a pinch of Rand Holmes.

But the rest of the comics here are more Wrightson than Messner-Loebs.

Included are some early and somewhat rough pieces, but it’s mostly like the one above: Pretty great. The stories are slight, though.

Kim Thompson introduces the second issue. Kieth does sound very self-critical.

The bulk of the second issue is reprints from Critters. Which is OK, but I read them just the other… month…

And a checklist for the Kieth completist.

I didn’t buy this at the time, and getting them now was slightly difficult. I mean, they’re for sale all over the place, but mostly as “slabbed” high-grade issues that you can’t really read. And very expensive. But I found these non-slabbed issues somewhere for… er… a price. Which I guess means that the material here might not have been reprinted anywhere else? Otherwise it would have been cheaper?

I’m just guessing, though, because I’m too lazy to do research tonight.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

Avenue D, Guttersnipe Comics #1-2 by Glenn Head.

I guess you could call Glenn Head a third generation underground comix artist. His comics seem to belong to that lineage even if he started working in the 80s.

Avenue D collects various bits and pieces into a 48 page magazine sized single author anthology. About half the pieces are autobiographical (although Head uses the name “Chester” for himself), and we’re treated with a number of anecdotes and stories from his drunken, druggier days. Here he meets Muhammad Ali randomly on the streets, a scene that Head also included in his recent (and very well-received) Chicago book.

There’s a lot of stories about drinking too much. It starts to feel somewhat boastful after a while, but they’re interesting.

The other half of the stories are violent anthropomorphic tales of depravity. Here we see somebody doing something that Borderlinx certainly wouldn’t approve of!

There’s a certain element of going over the same stories again and again, like when Head moved into a place above a topless bar in Brooklyn. Here we have the scene from Avenue D…

… and here it’s from Guttersnipe, his short-lived series from the mid-90s. It’s a really good story though, so the temptation to tell it twice is understandable.

Guttersnipe is wilder graphically than Avenue D was. I think perhaps a great deal of Kim Deitch has crept into his layouts? Lots of chaos on almost every page.

Head really likes characterising himself as a slightly dangerous guy, but he also deflates himself a lot, so it’s not too eyeball-roll-inducing.

As mentioned earlier, Head published his first larger book recently, and it was well received. I thought it was fine, myself, but I found the reception slightly puzzling. “A Titillating, Brutal Comics Memoir” warbled Vulture, as if they hadn’t read any underground comics before… In the book, Head depicts himself going to Chicago and almost (almost) sleeping on the street one night before somebody took him in.

It’s just not all that brutal.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.

Stinz #1-4 by Donna Barr.

Stinz had been running in the Dreamery anthology by Eclipse Comics for a while, but the Fantagraphics title is his first solo comic.

Stinz is a half-horse living in an alternate reality Austria in the early 1900s. Rather high concept, eh?

But it’s fun. Barr has a lively drawing style and a way to make virtually any scene, no matter how trivial, into so much drama. Here’s Stinz getting on a train.

These people are surely all speaking German, which makes the, er, translations in the speech bubbles all the more bewildering. First of all, it’s all “thou canst” all the time, which I guess you could think of as a way to signify that they’re talking oldee tymee German… or country bumpkin German… but then there’s the frequent inter-sprinkling of real German words, always asterisked with a translation elsewhere in the panel.

I know some German, so reading this stuff without looking up the translations is no problem, but this must be a rather annoying affectation for most people. Language play is fun and all, but if you start thinking about it, these speech balloons make no sense. But perhaps they add to the general sense of approaching chaos…

And the thing about So Much Drama? So Much Drama. These kinds of scenes erupt all the time. But it’s fun. Barr draws these scenes of controlled chaos well.

The lower parts of Stinz aren’t clothed, which leads to, er, fun, but it’s not a very bawdy comic book.

Oh, yeah, I forgot to say what this series was about: Stinz gets enrolled into the military, and we follow him through training. And it’s structured in the classical way you’ve read in dozens of young adult books: Grouchy teacher (I mean sergeant), kindly headmaster (I mean Captain), student who struggles then makes good (I mean private).

It’s fun.

And then Kim Thompson announces that it’s over due to low sales (under the break-even point).

Barr went on to publish the Stinz saga through a bewildering number of titles from several smaller publishers. I’ve got most of them, and I seem to recall that Stinz gets a slightly more sombre tone as Stinz gets older. (There’s a war coming and it’s not one of those fun wars.)

But I haven’t seen anything from Barr lately… What’s she up to these days?

If I’m reading this correctly, she hasn’t published any new comics in nearly a decade, but she has most of her books available on Kindle and on print-on-demand.

This post is part of the Fantagraphics Floppies series.